-Archive from UCI Journalism Workshop-
By: Hannah Elizabeth Williams
Courtesy of Antonia Crane
SATURDAY APRIL 20, 2024- 12:00 P.M.
Multitasking can be a struggle for many, but Antonia Crane puts in the supplemental effort to make it a part of her day. On top of being a PhD candidate at USC in creative nonfiction and an author in the process of completing several new projects, she makes time in her schedule for an interview, and eases out onto a yoga mat while writing letters to men and women on assembly in Sacramento. Crane’s reasoning is in strong opposition to three bills that are being heard the following day. On Saturday, she is to finish up teaching her class and head straight up to Sacramento, a seven-hour drive, and join others in her industry in protest.
That industry being sex work, which Antonia Crane has been a strong part of for 30 years. Crane, platinum blonde, covered in tattoos yet graceful and feminine took the stand with her fellow sex workers during public comment on the hearings of these bills.
These bills are for loitering with the intent to commit prostitution:
CA AB2034: Crime of loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution. Hearing ended up being postponed by committee after introduction. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2034/id/2912474
CA AB2646: Misdemeanor to loiter in a public place within 1,000 feet of a school, park, playground, amusement park or state highway with the intent to commit prosecution. This hearing was postponed by committee members after introduction. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB2646/id/2928981
CA SB1219: Misdemeanor to loiter in a public place with the intent to commit prostitution. Existing law until January 1, 2023 and held in committee and under submission. https://legiscan.com/CA/text/SB1219/id/2930730
Crane calls these bills a backlash from 2021, when she and others fought and succeeded in squashing an anti-loitering bill in California that was called “walking while trans” bill (SB 357). This bill meant that legislators could criminalize people while walking on the street and use condoms as proof to commit a crime; now overturned.
“This crime being the victimless crime of being a sex worker,” Crane commented in rightful annoyance. This bill was seen by many as discriminatory as it disproportionally affects black transgender women universally. “It gave police enormous power and resulted in human rights violations that were also traumatizing.”
Crane is quick to point out the pattern in ways legislation further targets sex workers. “I think this is a backlash because they can tell that we are trying to get decriminalization language into bills and that we are unionizing strippers once again.”
Pictured above: Antonia Crane speaking to legislators in Sacramento to oppose anti-loitering legislation.
Born and raised in Northern California, Crane attended the University of San Francisco, where she earned a master of fine arts in creative writing, but also struggled with the loss of her mother and others close to her.
Twenty-seven years prior to protesting in Sacramento, Antonia Crane found herself back in her home of Northern California fighting for solidarity and founded Strippers United, the first union for strippers to be created in the United States. She began dancing at the Lusty Lady Peep show in 1995, the same year as getting sober and kicking meth, where her AA sponsor suggested getting back into stripping in a step to remove her habit of couch surfing post eviction. Scared, she was 25 and broke working for minimum wage at a clothing store while also mourning the loss of several friends who passed from AIDS. When money was tight, Crane marched into the Lusty Lady based in North Beach and Kearny the next day and felt the unease of her soon to be co-workers immediately.
Such an establishment was owned by a woman who operated a peep show behind glass with a reputation for hiring private school sex-workers- well off who had savings accounts, skateboards and cats. However, the mistreatment faced at the Lusty Lady was not for the weak.
“Pretty much right as I got there people that I worked with were unhappy and experiencing discrimination,” Antonia reminisced and was referred to in her memoir Spent, published in 2014, which is about her mother’s death and journey through the sex industry. Crane and her coworkers frequently faced exploitative working conditions including inadequate compensation, lack of job security amidst safety concerns, and overall emotional and psychological toll compounded by stigma and burnt out.
Customers began filming them without their consent, and started a labor war within. “At one point my friend Star said ‘Hey move over they are filming your butthole’.” After which Star demanded that they change things around her or she would. She was 19 at the time.
Two long years of organizing, picketing and fighting management with by the book union busting tactics, they finally unionized and became SEIU Local 790: The Exotic Dancer’s Alliance.
Antonia strongly specified that one of the components that helped them organize this union was the proximity and solidarity with her coworkers. “We would work shoulder to shoulder. Hip to hip, and when one said ‘Hey we’re walking off stage right now’ I was like ‘Yeah totally!’ There was no doubt in my mind to go with them.”
The Lusty Lady had a unique approach to sex work and employee empowerment and brought much attention at the time and is used as a model for today’s unionizing. It was one of the first adult entertainment venues to become a cooperative owned and operated by its workers. The cooperative model was to serve as an inspiration for labor rights movements within the adult entertainment industry and beyond.
“Honestly sex work is fucking boring. A lot of the time you’re sitting there dancing naked which is okay, but in that environment there’s not a lot of interaction with the crowd so you’d talk to your coworkers for four hours or so,” Crane comments on the positive impacts of proximity in the workplace that can help contribute to solidarity. “It’s a survival tactic.”
This tactic can be seen in the North Hollywood Stripper Strikes, where 27 years after the Lusty Lady, has unionized. Within that time gap in unions, working conditions were getting worse and union organizing was one of the ways to address that. “Is it perfect? No. Is it a guarantee? No. Is it fucking hard? Yeah. Does it feel impossible? Yeah. But I think that is a tool that we have.”
Pictured above: Antonia Crane and others at the North Hollywood Stripper Strike- Courtesy of Antonia Crane.
Now, continuing in her 3rd year PhD program at USC, she is now teaching up to 50 students while also getting an additional certificate in gender and sexuality studies and getting married in June to her trans partner, Jed Bell, who are both lifelong activists. Bell was behind the first ever transmasc gathering that happened in San Francisco in the women’s building in the 1990’s and is also an ACTUP member.
Pictured above: Antonia Crane and Fiancé Jed Bell, who are to be married in June.- Courtesy of Antonia Crane.
“I feel like every day is an opportunity. My life is really structured at the moment, but I always carve out time for myself. Being socialized as a woman I think we’re taught to give all of our energy away to other people and it’s expected of us, and I really have to fight against that,” Crane explained passionately.
Driving seven hours to Sacramento for a protest, people can see Antonia Crane is a very passionate and caring person. She expressed her nervousness about the new playing field, explaining that many of these sex workers in attendance have been in the work since the 70s and 80s. “It’s fun not to be the oldest one in the room, honestly. I am looking forward to spending time with my mentors.”
Claimed as a mentor by Crane, Lizzie Borden is an American filmmaker best known for her independent films Born In Flames (1983) and Working Girls (1986) and is in full support of Antonia Crane.
Pictured Above: Lizzie Borden- Courtesy of Cinema Femme
“When I met her for the first time during research for my book Whorephobia, she was very tall and very Amazonian. I was so intimidated by her but she is so gentle,” Borden described. “She educated me gently about the decriminalization of sex work.”
Crane and Borden have 10 years of friendship between them, and Crane even did the introduction for Borden’s book. The impact she has on someone she sees as a mentor is hard not to see.
“Antonia was a huge influence on me. She may call me her mentor, but she is my avatar. She’s so modest, but she’s a powerful and astonishing woman. She embodies pride. A whirlwind.”
While sex work can be ‘fucking boring,” as Antonia stated, the solidarity of the relationships you make inside can help support them through their greater cause.
“There is a pervasive tendency to relentlessly critique activists, specifically women, who maybe aren’t serving their community perfectly instead of considering what activists and leadership have sacrificed for their community,” Crane explained. “I’d like to move past this pervasive cynicism because it’s a wrecking ball towards solidarity.”
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Antonia Crane’s essays and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Believer and Cosmopolitan. Her work continues to inspire and provoke thought and make her a vital voice in contemporary literature and advocacy. Crane currently resides in Los Angeles, where she continues to write, teach and advocate for change while also working on future published works.
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