When I was eight years old, I wanted to be the next Bobby Fischer. I was a chess champion, a spelling bee fanatic, a classically trained violinist: in short, I was the all Asian- American role model. I never thought that I'd end up where I am today, a former sex worker and a sex workers rights activist.

Sex. Sex Work. Sex Worker. Titillating words that illicit strong reactions. From the completely disgusted to the all-knowing, these words never fail to arouse curiosity matched with endless questions.

I remember my first discussion about sex work and sex worker politics. I was eighteen and in a women's studies class listening to some fellow classmates express how the support of sex workers seemed fundamentally wrong in regards to the rest of the feminist movement-that if women wanted to exist out of the patriarchal paradigm, they shouldn't be selling their body image or themselves for male pleasure. A few women had dissenting views and brought up the point that the feminist movement should be supporting all women and that if the feminist movement wanted to move forward, that it would have to include everyone, even women who chose to do sex work.

The experience of entering a strip club for the first time-- the flashing lights, gaudy Mardi Gras like decorations, and nude undulating female bodies-- is still fresh in my mind. My roommate and I had gone because we decided that we were going to be strippers and that we were going to make a shit-load of money doing it. Fuck what everyone had said about sex workers and fuck what we had been taught about them growing up; we were on a mission--we wanted to see what stripping was like and why so many women did it. After the initial shock wore off, I decided to buy a lap dance. After all, I was a paying patron, why should I feel intimidated as a female client in a strip club? I was entitled to the same things that all the male clients were entitled to.

By the time I left the club, I was offered a job and was in awe of how glamorous every woman had seemed. My former image of the coked up sex worker was quickly replaced with the sex goddess, the femme fatale, the innocent school girl. The pendulum had swung-- from the misconceived negative image that a sexually repressed culture ingrained in me, to a new, naïve, and equally misconceived positive outlook on sex work.

Within the first few weeks of working as a stripper at Lil' Darlins, I quickly realized that sex work wasn't a glamorous job. I'd walk in at 5 pm to cake on layers upon layers of cosmetic products, stuff up several tampons into myself and tuck in strings when I was bleeding, let other working women spray feminine hygiene products on me and then get horrible yeast infections, painstakingly walked around in nine-inch stilettos for hours at a time, make up stories about where I was from, slink up to patrons to seductively offer lap dances, tell patrons to keep their hands off of me and always, always demand more money. I would go home at 3 am with baggy raccoon eyes and tell inquisitive housemates that I was returning from my waitressing job in the city.

Most of the women I worked with were single mothers, many of them had been working there for over five years. Our favorite topic to discuss was what we were going to do once we stopped working at Lil' Darlins. We all were "temporary" workers, talking about the day that we'd be able to quit and start working "real" jobs. "Panther" was training to be a masseuse, "Jasmine" was planning on going back to school to become a veterinarian, and "Tony" was going to become a professional ballet dancer. I had long given up my dreams of becoming the next Bobby Fischer, but I was putting myself through college.

Meanwhile, in my women's studies class, we had moved far beyond contemplating why women did sex work. We decided that it was more important to discuss the politics of sex work; we had a discussion about unionizing sex workers, what it meant and if it was important.

San Francisco's clubs are practically monopolized by a chain called Deja Vu. Deja Vu owns strip clubs all over the United States. In San Francisco's infamous North Beach district, there are two blocks chock full of strip clubs; Deja vu owns the vast majority of the clubs in North Beach, and is closely associated with most of the other clubs, with the exception of the Lusty Lady. There have been several efforts to unionize the Deja vu strip clubs in San Francisco, but none of them have been successful. Aside from the reluctance that many have for labeling themselves as sex workers, because of social stigmas and discrimination, the main reason why women haven't been able to successfully unionize within the Deja vu chain is because the vast majority of them sign on as independent contractors after being pressured by managers to do so.

At Lil' Darlins, I was charged "tickets" as an independent contractor, which I found out to be illegal years later when I got involved in a class action lawsuit against Deja Vu. I rented out the stage for all of my stage shows as well as the private booths for all the lap dances that I did. I also had to pay extra tickets if I came into work "late." Basically, if I walked into work at 8 pm, I automatically owed the club $80 and if I gave 13 lap dances and did 20 stage shows then I owed another $260, a total of $340. The money I took home depended solely on tips and I usually brought home anywhere from $0 to $1000.

As an independent contractor, I was given no health benefits or sick pay, I had no rights to complain about working conditions and knew that on any given night I could be fired and blackballed from any of the Deja vu clubs.

According to the women I worked with, the Lusty Lady was a peep show that paid women by the hour. I found out that in 1996 workers at the Lusty Lady joined the Exotic Dancer's Union in the Service Employees International Union Local 790. Workers demanded, and later received health benefits among other things. Years after unionizing, management decided to shut down and sell the Lusty Lady. The workers of the Lusty Lady organized themselves and decided to purchase the Lusty Lady themselves and turn it into the first worker-owned cooperative peep show in the U.S.

The unionizing efforts of the Lusty Lady workers proved that sex workers could organize themselves to demand rights and challenge society to recognize sex work as valid work.

I started to seriously question myself. Did I think sex work was valid work? Did I identify as a sex worker? Did I feel entitled to having basic rights as a service industry worker? Despite the fact that I knew that I wouldn't be a stripper for the rest of my life, despite my reluctance to let friends and family know that I was stripping, despite my non-existent voice that wanted to tell my manager's to "fuck off" and stop charging me all those illegal stage fees; I knew that the answer to all those questions was "yes."

After finally coming to terms with identifying as a sex worker, I started to critically think about other issues that doing sex work brought up. I recognized that as a sex worker, my definition of sexual harassment had become completely skewed; I no longer considered my manager slapping my ass or coming onto me as sexual harassment. Most importantly, I realized that unless there was a forum for constructive dialogue about sex work for and by sex workers that society's view of sex work would still swing wildly from one end of the pendulum to the next.

For the first year that I was involved in sex work, I hardly shared any of my experiences. All of my friends were worried about me, and many of them had told me that they could not support my decision to strip. Desperately wanting to prove why sex work was something worthwhile to me, the only experiences I shared were positive ones having to do with reclaiming my sexuality, or making quick money. I never talked about incidences of sexual assault or my heightened body image issues. I have no doubt now that if I had lived in a culture where sex, sexuality, and sex work weren't taboo and sensationalized topics that I would have been able to effectively communicate more of my experiences to my friends, and seek out professional help and community resources.

Maybe I'll return to my aspirations of becoming the next Bobby Fischer and start my own community of supportive and sexy sex workers who play chess. Anyone down for a game?