Stripping away rights: The impact of sexual entertainment venue licensing and feminist campaigns on dancers’ safety and livelihoods

This paper draws on a mixed-method Participatory Action Research project, co-produced by academics and strip club dancers, to deliver a post-pandemic analysis of the UK stripping industry more than a decade after the introduction of Sexual Entertainment Venue (SEV) licensing and the expansion of nil-cap bans. Our research makes three original contributions. First, we foreground disability and neurodivergence, largely overlooked in sex work scholarship, to show how strippers who are systematically excluded from mainstream labour markets cannot simply “find another job” when workplaces close, despite assumptions underpinning anti-strip club campaigns. Second, we expose the symbolic, political, and interpersonal violence generated by such campaigns, particularly from strands of radical feminist activism, revealing how they reproduce the very inequalities they claim to oppose. Third, we trace how market concentration and restrictive policy interact to erode workplace safety, fostering a culture of silence and displacing sex workers into more dangerous and criminalised environments, with disproportionate harm to the most marginalised. Centring dancer-led analysis, we conclude with harm-reduction oriented recommendations for regulation that prioritise labour rights, safety, and the self-determination of those most affected.