Maybe because it was a fucked up thing for them to spend money on?

Good for you to take the tweet down. Oliver is a one-woman outrage machine, a rather unpleasant and seething character who thankfully came in a distant 3rd place for mayor.

Now if a group of Amazon employees hired Ms. St James to come shake her big ol’ titties at them at a hotel event, you want to bet Oliver would be outraged?

@4
According to the story, the "dancer" wasn't paid for the "performance," but speaking as a civil servant myself, if the city and county staffers were "on the clock" and paid for their attendance, using that time in this way would clearly be a form of wage theft.

Katie,
Good article and good thoughts and observations. Congratulations. I'm convinced that you may be one of the last rational, sentient, beings in Seattle.

@4 Seriously. I wonder if these people know how budgets, or like... work, works. "Ok, we have $1,000 to spend on entertainment, who should we get?" End of story. Would it have mattered if it were a Maroon 5 cover band instead? People talking like they raised your taxes for this.

@7 Is it more or less wage theft than you participating on the Stranger forums right now?

Humans will destroy themselves. But it won't be nuclear war or even climate change. It'll be the internet. We're like a dog that has to chase a ball. We are completely out of control.

@7 "wage theft" is when the employer steals from the employee.

It does seem like some people get some sort of dopamine hit off of getting outraged.

@7 You gotta be kidding me! This is rich coming from such a retrograde manly man as yourself. Technically I guess you are probably 'off the clock' when you're picking up hookers while on a business trip.

"...but for those of us sick of these cycles, maybe the first step is to stop taking part." Wow. This. Coming from you.

@5: Then why do it? Have the appropriate entertainment for the venue.

But to do it, and then whine about the outrage is the epitome of disingenuousness.

I dunno, man, if i have to pay for Congressional prayer breakfasts, i think we should be allowed to pay for a trans-poz performance.

@21 How is pigeonholing trans-women into sex work shaking their big ol' titties for dollar bills "pos" exactly?

Most people live very dull lives and watch too much TV. People on the TV are always angry, so they think they should be angry too. That spills over onto things like Facebook, which is another place where people with dull lives hang out.

As for whether or not the stripper was paid by a government agency, that's very simple to find out if one cares to do so. I for one certainly don't.

@22
The real question is, why does trans women taking charge of their own lives and sexualities scare you so much?

We all know the answer to that, even if you don't.

@24 So you believe doing sex work is "taking charge of their own lives"? Seems trans-women have long been forced to do sex work rather than say, accounting, for people like this.

@15 Capitalism destroyed liberal democracy (imo). The internet is going to finish us off.

"Person responsible was fired, as they should have been"

Actually, they were allowed to resign, resume in tact.

“ if it weren’t filmed no one outside the event would have known about it.”

When all else fails, blame the camera.

Stripper + work event = sexual harassment risk for the employer. Even if the entertainment wasn't mandatory it's risky.

This wasn’t drag, this was stripping. I’m just amazed that no one was injured by those big ol’ swinging titties and non-consensual sexual contact.

@25
Slippery Slope fallacy. Red card: off the field.

Can you imagine, say a manager at Amazon, organizing an off-site event at a hotel with several hundred employees, AWS evangelists etc etc. Then imagine that manager hiring a black, trans, stripper to perform but announcing before that the stripper is coming on that folks uncomfortable with it should leave the event. because, well, "squares!".

Could you imagine the law suits?

Could you imagine all the defenders of the Homeless Industrial Complex here screaming "racism!:", "sexism!", exploitation of black bodies!

The hypocrisy is fucking breathtaking.

“ seemed to enjoy it. ”

I imagine rapists, gropers and sexual harassers would like that defense.

“ But no, being present for a showgirl drag number is not sexual harassment.”

So stripper is now showgirl. But good to know managers at Amazon can hire “showgirls” to shake their tits at their female employees during off-site events without fear of condemnation in Seattle.

Most of the conservative outrage snowflakes are just really, really turned on by this story/video and that's what's making them so excited about it. Especially Feebs.

@39 Ah yes, the closet homosexual attack. How progressive of you.

41

I didn't mention anything about homosexuality. The performer rocking your world is a woman.

Enjoy yourself. Why so uptight?

@42 How do you know I’m not a woman?

@43

Can you tell?

@43
Women don't swing their dicks around like you constantly attempt to

“ Women don't swing their dicks ”

No, we like to shake our titties for dollar bills. It’s so empowering.

“ have zero stakes in this ”

“Zero stakes” is a taxpayer funded conference?

No no no. The reasons laid out here are not why this incident is - irksome. Not why I find it so inappropriate. Here is why: I work for a law firm that takes "Seattle Nice" to ridiculous levels. If you look at someone the wrong way - you get a talking to. Raise your voice while on the phone because the person on the other end can't hear you? Yep, that's a talking to by your supervisor because raising your voice can be "upsetting" to some. Use a word like bitchin' in jest - yep, that's a talking to. If you make anyone uncomfortable in any way - no matter how slight - you'll find yourself sitting in your supervisors office. When I first started working there I thought it odd how little people interacted - now I get it. I don't talk to anyone I don't have to. Don't tell any kind of joke, no matter how benign. I said "we gotta stop meeting like this" one time to a lawyer I kept running into in the copy room and he PALED so bad I thought he was ill. Then got all weird "are we meeting????" Really - are you that delicate?

So no, no FUCKING WAY. If I have to act like I've got a rod up my ass all day at work NO FUCKING WAY do other work enviroments get to have strippers. If strippers are ok in the workplace, then I should be able to say things like: "This new software keeps bitchin' at me with its error messages - can you help?" and NOT find my supervisor calling me on it. True story. I was lectured "don't use swear words like that -ever."

And this is a firm that prides itself on its inclusion, left-leaning lawyers...ect. Don't lay this at the feet of the right wing.

No. Fucking No.

@49 Holy shit, seriously? Friend of mine practices at a firm that literally specializes in workplace harassment cases and her office is Caligula's cubiculum compared to what you describe.

blip makes a good point about no one expecting the top to come off. otherwise it's tolerance virtue signaling to have a near max-points (intersectionally speaking) member of the community put on a "performance." trans-burlesque is some hot shit right now in the woke-dominated spaces of coastal cities. Im fine with it, it's just a little funny to me that it ended up like this. It's extra funny because I recently left Seattle for a more no-bullshit big-American-city where the naive amateur hour peter principles are a little less apparent, but even here in New York, would someone have stopped the performer mid-tit-twirl? That would have been the capital crime of tone policing.

The only inappropriate outrage in this piece, Katie, is yours.

One would think that this group would have among them at least of couple of members with the common sense to realize that his was inappropriate (whether straight or transgender) entertainment for its dinner given its mission. Somebody should have realized that one Tweet would put the group in the cross airs (after all, it's almost 20 fucking 20 for chrissakes, not 1950). How much dumber could they possibly be?

They absolutely deserve all the scorn and criticism heaped on them for this serious lapse of intelligence.

If you believe Mz. St. James traveled from Spokane to Seattle solely in the hope of getting a couple of dollar bills stuck in her garter, you're as gullible as ECB. In her self-appointed role as Defender of the Narrative, ECB will pretty much assert anything in order to make her case. Even when it defies credulity.

The only solution to this onslaught of trans nonsense is to laugh at these trans losers. That guy with boobs is a boob.