In the state of Washington, a bill aimed at regulating strip clubs to create a safer environment is encountering an unlikely opponent in the state legislature, older Democratic women.

Washington is an unusual state when it comes to how it handles strip clubs. Blocked from selling alcohol, strip clubs are left to try to turn a profit by making as much money from dancers as possible.

According to the campaign manager for the organization behind the Strippers’ Bill of Rights, Madison Zack-Wu, this dynamic is the root of many of the issues with strip clubs in Washington.

Ms. Zack-Wu explains that in Washington, dancers are normally required to pay the club a “house fee” in order to dance — fees that are sometimes as high as hundreds of dollars — and then work to try to make their money back in tips through the night. Other charges dancers can face include things like a fee to leave the dance floor.

Allowing clubs to serve alcohol, Ms. Zack-Wu says, would be a good first step toward helping both them and dancers, and would also help clubs pay for other provisions, like security guards and anti-trafficking training.

Permitting alcohol sales, though, was a sticking point for some in the state legislature who were skeptical of last year’s bill and, because of this, the push to allow alcohol sales has taken a back seat to other protections in this year’s proposal.

This year’s bill would cap house fees, require clubs to maintain a blacklist of troublesome visitors, and institute a variety of independent contractor protections to support dancers, who rarely are staff employees.

Ms. Zack-Wu tells the Sun, “There will always be some form of demand for sex work,” and the current laws in Washington don’t work for either employees or contractors, or for society at large.

“My pitch is that regardless of how someone feels about this work and whether it’s okay or good people will always be using it and other forms of sex work,” Ms. Zack-Wu says. “Here in Washington we are so far behind.”

Last year, a similar bill that was also backed by the Strippers Are Workers campaign ran aground in the state legislature. Ms. Zack-Wu says that “surprisingly a lot of our opposition has been older Democratic women.”

In last year’s legislative session in Washington, the bill initially passed the state Senate in a 40-to-8 vote and was passed by the state house labor committee. 

Yet key Democrats at the state’s Regulated Substances and Gaming Committee, Representatives Sharon Wylie and Shelley Kloba, failed to schedule a hearing before the deadline for last year’s session.

A spokesman for Ms. Wylie declined to comment on the topic, and Ms. Kloba’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Sun.

This year’s bill circumnavigated that committee by excluding provisions concerning alcohol sales in the state and is currently pending in the state house rules committee. 

If passed, it would bring laws in Washington more in line with those of most states. Nationally, the laws and regulations around strippers, who are normally considered sex workers, and other sex workers have been changing rapidly.

States such as New York, Hawaii, Tennessee, and Maine have all considered changes to the rules around sex workers in recent years, and, nationally, strippers specifically have been recognized as employees by the National Labor Relations Board, leading to successful union drives at some strip clubs.