When Game Workers and Strippers Stand Together
On July 28th 2021, video game workers at Activision Blizzard stood up from their desks, collected picket signs, and walked off the job. In July 2022 they walked out again, marking one year of fighting against harassment, sexism, and abuse under the banner of #ABetterABK.
In March 2022, strippers at the Star Garden dive bar also found themselves outside their workplace with picket signs. Dancers had delivered a petition demanding an end to gendered violence, racism, and wage theft. Management responded by locking them out, but the dancers stood their ground: they picketed for eight months, ultimately unionizing.
Making video games behind a desk and dancing on a stage seem as different as professions can be. But workers in both industries are fighting tooth and nail battles against sexism, harassment, and dangerous workplaces. And so in Southern California, an unexpected friendship has bloomed.
Stronger Together
Organizers representing Game Workers of Southern California and the ABK Workers Alliance have walked dozens of pickets with the Star Garden workers. We’ve donated handmade signs, hundreds of buttons, and thousands of dollars to the Stripper Action Fund — often dispensed via $1 bills thrown at fundraiser shows.
From the other direction, a Star Garden organizer donated her space and expertise to help the Tender Claws Human Union run a t-shirt making party. A contingent of stripper-organizers drove down to Orange County to demonstrate at the #ABetterABK anniversary walkout. And most of all, these brilliant organizers have shown game workers — often a shy lot — how to run an energetic, welcoming, and joyful picket line.
Between the material support and the knowledge exchange, this friendship between game workers and sex workers is a shining model of cross-industry solidarity.
A Tense History
Past relations between game workers and sex workers can be fraught. In 2016, XBOX executive Phil Spencer apologized for the presence of “Go-go dancers” at a company-sponsored party. And until recently many game companies employed “booth babes,” professional models paid to attract convention attendees. Many accuse that these practices alienate female and gender-marginalized employees, and reinforce our industry’s “frat house” culture.
There are valid critiques here. Many of us have to attend industry events to maintain our careers, and companies violate our consent when they hire erotic entertainment for a work party. But some game workers (and many outsiders) misidentify the enemy to be the dancers and models themselves. This feeds the stigma against sex work, which enables the very sort of gendered violence that we’re trying to banish from our own industry.
These attitudes are even appropriated by management and customers into sexist “modesty standards.” HR often writes up female employees for personal social media posts that the company deems “inappropriate,” such as harmless swimsuit photos. And game players repeatedly accuse female streamers (workers who entertain online audiences by playing games on camera) of using sex appeal to attract viewers.
Finally, there is a category of game workers who are also sex workers. Some streamers and game developers make money on the side with OnlyFans profiles. Others work on websites like epal.gg (formerly egirl.gg), which offers primarily female companionship through multiplayer game experiences. These are our fellow workers, and we need to have their backs too.
Our challenge is this: how can we have a mature discussion about sexuality in professional games spaces, without harming sex workers and ourselves in the process?
Two Paths
Game workers have the same choice as the rest of the labor movement. We can fixate on who we think is and isn’t deserving — “sex work isn’t real work,” “fast food jobs aren’t real jobs,” “white-collar offices are too cushy for unions,” etc. These divides have fueled the labor movement’s decline over the past half-century.
Or we can embrace the simple truth that a worker, is a worker, is a worker, is a worker. We are not all the same, and many of us face different magnitudes of exploitation. But we all work for bosses who take more than they give, and we all deserve better pay and safer workplaces. The task ahead of us is enormous, and we can’t afford to stigmatize those who would be our allies.
The good news is that the most successful anti-sexism movement in the history of the game industry — #ABetterABK — chose solidarity with sex workers, and stands with the Star Garden strippers. This doesn’t mean that our work is done, or that individual game workers don’t hold oppressive beliefs about sex work. But it bodes well that the organizers leading the battle against game industry sexism have embraced what we share, not what divides us.
In labor’s fight, all we have is each other. And we have more in common than we think.
