Закон о зонировании в Торонто лишает стриптизерш возможности открывать собственные клубы

Andrea Werhun is a political correspondent for Stripper News. On the morning of Aug. 16, Toronto’s historic Zanzibar Tavern was severely damaged in a three-alarm fire that has shuttered its doors indefinitely. Allen Cooper, the owner, is optimistic the club will reopen, but it is just the latest in a string of setbacks for high-profile strip clubs in Canada’s biggest city over the last year. Filmores Gentlemen’s Club closed in January. Brass Rail, also owned by the Cooper family, is set to close Dec. 31. These closures represent the loss of hundreds of well-paying jobs. So, why aren’t we talking about it – and about the reasons that Toronto’s strip clubs are disappearing, as if by design? Back in the 1970s, when the neon-lit Yonge Street was known as the Sin Strip, Toronto boasted more than 360 strip clubs. In 1981, when the city capped adult entertainment establishments at 63, it also introduced zoning bylaws intended to prevent new strip clubs from opening. The bylaws state that new clubs must be 100 metres away from a residential zone, and 500 metres away from a school, place of worship or another strip club or massage parlour. These bylaws, in conjunction with the recent closures, mean the permanent loss of dancer jobs. The current situation isn’t just unfair, it’s entirely avoidable. And it represents a huge potential loss of revenue for the City of Toronto and the businesses that profit off strip clubs, like surrounding restaurants, hotels, and transportation services, not to mention the city’s beauty industry. Like any job loss, these ones have real-life implications. Stripping is predominantly women’s work. The living we earn from dancing gives us the opportunity to fund and complete our education, start new businesses, provide for our families, and give back to our communities. Strippers are students, parents, entrepreneurs, artists, activists, renters and homeowners, for whom getting a new job that offers the same rate of pay and flexibility will be difficult to secure, especially in the middle of a deepening affordability crisis. Most of all, stripping is a legitimate occupation. That much is recognized by our mandatory City of Toronto Entertainer licences, which cost $500.03 with an annual renewal fee of $352.12. This licence accrues us no benefit at all except the right to work. For our money, we ought to have a say in how our workplaces are run. That should include the right to open our own establishments, before our jobs are rendered unnecessarily obsolete. But these bylaws that make it impossible for new strip clubs to open also prevent strippers from opening our own nightlife establishments that are safe, sexy, lucrative, and most of all, fun. After all, what kind of world-class city doesn’t have strip clubs? The shuttering of strip clubs doesn’t mean sex work is going away; in fact, it will only drive sex work further underground. While the abrupt job loss may inspire a few sex workers to change industries, many of the most vulnerable will be pushed into far more dangerous work environments hidden from public view. That should concern us all. It doesn’t have to be this way. I know a great many enterprising dancers who would relish the opportunity to run and operate their own establishments that prioritize worker occupational health and safety. Imagine stripper-run clubs with clear sexual harassment policies, training manuals for new hires, a no-tolerance rule for boundary-pushing customers, and a complaints procedure that doesn’t threaten a dancer’s job security. Improved workplace conditions would apply to all strip-club staff, including security, DJs, servers and bartenders, as well as management, who all deserve to be paid a living wage to effectively uphold a safe and respectful labour environment for dancers and each other. Ontario strip-club owners in the 1990s organized to advocate for their own interests by establishing the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada. In 1993, so did Ontario strippers, under the banner of the Exotic Dancers’ Alliance which advocated for safer work conditions until 2004. Perhaps it is time, once again, for the current and former card-carrying entertainers of Toronto to organize for their right to work and to build their own clubs from the ground up. The loss of Filmores, Brass Rail and Zanzibar in a single year may be a brutal blow to hundreds of stripper livelihoods, but the demise of the strip club is not inevitable. In fact, it can be amended quite easily: Toronto’s zoning bylaws must change so that new strip clubs can open – and that dancers are empowered to push back against the seeming end of Toronto’s strip club era.