Feminists have long argued over whether the sex industry is empowering or degrading. Both sides agree, however, that sex workers deserve equal and civil rights. To supplement her income as a stand-up comic, Julie Query becomes an exotic peepshow dancer at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco, where she runs up against management’s unfair practices of racial discrimination, firing workers for not “having fun,” refusing to offer sick days. So she and her co-workers set out to form the only strippers’ union in the United States. In one of the more surprising twists to this riveting story, Query and her mother, a well-known public health advocate for streetwalkers who does not know her daughter is a stripper, both turn up to speak at the same conference on prostitution, and the confrontation that ensues is intense. But the real drama in this quirky, impassioned, funny documentary is in the fearsome battle that a diverse group of women—intelligent, tough, hard-working, independent—wage for their rights.  BD