The new Stranger column. It's about a common bit of sex-industry infighting, and I see in the comments that the stripper version of this argument is also getting some airtime.

I'm not surprised. As a former stripper myself, I have known many strippers who spent a lot of time and energy trying to control the behavior of other strippers, and that always baffled me.

For one thing, trying to get a bunch of strippers to do anything at all is like herding cats. (No pun intended.)

But trying to get a bunch of strippers, many of whom are not exactly deeply invested in strict professionalism, some of whom are chemically altered in some fashion when they're at work, and all of whom are actually in financial competition with each other to adhere to a highly-interpretable set of behavioral boundaries just because you want them to - you're kidding me, right? Never gonna happen.

The amount of blood, sweat and tears some strippers will put into policing whether some other chick put her hand on a guy's thigh or his crotch, whether she brushed up against him or she rubbed up against him - you know, you could put all that energy into getting a job where there really are strict rules about how people are supposed to act. That seems like what you want.

But sex work? This is the wild wild west, baby. We ain't got no sheriffs, and we don't need no stinkin' badges.