Let us now return to the tiresome world of the lap dance.* I know, I know. I’m sorry, but it has to be done, because last Election Day in the enlightened city of Seattle, a referendum** prohibiting, among other things, bodily contact between johns and strippers was seen swirling down the Crapper of Women’s Dignity, waving a bleak farewell with its feeble, shackled hand, while the town’s “open-minded” Tony Sopranos and their “liberal” butt-boys threw a big we’re-in-the-money penis party.
Seattle’s mayor and city council thought Referendum 1 was a good idea; their guiding principle emerged from the sound reasoning that strip clubs, which are directly related to elevated crime rates, might buzz off if skulking pornsick “gentlemen” could no longer use them as repositories for their personal moistness.***
Stupid, naïve city government.
The portion of the Referendum 1 to which the good townsfolk most strenuously objected was a restriction called the “4-Foot Rule”. This regulation would have kept strippers from coming within groping distance of their clients (although the knuckledraggers, with their longer arms, might still have had a shot), thus putting the kibosh on, as one journalist so wistfully put it, “strippers overflowing from their lingerie … [leading] men by the hand to dark booths for a dance.” But in Seattle, the city famous for duping otherwise right-thinking Americans into accepting burnt coffee as a taste treat and flannel as a fashion statement, the lap dance is apparently central to the voters’ sense of what it means to be a Seattlian (Seattlite?). According to the referendum’s vociferous opponents, the lap dance is no mere gentlemen’s entertainment. No. The lap dance is the physical expression of Jeffersonian political idealism. It is what our boys are fighting for. It is woven into the very fabric of Old Glory.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the aforementioned vociferous opponents were in fact a contingent of Seattle strip club owners/organized crime enthusiasts — i.e. men who sell women for a living — who spent almost a million smackeroos**** on their campaign. Their tireless efforts successfully persuaded voters (not that the average enflanneled yay-hoo needs much persuasion to view strip clubs as elemental to American dudeship) that a male groin without 24-hour access to abused, degraded, naked women constitutes a travesty so egregious that it must be construed as nothing less than an infringement on the right to free speech.
I’m not joking! Free speech! Ha-ho! That’s a hot one. In Seattle you can do whatever you want as long as you do it to a woman in a strip club and you call it “speech”.
The suggestion that there be maintained a distance of four feet between the fully-clothed bonerized pervs and the naked women they enjoy degrading caused an uproar so frenzied that nobody in Seattle had the slightest idea that there was anything else on the ballot. God forbid, yawped the gangster-strip-club-owning pillars of Seattle society, that city government should naggingly “nanny” the citizenry by casting the legislative stink-eye on the sexyfun of feeling up a teen crack addict in some dank, caliginous hell-hole. Strip clubs are awesome!
The awesomeness of strip clubs is a topic irresistible to the sort of male blogger who uses the word “awesome.” Thus there ensued some lame hipster bloviating by Dan Savage fanboy James at Seattlest (what Seattle blamer Susan calls “a kind of faux-brash, free-thinking, culture-loving local blog” that has been “braying off and on for months about the scarcity of good strip clubs in our city”). Quoth James, using the Royal We that we find so tiresome in our corporate proto-journalisto bloggers, “We’re voting no on Ref. 1 because we want the occasional lap dance. They’re sexy! They’re fun! If our wife is GGG, what’s it to [pro-referendum journalist Susan] Paynter, the cops, the local bluenoses, or [Seattle mayor] Greg Nickels?”
Not surprisingly, James appears not to have considered that strippers are sentient beings. But then a stripper wrote in to Seattlest to complain about James’ dudely entitled idea of sexyfun, and James posted it.
“Strippers,” she wrote, “really hate the rise in lapdances and private room experiences that johns like you are increasingly demanding from us to have your ‘fun’. If imposing a four-foot rule keeps me from having one more asshole lick me, bite me, jam his fingers into me, rip my costume or otherwise act like an entitled fuckface, then four-foot rule it is. Asking you little boys nicely to stop hasn’t been working, and the last time I complained the manager laughed in my face and said, ‘You don’t have to work here, lots of girls will be happy to take a finger up the ass for what you’re getting paid.’”
James lost no time in conducting an email interview with his anonymous penpal in which she failed, alas, to effuse sufficient enthusiasm for her work. The resulting comments are unanimously venomous and fall into two categories:
• Shut-The-Fuck-Up-You-Stupid-Whore: “You make 100 to 300 bucks an hour? I think you should shut the fuck up and ride the dick like a good girl, or quit the business and go legit making far less. Either way, shut the fuck up” (a sub-category is Who-Cares-If-You-Were-Abused-As-A-Child-Shut-The-Fuck-Up).
• She-Is-Obviously-Not-A-Real-Stripper-Because-Real-Strippers-Love-Being-Groped: “So, the consensus on Fark (fark.com) is that this interview has never taken place, the interviewee (lol) is not a stripper but a man-hating feminist.”
In other words, men are entitled to abuse and degrade women as long as they pay them, and any sex worker who says different is a stinking feminist impostor.
What does all of this have to do with the myth of sexual repression I promised to expound on yesterday? Nothing. It turns out I already covered that one.
___________________________________________
* “Lap dance” are words I type with jaundiced fingers, which I do whenever benign euphemism is popularly substituted for accurate description, which transpires whenever a grim truth interferes with romantic fantasy.
** Say, what’s the difference between a referendum, a measure, and an initiative, anyway? Where does it fit in with amendments and propositions? And why do they call that flying saucer tourist trap thing a “needle”?
*** Naturally, from what I can tell, city government was more concerned with sticking it to the strip club mafia than with the humanitarian implications of women working these shit jobs under these shit conditions.
**** Smackeroos: the 20th century working class term for “dollars,” according to gun moll-with-a-heart-o-gold Barbara Stanwyck in Howard Hawks’ 1941 Ball of Fire, a film also featuring famed pothead drummer Gene Krupa playing a tiny box of matches. That’s right, lately I do nothing but watch Turner Classic Movies, with the result that my formerly articulate craw is now choked with black-and-white Hollywood colloquialisms such as “Say, what’s the big idea, Mac?”
Quick warning to all - Twisty has summed this up really well. If you go to Seattlest &/or Fark to see for yourself, you will get very, very depressed.
The correspondent is correct, she doesn’t know where that finger’s been.
And I can’t believe Seattle attempted to pass this measure by referendum [popular vote] rather than simple initiative from the city council… if the Austin smoking-ban-in-pool-halls-for-Christ’s-sake was any clue, democracy simply doesn’t work.
Also remarkable is that Houston, TX, home of the unzoned strip club in between a junkyard and an elementary school, enacted its own 4-foot rule close to a decade ago. And trust me, there are still shitloads of strip clubs; they even outnumber megachurches.
Urbandictionary was depressing enough, never mind the Seattlest bile-fest, but at least I now know what ‘caliginous’ means. Thanks, Twisty.
I live in a place without strip clubs, but both my lovely daughters and my lovely granddaughter live in Seattle, amongst the slime who would tolerate, or even patronize (nice word, that) these clubs.
Women should picket these places, the way wingers picket abortion clinics, harassing the “customers” as they go in. If that fails, protesters may have to resurrect Carrie Nation and get busy smashing things. Carrie Nation thought bars were bad. This is so much worse, and I can’t believe anyone tolerates such businesses.
I didn’t care all that much until I real Mimi’s blog, about the dreadful pathetic life she leads (or I hope, led) as a stripper. She opened my eyes to the degradation that passes for empowerment.
I think picketing would just make them more popular. Nothing like the chance to degrade women AND show your courageous opposition to “prudes” at the same time.
Seattle is a strange, strange city. We lived there for 12 years too many and never looked back when we left. It’s a city with a light outer face and a dark underside that remains well hidden so that mega businesses can still attract their people. Yes it does rain as much as everyone thinks, maybe that’s why these poor deprived shit-headed examples of patriarchydumn think they have the right to titilation on their terms; hey, they have a giant ringed dick as a tourist attraction, a music museum that looks like mammal innards and all the coffee any small country could consume.
The fuzzy new-age light and faeries that portray an enlightened city also nicely veil the fact that it is one of the most socially isolating places in the US. Most people can easily count on one hand the times they’ve spoken to a neighbor with more than a passing and slightly suspicious, “Hi”. People in our middle-class neighborhood consistently had their mail and identities stolen, but the cops didn’t pay attention until an unnamed multi-gazillionaire’s neighborhood was targeted. (Bet the crooks thought they had hit the jackpot there…) I personally found NY City a friendlier place. Meth labs lurk in the nicely painted house next door and anytime you want to see someone shooting up just go to the famouse downtown market.
Anyhoo, the point being, I can see this sort of thing happening not infrequently.
I wonder, however, if a congregation of wriggling thong-wearing men stationed outside the entrance of strip clubs, yelling “Hey daddy!” and “Nice ass!” at the clients, would turn anybody away.
Seattlite is correct. The reason we have to do practically everything by referendum in Washington is that, for example, the asshats on the Seattle city council are the owners and frequenters and tax profiters of strip clubs. This is a state where the people had to sue the state in the 70s to get them to pay for basic education as required by the constitution of the state, fer cryin’ out loud. Where they persuaded the people to go along with a lottery by telling them the money would go to education and then spent it on sports stadiums. Where they spend more money on public relations patronage than they do on the public projects. And if you don’t know what WPPS is, it’s an acronym for all the money you want for a project we don’t need, don’t want, and is built so poorly that if it does work it will probably render the are uninhabitable.
That extreme lefty, righty division the punditry loves to carry on about is a living breathing reality here in WA.
I blame Boeing and Microsoft, but mostly I blame the patriarchy.
That would be render the area, rather than the are. Sorry.
a music museum that looks like mammal innards
Yes. I hate that place. Actually, when the sun shines (ie not that often) it looks like a bunch of gift wrapping paper thrown on the ground. But mostly, as you say, it reminds me of those plastic models of innards that you see in anatomy class.
I wouldn’t have a thing to do with Seattle or anywhere else in the “great Northwest” if I didn’t have kids living there. The vice scene is especially nasty and covert in Seattle as well as in Portland, and probably in Vancouver too.
Actually, for those who must live in Seattle, Ballard is pretty cool.
life love and the pursuit of lapdances! don’t mess with the constitution.
also wish i had read the comments and antelope’s warning before clicking…teach these people english - you can do it to chimps so let’s try with them too.
Well, since Twisty’s called me (and 10,000 other people) out as the kind of male blogger who uses the word awesome, here are my thoughts on the stripper-as-empowerment myth, and the complementary male myth of the cowboy.
My response to the commenters on those posts is here.
I’m ill reading the balls-out misogyny of that comments thread. Wrote two comments if anyone is interested. Now time to go pour Lysol in my ears to try and cleanse my brain.
Great Scott, Kugelmass! You use the phrase “solipsism embedded in the archetype” in describing a Britney Spears video, which goes beyond awesome.
I’m delighted that Twisty turned her laser wit to our fair city and its disgusting support of lap dances, but is it blame the patriarchy or blame Seattle? The patriarchy thrives here, as it does everywhere else. Yes, the particular brand of “sex positive” nonsense is irritating and damaging. But is New York’s insane competetiveness about shoes and strollers and purses any better? How about Southern California, where porn (the Valley kind and the Hollywood kind) is made and fake boobs endemic? You want to see some ugly, hidden sexual exploitation try San Francisco.
That building is really horrible but I like the weather. Too much sun addles the brain.
The successful patriarchy-blamer must be thick-skinned when it comes to hometown pride. I manage to love Texas despite its loudmouthed gun-totin’ vulgarity, but I take a lot of heat from people who think there’s nothin’ but W-lovin’ Klansmen down here.
“The successful patriarchy-blamer must be thick-skinned when it comes to hometown pride.”
Right you are Mme. Plus Vite. It’s hard out here for a blamer.
the space needle was oh so outer-spacey in 1962! remember the jetsons? yup - that’s us!
I wonder, however, if a congregation of wriggling thong-wearing men stationed outside the entrance of strip clubs, yelling “Hey daddy!†and “Nice ass!†at the clients, would turn anybody away.
I’m picturing an army led by Party Boy from Jackass. Is it wrong to say I’d pay to watch that?
My goodness, such negative comments about Seattle here! I’m a little surprised, frankly. I live here, as you probably guessed. I am a feminist, I don’t like strips clubs, and guess what? I voted against this referendum! Yes, shocking, but true. Here are my thoughts on it, whether or not they make any sense to you, take ‘em or leave ‘em:
- The City of Seattle proper, and this was a referendum for just the City of Seattle, has, like, five strip clubs maybe. They’ve pretty much been practically outlawed in this city. City Council has made it practically impossible to open one, which is fine by me. The majority of the strip clubs in the Seattle area are just outside the city limits and therefore would not have been affected in the least by this referendum. I’m just sayin’.
- Seattle is notorious for trying to pass initiatives and referendums based on gross misinformation. The information in this case that they tried to use to justify passing this referendum was that strip clubs are directly connected to a higher rate of crime (narcotics, prostitution, breaches of peace) in the surrounding neighborhood. They lied about that statistic. The police did not find this to be the case at all and yes, I actually believe them. What I am sick of is this city lying to me to get its way on initiative and referendums. I think many Seattle citizens are by this point. If you lived here, you would understand what I mean, but if you don’t, this may be meaningless to you. It was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, unfortunately.
- Actually, this initiative wasn’t *that* much of a hot topic on the ballot. We were waaaay more concerned with getting Darcy Burner elected, making sure Maria Cantwell stayed our Senator, trying to figure out if we wanted to keep our basketball team in town, and trying to mow down Initiative 933 in order to protect our land-use laws from going to shit environmentally. This strip club thingy really didn’t make all that much of a splash in the face of trying to whip the Republicans asses and keep on track environmentally.
- The good news: Seattle also has a magical way of passing initiatives and referendums even if they are voted down completely (see: Seattle Seahawks stadium and accompanying citizen taxes). See, Seattle, once it gets its claws into an idea, will not let go. I have every faith that this will eventually get passed too. It’s just Seattle’s way!
And oops, I forgot to sign my name to that last one! I’m Shannon. My blog is at westeringhills.weblogged.net. Sorry!
Oh, how I love you Twisty, especially for sentences like the last one in the first paragraph. And for fabulous images like the one for this post. You somehow made a lap actually dance! I think it’s doing the can-can. The fact that you’re in the world, blaming away with such finesse and deadly aim, gives me hope, and also a good dose of much-needed glee.
Sheesh, you know, Twisty attacks Seattle and all the Seattle kids start whining in defense. Get real, folks! I hail from the Valley (like, THE Valley) of Los Angeles and NOW live in San Francisco, so dudettes and dudes, get over yourselves. Way more fun to blame the patriarchy residing in those OTHER places then dare turn it on your own fair haven, right?
(Maybe I’m just tired of hearing my hometown brought up in some poor would-be deflection of YOUR hometown’s ills.)
Also, since being defensive seems to be the cool thing to do right now, I’m going to have to defend the term “awesome.” It’s, like, awesome. Just ’cause everyone in the world uses Valley slang in this wannabe-Valley-ness doesn’t mean it’s fair to censor those of us who happen to speak “Valley” as our actual first language. If YOUR town controlled the media, then maybe everyone in the world would use YOUR slang.
But back on topic — awesome post, Twisty. Ha ha ha, see, I swear that wasn’t even intentional.
I just can’t believe how easy it is for so many people to just blow off the whole issue of how degrading a lap dance is for both parties.
I’m so sick of a world that profits from exploiting women. At the same time women are exploited, men have their sexual impulses exploited, too. And then they cover their shame by insisting that they like it.
It’s the ultimate sexual repression: turning sex into a loveless, mechanical, brutish and mercantile exploitation of everyone concerned.
I would love a world where exploiting sexual desire was illegal. I make no bones about it. If anyone misses it they can think it up for themselves.
At the same time women are exploited, men have their sexual impulses exploited, too. And then they cover their shame by insisting that they like it.
They do like it. Men, I am becoming more and more convinced with every passing year, do not have sexual impulses. They have degradation impulses, and they simply use their dicks to act them out.
I think it was seeing all the posters that said: “Protect your rights! No on Referendum 1!” that did me in. Protect your RIGHTS? I just wasn’t aware of any right to 24-hour groping access.
And the thing that got me about the Seattlest interview and thread was how evasive James and the rest of the dudes were on the question of exactly WHY they deserve this type of access at all times, and how defensive they became when the illusion of the happy stripper was threatened. How much do you want to bet that they think they “love women”?
TP: I love your whole post, especially the second to last (penultimate, if you’re feeling fancy) paragraph.
Edith: Well Twisty didn’t attack Seattle, some commenters did, and for things having no relation to the matter at hand. And I didn’t exactly defend Seattle, I merely pointed out that it isn’t unique in its adherence to patriarchy.
Defending the Valley? Get down with your bad self!
Classic Twisty - bravo. Though I am now too angry to work.
thelmyc: “Men, I am becoming more and more convinced with every passing year, do not have sexual impulses. They have degradation impulses, and they simply use their dicks to act them out.”
Very interesting way of looking at it. That would explain a lot. I bet those little boys who spend their childhoods pulling legs off frogs and frying ants with magnifying glasses are the same little boys who grow up to think they are entitled to ram their filthy fingers up some poor sex worker’s private parts.
And, re: “So, the consensus on Fark is that this interview has never taken place, the interviewee (lol) is not a stripper but a man-hating feminist.â€
Amazing that anyone would think these categories are mutually exclusive. How delusional these patriarchs can be. Do they actually imagine that strippers *like* them?
I believe they really do. Hence the unquestioning ease with which James et. al. will accept the premise that most strippers disagree with the proposed ordinance. The myth of the happy hooker will never die in the tiny, deluded minds across dudedom.
The boys don’t give a flying cock whether women like them. Fact is, the more they disgust women, the more points they make in The Brotherhood.
It is all delusion out in the ‘pay-for-play’ world. Phone sex is particularly delusional as it involves a person that you cannot see but who just says what you want to hear. Over the phone line, it is all happy hooker as you never have to see the look on her/his face. Lap dance allows the delusion that you are pulling something off- the illusion that you pay for is inevitably delusional. What is amazing is that these dudes do not realize that the only power they have is that of the pocketbook and that they only have that power as long as it satisfies the club owner.
The boys will continue to have pocketbook power as long as the corporatocracy can continue to attack their main target: Mothers in the workplace, whether single or married, the single greatest threat to the patriarchy.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2961
I have never been to Seattle in my life, so naturally I am the world’s foremost authority on Seattle politics. I have gathered that the strip club = high crime statistics were only “debunked” by the very group who stood to lose the most if lap dances were banned, i.e. the 3 strip club owners who raised the 800 large to defeat the referendum. Nobody spoke out publicly in defence of the ban. Nobody, that is, except one lone dude, who insisted that he risked violent retribution by doing so, and was portrayed as a sort of nutjob by the opposition. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first case in the history of the world where organized crime proactively defended its nefarious interests with threats of violence.
But in the end I don’t suppose there was a gun held to every Seattle voter’s head; obviously they are all just fine with the idea that women are the sex class. Which is the truly wack thing about all of this: that they all seemed to accept unquestioningly that commodification of this sex class is biologically determined or constitutionally protected or something.
So Shannon, even if the police didn’t lie to you, and there is absolutely no evidence of strip club criminality, even if you believe, for some reason, that women are not being violated or even raped in these joints, is there not some small, hoarse voice of common sense that whispers in your ear, telling you that sex work degrades all women and that the commodification of an entire class of people is a global humanitarian crisis?
Some Farkers 1st amendment examples of free speech
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/stripc2.htm
Mar, thanks for ruining my day.
I was just wondering why the patriarchy was allowing me to live in this bubble of autonomy: I have no need for a man in my life though I’m a mother, because I work and got a break on daycare. I can’t help enjoy the delight of bringing up a child in a man-free environment: no arguments, no compromises, no violent TV shows, no having to tiptoe around male moodiness or argue over money.
If every woman had an opportunity to live like me, why would anybody want a man around?
That’s why I worry: this is too good to last.
Oh, how I love thee, Twisty. Some day I will enumerate all the ways in which your peerless prose has bent me to your will, but for now I will just quietly and humbly thank you for your latest deconstruction of patriarchal privilege. I despise strip clubs, their patrons, and most of all the stupid hyper-rationalizations lap dancees invent to justify their degradation/exploitation of captive women.
Dear Gyns,
Robert Jensen has a disturbing post today on stan goff’s site about men and porn. Worth reading but be careful.
Last night I skimmed thru Sheila Jeffreys book The Idea of Prostitution for some inspiration and found lots and also was sparked to go back and re-read Millett. Seems nothing much is new under the sun. We buy ya books, and we buy ya books - but do ya read ‘em?
A few years ago, on her trainwreck of a reality show, Anna Nicole Smith went on a road trip to Las Vegas. Her posse visited a strip club, and Anna ordered a lap dance as a gift for one of her heterosexual female friends.
This baffled me. Why would you pay someone to imitate sex with, and attempt to sexually stimulate, a person who had no interest in coupling with her? Wouldn’t that be like giving a toothbrush to a canary? I had to have it exsplained to me: it wasn’t about sexual tittilation. It was about the power trip of paying someone to realistically mimic an act they don’t want to perform with you. Dance for me, bitch.
And then I realized that of course I was participating in the dance too, and getting a rush from feeling superior to poor stupid drug-addled fat Anna and her dumbass vapid friends.
Oh boy, spelling mistakes. That’s my lap-dance power-trip gift to you folks. Feel the superiority! :) (and a smiley AND parentheses AND improper capitalization. You see how I degrade myself for your pleasure?)
Does Robert Jensen still work out of Austin? He taught one of my classes as an undergrad many years ago. It was one of those 300-people lectures, so we didn’t get to know him well. What’s the general feeling about Jensen these days? I’m just curious, because even though the class was huge and impersonal, it was one of the most carefully organized and thought-provoking classes I remember. I hope he is well.
Twice I have seen so-called “role reversal” where a male stripper was dancing at some woman’s birthday party. Mostly what he does is shove his ass practically right in her face. I’m guessing it’s because these guys mostly dance for gay men and don’t feel like changing their style. The woman never looks even remotely like she’s having fun. Why should she? Even if she did get off on the illusion of control, that’s not what he’s giving her by dancing in a way that has nothing to do with typical female sexual desires.
Mainly what it seemed to be about, both times, is that her friends wanted to humiliate her and take pictures they could use to humiliate her further later on.
I don’t have anything insightful to add, just a warning comparable to the first one, for my fellow* thin-skinned blamers. I went and read the Jensen article on Goff, and I wish I hadn’t. Ick.
*: Twisty or anyone, have a non-masculine alternative for the word fellow (adj.)?
Annared, I skimmed the post, and that’s appalling. But I’m going to save the link, for the next time that some man asks me to explain why strip clubs are a Bad Thing.
CafeSiren
Here is the full article
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/stripc1.htm
You’re not going to believe this but - wait - what the heck, maybe you will: Last New Years’s Eve I found myself on a blind date that ended at a high end strip club. I cannot express how bored those women looked, but I must say the hang-upside-down-from-the-pole-thing was pretty impressive (I’d land on my head if I tried).
My date bought me a semi-private lap dance and I went along (for research purposes of course). What did the dancer and I talk about while she hovered over my lap? Our kids! She had three kids, all still in diapers (a set of twins, but were they all triplets? I forget). She whispered in my ear how she preferred giving lap dances to women, for reasons one can only imagine.
Imagine his disappointment when he asked for my assessment of my lap dance. I never saw the man again.
My assessment of the evening: Even though it was the fanciest club in the city the vibe was empty and flat and depressing. I don’t know how men could even enjoy it - - were they so dense they couldn’t pick up this vibe, or did they not care? A little of both, perhaps. GAH.
I really hope that if the strippers are geting groped and they cant pass an ordinace to help(though if the club owners are fuck-faced enough not to care about strippers being poked would they even enforce such an ordinance?) tha the strippers unionize and get the ability o strike, sue, and hire some muscle if the club owners won’t. If the thought of geting a chair upside the head in case of bad behavior limpifies the johns johns, to damn bad.
Darlings, do you know what I find degrading? Temping. For seven dollars an hour, in a cheap clown suit purchased from Ross. Particularly when one has to wear nylons, and squarish sort of elephant heels that make one feel about fifty.
Or what is worse is waiting tables at PoFolks Restaurant, where they are famed for country fried steak and gravy, for $2.01 an hour plus tips, which bumps your wages up to nearly $5 an hour. Without breaks. Not even for the bathroom, let alone a meal, not that you would want to eat any of that horrific food, anyway. On nine hour shifts.
Quick! Let’s pass a referendum that says that temp workers must be paid equal pay with lap dancers. That would fix it!
This “Quick Informative on Law Related !” outfit is a splog. Apologies for the shadow link. I’m working on ditching them…
Twisty, you are nothing short of stunning. This subject makes me incandescent with rage but I have never seen it summed up so beautifully. Free speech, my big red Canadian ass! I loathe the idea that sex work is empowering, and that study listed by annared sounds perty similar to the many other studies on prostitution and stripping I have checked out. And anyone who says that society is immune to the xxx culture that we’re steeped in these days and that kids (and adults, for that matter) aren’t learning from it and getting an education on male-female relations from it, needs to pull his/her head out of his/her ass and smell the extreme backlash.
The last two “nice, feminist-friendly” guys I dated were addicted to porn at one point or another, and because of this they had some major sexual issues. The first one was young (21) and hated the idea of porn after learning about sex from it in high school; he preferred real women and real sex, intimacy, all that jazz. However, he could hardly get it up in the presence of a real woman (me). When I expressed my interest in having an orgasm, he actually told me that when I voiced my “demands” it didn’t help his performance. Some of those reasons were specific to him, but an article I found by Naomi Wolf alerted me to the possibility that it wasn’t so rare: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/index.html
The second guy was 33 and divorced, and had spent 5 solid years of his marriage addicted to porn and going to strip clubs since his wife had sex with him only twice during the marriage (after finding out his skill level, I ceased to wonder why). You’d never guess this by looking at or talking to him. Imagine how lucky I felt when I found out that I’d hit the jackpot twice in a row. This guy COULD get it up but couldn’t have an orgasm with a real woman (me) unless some other form of stimulation was involved. I let him watch porn once during sex and of course, he had an orgasm. It was just a test to see if my hunch was right, and then I dumped his ass. I spent 3 months trying to educate him on why porn and strip clubs were warping everyone’s minds, but deep down I doubt that I made a dent.
Besides the fact that I have been blessed with these fantastic experiences with men, I hate the pornification of everything and how it’s considered “ironic-trendy.” As though this hatred for women is just fun stuff, not real, and when men go back to society after a lovely evening of throwing bottles at strippers and imagining all sorts of degrading scenarios where they treat women like less than human beings and get off on it, they can just switch back to being the loving, caring, equality cheerleaders that they so willingly are.
I think that some sit-ins at lapdance clubs are in order in the near-future, on a nation-wide basis.
Oh, my god, mearl, you have hit it on the head. There is such widespread denial about the destructive brainwashing men get from porn, and you have lived it. And I freely admit, I have lived it, too.
Despite the fact that men will loudly declare over and over again how great it is to degrade women and how women love it too and all the other insane crap you hear, it’s really all just symptoms of porn sickness. Porn sickness is when you are so inured to scenes of degradation and transgressive sex that anything real becomes abstract and ceases to even resemble sex to you any more.
I have to believe, since I am a man, that men are capable of much more than this. Porn sickness can ruin one relationship after another and then the men, instead of blaming their beloved porn, blame themselves. Men NEED to understand feminist theory because it liberates them from inhuman behavior.
Feminist theory to me is human being theory. There can be so much less sexual pathology and so much more fulfilling loving sexual relations if the world were a little bit less patriarchal. Women are not sexbots, they are simply human beings who haven’t been seduced by sicker and sicker porn fantasies that seem to always need to become more and more transgressive until you end up in a black hole of total degradation of women.
I think men are degrading themselves by projection when they degrade women, and a hint of it always emerges when they insist that women like it.
I think women have a natural resistance to the seduction of porn sickness because - duh! - it’s not aimed at them. Though if all the women who love being tied up and degraded come back and start posting about how great it all is I shall be distressed beyond all measure. I hope to god Twisty has them, whoever they are, under control, because it’s so hard for them to understand how terribly sad and frightened for them I can get.
I’m not sure that a position in favor of a law governing the rules of engagement in titty bars qualifies as true patriarchy-blaming.
Isn’t such a law just tuning the knobs on a device that runs on pure jism?
If the idea is to free our society from its pathological approach to sex and gender, it hardly seems worthwhile to buy into the notion of a continuum from “womenly wiles” to outright prostitution, which is what the Seattle referendum does.
Moving the little ladies farther from the big, nasty men (and their big swinging dollar bills) does what? Protect them?
It seems important to mention that Referendum 1 was not put in front of voters by city government. The Seattle city council barely passed the new strip club rules. A petition drive started almost immediately to get a referendum on the ballot. The referendum asked Seattle voters whether they approved of the new regulations or not. (I don’t know why it was phrased that way. I had to reread it a couple of times to figure out whether I should check yes or no.)
Since the referendum was voted down by a wide margin, many women had to have voted to overturn the new regs. I was one of them, not because I like strip clubs, but because I refuse to tolerate anyone telling women what they are “allowed” to do. I don’t tolerate it from right wingers who attack strippers for being immoral, or from feminists who attack strippers for being tools of the patriarchy.
See, the thing is you get this idea in your head about Seattle and suddenly everything else about it sucks too.
I dunno. I think strip clubs with or without lap dances are stupid. Every day I drive my kids past two of of the maybe five or six in town on the way to their elementary school.
For years (like 35 now?) one of them had the Texas-logic motto “Top Class Show Girls” (as if “top class” was ever applied to anything that might actually be “top class.”) The other one, about 15 blocks away, only has male strippers. It’s only been there for maybe 10 years.
Like I say, I think the whole idea’s pretty stupid since you’d think the men who go to the one, and the women who go to the other, could eliminate the middlemen and just pull their pants down in front of each other.
But I digress. My main point is that as far as I’ve ever been able to tell there’s no crime associated with either of these clubs, although the bachelorette party stretch limos sometimes double park, making it hard to pull into the semi-upscale family grocery store across the street.
Lord knows there’s plenty of criminal activity 20 blocks east on the old Highway 99, but it’s hard to blame imposing and/or repealing the 4-ft rule since as far as I know there’s only one strip club and it’s miles north.
Now I know what you’re sayin’ here, Twisty, that letting guys get “Texas Lap Dances” all inside licensed, alcohol-free establishments where there are bouncers and other customers and well-lit parking lots amounts to legalizing preostitutution and all that, but see, it’s about that Highway 99 thing again, part of town that doesn’t have so many strip clubs at all, the unlighted, unpatrolled, no-bouncers part, where any number of serial murderers went to pick up *real* prostitutes who were then never seen again. In one piece anyway.
But whatever. We repealed a dumb power-play ordinance that the mayor was going to use to carve out a giant “red light district” in an industrial area south of the stadium district. But if you want to say that makes him virtous then, well, that’s that Texas logic for you again.
Oh yeah, while you mentioned that just because we voted the thing down our coffee now sucks you forgot to mention that we’ve had record-breaking rain *ever since election night!*
(Also, just like you’d hate to have everyone think Texas sucked just because one narrow-minded blogger is from there — especially since usually she’s actually pretty cool once you take the time to get to know here, we hate to have people think the same thing about Seattle for the same reasons.)
figleaf
Oh look, it’s burning hour at the strawfeminist rally.
Keshmeshi: “I refuse to tolerate anyone telling women what they are “allowed†to do. I don’t tolerate it from right wingers who attack strippers for being immoral, or from feminists who attack strippers for being tools of the patriarchy.”
Who is attacking strippers for being tools of the patriarchy? No one here (as far as I can see) has attacked other women for being immoral spreaders of sin, or for being dupes of the patriarchy. I don’t see any hatred being handed out to strippers whatsoever - only to johns and to a system that means many women can only earn a respectable wage through lapdancing.
This myth that feminists are prudes who hate women is the most pernicious load of backlashy crap. You know what the problem is for sex workers? Might it be feminism? No, doofus. It’s the patriarchy.
Moreover, I really loathe it when people argue along the lines of “I refuse to tolerate anyone telling women what they are allowed to do.” This supposedly inarguable statement - because the reverse of it would be nonsense - is a pathetic attempt to caricature any discomfort with the exploitation of women as an infringement of their rights.
First, we are all told what to do, all the time, by law and by our unwritten codes of social etiquette. Please don’t try to pretend that this is somehow a problem. It’s called “civilisation”. Liberation from it is not desirable.
Second, the consensus here is that it is not acceptable that men express their “freedom of speech” by mauling terrified teenage crackheads in strip bars. No feminist here is telling women not to work as strippers, although I’m sure many of us are depressed that some have to. Rather, they are arguing that the *johns* should be told what to do - in this case, that they should stop treating women as commodities to be abused.
Personally, I am perfectly comfortable with telling men not to abuse women. Are you unable to tolerate this?
TP,
Fantastic comment, you said a lot of things in there that I was thinking as I went through the responses to Twisty’s latest excellent blaming.
This line: “I have to believe, since I am a man, that men are capable of much more than this.” You said it, bro. There are fewer greater disappointments in my days than seeing men behaving so despicably towards women. And it is a disappointment because we (the collective of “men”) are capable of doing so much better.
The greatest revolution in the history of the world is the women’s revolution. Sadly, men have failed to realize this and sought to hold it back and relegate women to second-class status, and they use strip clubs, pornography, and other “sex”-based forms of degradation to do it, because there is no more visceral reminder of that difference in status. It’s bullshit and it’s time to tear it down.
“Particularly when one has to wear nylons, and squarish sort of elephant heels that make one feel about fifty.” Pretty Lady
Oh, you poor, poor, pretty. Truly there can be nothing worse than being made to feel like an old woman. The degradation! What horror to contemplete the inevitability of the fate worse than death. You might want to consider the alternative, dahling.
figleaf, Seattle’s favorite export coffee has sucked since long before the election. No cause-and-effect there.
I still can’t get past the idea that they sold this as a “free speech” issue. What next? Rape as free speech?
The idea that strippers should tolerate the groping, grabbing, mauling because they’re willing to be on display is, alas, nothing new. A woman who will be naked for money is, in the eyes of the patriarchy, no different than a woman who will have sex for money. Artist’s models have, for centuries, been considered interchangeable with prostitutes, and often (like strippers) were expected to give up sexual favors in addition to their clothing. (I’m thinking 19th c. Paris, my field of reference).
I find it bewildering that any man can claim to see no difference between taking your clothes off for money, with no physical contact, and taking your clothes off and being groped, poked, flat-out physically assaulted all night long. Whatever happened to the “no touch” rules? I guess the dancers who thought they were doing contact-free sex work are now having to rethink that, aren’t they? My stomach still clenches and my legs cross when I remember being aggressively groped, once, in the 7th grade; I can’t imagine how horrible to have that happen dozens of times a night. What’s worse, by entitled motherfuckers you have to be nice to.
All this reminds me somehow of a t-shirt a friend brought home from a punk-rock shop in London back in the early 80s. It said, “We are all prostitutes,” and at the time, I kind of didn’t get it. Now it’s making sense. Guess I’m a slow learner.
To my mind, the truest definition of “shit job” would mean being paid like a file clerk and objectified like a stripper. I’m certain any woman who’s held a job can describe disgusting situations of sexual harrassment. It’s a depressingly common form of economic terrorism.
Just linked to this fabulous post and to the Drudge Report post on the 27th Carnival of Feminists that just went up on our blog Body Impolitic.
Check it out!
Jezebella; “I still can’t get past the idea that they sold this as a “free speech†issue. What next? Rape as free speech?”
As I understand it, it’s the “dancing” that is the “free speech”. This somehow morphs into the concept that the strip club regulations infringe on everyone’s rights.
“But if you want to say that makes him virtuous then, well, that’s that Texas logic for you again.”
It may look like Twisty is giving a free pass to the government, but read the asterisked fine print:
“Naturally, from what I can tell, city government was more concerned with sticking it to the strip club mafia than with the humanitarian implications of women working these shit jobs under these shit conditions.”
I’m cackling right along with Mar. Damn, I wish I could find a pair of shoes that made me feel fifty again. If I recall correctly, that would be before my joints went all to shit.
There’s nothing quite so persuasive as being held up as the Personal Example of Horrible Fate, is there? Wait, there’s one thing that might be: personally witnessing the immediate and effective effort of the examplereifier to avoid that horrible fate. I hear that women in Afghanistan are using a method that selflesssly (as proper ladies should always be selfless, of course)contributes to heating the family home. Of course, what they’re trying to avoid isn’t (shudder) living to be 50; it’s being forced to fulfill their womanly destiny as household appliances. Here in America, see, we give women the empower to choose to be public appliances if they want to fulfill their womanly destiny without being prudes.
Here’s your match; what’s your hurry?
Also, not to put too find a point on it but saying “oh, that’s a *good* strip club” because they have a 4-foot rule but “that’s a bad strip club” because they have lap dancing is just… missing the point?
I’m clamp-jawed neutral on the issue of strip clubs and all other forms of sex work but it just seems to me like the slippery slope begins a lot closer to “men and women employed to dance around taking their clothes off” than at some later point in the process. Same with the decision either to or not to go into that line of work. (Or, for that matter, to become a customer.)
figleaf
“Do they actually imagine that strippers *like* them?”
Yes.
I know a man (whom I can’t tolerate associating with any longer) who once told me in absolute sincerity that the prostitutes he used when he was a young man really liked him because he gave them the very first orgasms of their entire lives, and he knows this because they told him so (and I assume made the appropriate noises). I became utterly speechless in the face of such idiocy and denial, as is unfortunately my usual pattern. I wish I could burst out with Twisty-like eloquence when confronted with such drivel but an inability to speak is instead what I am usually stuck with.
Figleaf,
I’m of the opinion that there is no such thing as neutrality when it comes to strip clubs or any form of prostitution. You’re either for it or you’re against it. If you’re not against it, then you are, at a bare minimum, acquiescing in the continued sexual oppression of women. The position falls under the same banner as “it’s not for me, but if other people want to do it, go for it,” which is tantamount to condoning other people treated women only as sex objects instead of people.
To say that you’re neutral on a topic in which you have engaged in discussion (which you have, by your presence and posting here) is a bit disingenuous, particularly given that you’ve expressed your view that all strip clubs are stupid. You seem to be leaning in a particular direction but don’t want to leap head-on and join the rallying cries AGAINST strip clubs.
This statement marred an otherwise good post. The men don’t blame themselves - they blame the women for not being like the ones in porn.
A)I don’t think the suicides of Afghan women are funny ;_;
B)I don’t know about the neutrality point. On one hand, I don’t really like strip clubs, they seem to encourage bad beauty standards, breast implants, and guys who think they can touch the strippers(just say no!) On the other hand, we can’t really ban them, and in another universe, stripping could be quite a nice profession- just not in this one.
In a universe where dominance is not eroticized, stripping would be a completely neutral act, like mowing the lawn, or picking a poppyseed out of your tooth.
Pretty Lady sez: “Darlings, do you know what I find degrading? Temping. For seven dollars an hour, in a cheap clown suit purchased from Ross. Particularly when one has to wear nylons, and squarish sort of elephant heels that make one feel about fifty.”
Well ain’t that a bitch.
You know what I find degrading? Women who still consistently banter the tired and old mantra that they have no other alternatives to make a living in this world than stripping, prostitution or porn.
Fact is, its bullshit, fed and supported by men who enjoy believing this and supporting it when they can get away with it and the women they practice it on and who either won’t or can’t see anything else.
Frankly, I don’t think women should waitress, work as maids, receptionists, retail cashiers or any other number of low paying work that women willingly get up and smile everyday for. I have this crazy idea about choice, that some choices one has are no good either way, but that the long hard road is better than the easy short road. By idea of choice has to do with good choices and bad choices. Yes, we all have choice, but what happens when we make one choice over another? Aren’t there bad choices and good choices?
Choice means that those in control of these jobs and wages (most predominantly men) will have the choice to raise their wages to attract the workers they need, or suffer the consequences. I dunno, call me stupid.
Women have the choice, opened up to them by those damn feminists of twenty or thirty years past, to enter into work where men predominate and enjoy pretty good earnings and work conditions.
But see, Pretty Laidee, that man-work will probably have you wearing jeans and getting a little gritty, you might suffer some harrassment. But here’s the hitch: you come home everyday after working your protected eight hours, can complain and expect action if harrassed and get retirement, bennies and more than likely, you won’t have to change your name, worry about the cops and if someone gropes you on the job, guess what! They are the deviant who is rooted out, not you!
How about that?
Or maybe you can do the trade thing and also go to school. I have a sister that did that, worked in a steel mill and at night put herself through school. She’s a surgeon now. And she’ not young either, but she’s got a damn good paying job, two kids she adopted on her own, with no man in the house, her own house by the way in a good neighborhood, friends, a social life, security and dignity.
But for one, I realize that the trades mean you might have to give up an inch of what license some people give you for being a woman. Because you know, us women weren’t just born women, we’re made women. By the penetration of the penis, by the swelling of our wombs with child, by the size of our breasts, or our thighs, or the length of our hair. Or the degree of our obedience.
THen it can be taken away as quickly as given. One slip and suddenly you are a whore, a slut, a tramp, forgotten. Your license and membership card into the Women’s club is gone. They give and they taketh away. Welfare mothers, crack ho’s, strippers, porn stars, lesbians, butch girls, tom girls, girls who like science and books ‘too much’, ugly girls, ‘wall flowers’, you know what I mean right?
Like that song popular in the fifties sung by Nat King Cole about the Ballerina, “Dance ballerina dance…” Nat snarkily croons as he tells of how this selfish ballerina wanted her career and passed her big opportunity by passing over the man who offered ‘his hand’and now she suffers growing old and being all alone. Yes, women are told all their lives that they must bow to The Man, that there is no other way, they have no power and disobedience will mean a turn in the cold, dark forest alone with no sustenance…
To cap off: “I refuse to tolerate anyone telling women what they are “allowed†to do. I don’t tolerate it from right wingers who attack strippers for being immoral, or from feminists who attack strippers for being tools of the patriarchy.”
I can’t shut up and tolerate women wasting their energy assisting men in their efforts to exploit, denigrate and maltreat women and delegitimize feminism. Last I knew, that was being a tool for the patriarchy.
Pretty Lady be sure to come on back here and give us your story when you are 50, you know, when those tits hit your lap.
“I have this crazy idea about choice, that some choices one has are no good either way, but that the long hard road is better than the easy short road. By idea of choice has to do with good choices and bad choices. Yes, we all have choice, but what happens when we make one choice over another? Aren’t there bad choices and good choices?” KTal
Such as the “choice” to have your childhood literally fucked by your father, twisting your formative mind so completly as to have not concept one of what choice, free will, self worth even mean? Maybe some people just don’t deal so well with childhood sexual abuse and/or general mindfuck.
“Damn, I wish I could find a pair of shoes that made me feel fifty again.” Ron Sullivan
Yeah, but only if I could know then what I know now.
Hi RGM. Acting on a theory that stripping was inherently oppressive to women would close only one of the two strip joints in my neighborhood. Disregarding the dancing-men/women-customers joint might be acceptable to you but it complicates things for me.
Either oppression exists in both instances, in which case it’s not specifically oppression of women, or else it doesn’t exist in either case, in which case it’s not specifically oppression of women, or else it’s a complicated stew that doesn’t resolve with the simplicity of George W. Bush-like “either for us or again’ us” sloganeering.
figleaf
“Such as the “choice†to have your childhood literally fucked by your father, twisting your formative mind so completly as to have not concept one of what choice, free will, self worth even mean? Maybe some people just don’t deal so well with childhood sexual abuse and/or general mindfuck.”
Yes, Mar, I in fact buy into the argument that one’s identity and parameters of reality are formulated in childhood. Mindfuck is what most women are given in differing degrees. I would think that those who have the agency to discern the extent of mindfuck that stripping is, could take on the role of speaking against the oppression and demanding that others similarily equipped do as well?
That the Seattle ad-bombing went completely unchallenged is the most disappointing aspect of the story.
Its those with some agency of whom I speak. That’s actually what I wanted to post but Pretty Lady’s distress threw me off track.
Let me tell you about myself. I am a radical feminist dyke. Big fan of this blog. I am getting a degree in Women’s Studies from UCLA with a concentration in sexuality.
I am also stripping to pay for my education.
No, I don’t think it is empowering. I’m not doing it so that I can brag to all of my friends about how edgy and subversive I am. I’m not doing it so that I can write a thesis about how sex work is really just a lot of fun. I’m certainly not doing it to learn how to dance seductively for my potential future husband. I’m not doing it because my dad raped me and I’m horribly psychologically damaged. And I’m absolutely not doing it to support any kind of drug habit.
I’m doing it because I would rather be degraded and abused for $100 per hour than for seven, or nine, or ten, or however much I used to make in other jobs where a degree is not required.
I’ve been a waitress, a salesclerk, and a receptionist. To me, those jobs are the most humiliating and exploitative. I am not arguing that every woman would agree. This is just my experience, but I hope you will take it seriously and consider it valid.
Stripping is almost everything you folks are saying it is. But for me, while I’m in school, it is the most tolerable option. It means I can work just a few hours per week instead of thirty or more, and use the rest of my time being an activist and a scholar and a caretaker for my sick mother (breast cancer) and a partner to my lovely butch girlfriend. You know, things that people who make a decent wage have time to do and take for granted.
If, my fellow feminists, you really, honestly care about the well-being, safety, and health of sex workers, you might channel your energy and brilliance (which I know you have)into either improving the working conditions of the industry or, if that doesn’t suit your ideology, into coming up with non-objectifying/dangerous ways for young women without education to earn good money. THAT would help us. THAT would mean no more stripping.
Some of you do this, and I am grateful. Others claim to be sympathetic and then call us “teenage crackheads.” Lovely. That sounds like something the callous misogynists would say.
In short, I agree with many of your points. I’m very glad there is a vocal opposition to the problems of the sex industry. But sometimes life is more complicated than “ban lapdances” or “shut down strip clubs.” You do that, and suddenly thousands of female students, artists, single moms, queers, etc are left flat broke and homeless. If you are poised to to get rid of this stuff, there has to be a viable alternative (high pay, flexible hours and more)waiting in the wings.
I know we are all ultimately on the same side, but sometimes I sense an underlying hostility and judgement towards sex workers (and not just the larger patri-industry) on the comments of this blog. As if strippers are doing their jobs in order to personally demean and insult all women, instead of in order to survive. Sometimes I don’t think people on either side really have the right to male pronouncements about this type of work until they have been in the scary position of having to do it. It is about gender primarily, but also about class. Women who will never need to participate in sex work are free to make all sorts of value judgements about it. That is a huge privilige. Your theory, my life.
-Imogene
Figleaf: One word: slumming. Or, wordier: Who gets to go home and be the sesx class there too, not to mentionj how much fun it is to wait for the bus at midnight?
Imogene: Let me know when you see lots of ugly female strippers, hey? And then we’ll talk about options and luck. I was at that bus stop after the PM shift, myself, and I spent it wiping butts. And there are more degrading aspects to wiping butts than wiping butts, and they all have to do with class privilege. Oh yeah — that was after the degree.
Ron, you are right that even with a college degree, women have a hard time finding high paying jobs where they can maintain their dignity and humanity. I’ll probably be in sex work after I get my Women’s Studies B.A. - I have heard that degrees in the humanities and social sciences don’t exactly pave the way to riches.
BUT, you don’t have to be conventionally “pretty” to be a stripper. That’s the biggest joke I have ever heard. Fat girls can be strippers. Butch dykes can be strippers. I’ve seen both. The club owners and the customers don’t care that we aren’t all supermodel material. They care that we have cunts and need cash.
I’m certainly not conventionally attractive - I happen to be short, small-and-naturally-breasted, with a sort of Jewish Lesbian Intellectual type look. Doesn’t bother me, but you sure don’t see girls like that in Playboy.
“…coming up with non-objectifying/dangerous ways for young women without education to earn good money.”
Hey, no prob, Imogene. Could we have at least a couple weeks, months, years even to come up with the solution to the keystone of patriarchy? What slackers we are to have not ended a system thousands of years old in the long 88 years since we legally gained human status. We better get busy.
“I’m very glad there is a vocal opposition to the problems of the sex industry. But sometimes life is more complicated than “ban lapdances†or “shut down strip clubs.—
I am not in opposition to the problems of the sex industry. I am in opposition to the sex industry itself. However, legislating morality can never work. It will take raising the consciousness of men, no small feat when they would rather kill you than allow you to shatter their whack delusions of luv. I’m on it. Which has gotten me where I am today, a low link in the patriarchal food chain.
Imogene, all I want to say is, reconsider. It will hurt you spiritually and emotionally, and the confilicts of interest are huge. Anytime the major justification is money, there’s something wrong. For your own sake, be aware of how it is changing you.
You know what I do have a problem with women getting degrees in women’s studies and stripping. There’s a conflict of interest. Say you become an activist or an advocate, you want to inspire women to stand up for their inegrity and personal space. If you have a woman telling you her husband or boss is treating her in ways that you are being payed to accept for your living wage, how can you be outraged and want better for her when you’re not even giving it to yourself?
You can say you compartmentalize, etc. But to me feminism needs no compartmentization. Yes other jobs are demeaning and violating, but stripping is so by definition.
Radical feminist dyke stripper? Is that sort of like being a Jewish nun? A Muslim pope? Or a communist Republican? Are your parents really, really disappointed that you aren’t learning anything at UCLA?
May I suggest that you look up the word “radical” before you call yourself one and make a fool of yourself? It doesn’t mean “edgy and subversive.” It means “going to the root of.” A radical feminist is one who goes to the root of women’s oppression.
“Radical feminism confronts women’s oppression with a revolutionary analysis (as distinguished from reform) that goes to the root causes of male domination, defines men as responsible for and gaining from women’s subordination, and focuses on sisterhood and women’s bonding. The personal politics of radical feminism, which emphasizes sexual and reproductive exploitation of women, focuses on the commonality of women’s condition across class and race as well as cultures and national boundaries.”
Now, see what’s wrong with this picture when you call yourself a radical feminist? While in the same breath, justifying your stripping because waaaah, it’s too hard to be a waitress, a salesclerk, or a receptionist?
Tho I do support you as a woman, that doesn’t mean I’ll support whatever tickles your fancy. No, I will not support the sex work industry. Not in any shape, color or form. It does not help women. It keeps them in a subordinated sex class. It enables 27 female infants to smuggled in a suitcase to be sold as sex slaves, along with the millions of girls/women forced into the global sex trade, because boo fucking hoo, it takes too much time and doesn’t pay well to work as a waitress, a salesclerk or a receptionist. Well welcome to the real world. It sucks to be a grown-up and have to take responsibility for oneself, no?
Being forced into sex work or having little alternative is quite a bit different than choosing to do sex work because one is lazy and allergic to hard work and wants to take the easy way out. Capitalism is not to be confused with radical femininism. Nor is liberalism. Which is the correct label that should be stitched into your g-string.
I am saddened at these responses. It is really no wonder that a lot of female sex workers feel alienated by feminism. I read an article by a feminist sex worker somewhere that suggested that feminist activists should be walking strippers from the club to their cars to make sure they get home safely, similar to how they accompany women to health clinics. I cried when I read this because I know that as long as so many feminists blatantly refuse to understand our expriences and lives, this will never happen.
Think of it this way. You are basically saying to me, and other women in my situation, “I don’t care how miserable it makes you or how little it pays or what you have to sacrifice, but you better suck it up and go to that awful minimum wage job, because any type of sex work contradicts with my particular brand of Feminism and that’s final.” Harsh, huh?
Some women, for one reason or another, find sex work to be the best of a handful of imperfect options. Maybe they are artists and their temperments are not suited for menial, banal tasks one must do at a “normal” job, maybe they are disabled or sick and need to make as much money as possible to pay for their medication and surgery, maybe they have kids to feed and take care and low wage work won’t cover the expenses. Mybe they are immigrants and cannot read or speak English well. I have met strippers in all of these situations.
It is not the “easy way out.” Obviously someone who would say that has NO idea what stripping actually involves, and has never been in the siutation to have to find out. Lucky you. Try wearing six inch heels all night long with no breaks, worrying whether or not you will get home alive, getting constantly molested and groped, and having to do it all with a big smile on your face. Now imagine for a second that all these things are, for some reason or another, NOT AS BAD as whatever else you could be doing to earn a living. Doesn’t sound to me like women would be in this indsustry because they are lazy and looking for an easy way out. Hmmm, must mean they have a pretty darn good reason for doing it. And it is a shame you can’t comprehend that.
- Imogene
And, yes, I am a radical feminist dyke stripper. Sometimes things are more complicated than they appear. Intelligent people can accept complexities and contradictions within identities. Can you?
I’m just waiting for the day when my fellow feminists will stop shaming, judging, and condemning other women simply because they are doing something that is, for the moment, politically incorrect. Cause when you do that you sound an awful lot like the voices of the patriarchy.
-Imogene
No, I think I understand pretty well, having been there done that too, been a sex worker, having worked menial jobs, lived in poverty for extended periods, etc. many of us here have, we live in this world too, we’re not all computer-generated pixels.
We’re not talking about every woman in sex work, I’m not. I’m talking about working as a stripper to pay for a degree in women’s studies, it’s like selling your house so you can afford to paint it.
Why does what we say make you cry? Do you cry at some of the things the “gentlemen” say? Do you cry when they point at you and laugh with their friends at you and expect you to take it because of all the money they have to buy you? Do you cry when they wave a dollar bill and expect you to come over like a little dog after a hambone? Anyway I think you’re exaggerating, do you really make over $700 every night? I guess it’s possible but most strippers I’ve known take home far less than that on an average night. It’s not worth the damage that may not show for years.
I was talking to a young stripper about the referundum. She was working for it to pass because “for some of the other strippers it’s the only way they make their money” This young women was 21– cute little thing– with a baaad heroin addiction. No clue that her days as a easy money stripper were definetly numbered. Now I know sex workers and have been a stripper. It’s a bullshit industry that eats women alive. One of the myths put forward by the media is the “She only does it ’cause she’s a single mother and needs to support her baby and go to school. Where else can she make money like that?” People like to ignore the degradation, the violence, the drug addictions, the diseases, the psycholgical damage, the root causes of poverty, patriarchy and/or lack of educational opportunities. Can’t afford school? Don’t want to flip burgers? Hey strip!
Pretending those in the sex industry are healthy, well adjusted sexual beings, making the best choices for thier lives, and enjoy, truly enjoy their profession is just strange. I’ll just say this is not my experience, not what I’ve observed, and not the feedback I get from sex workers I know that aren’t addicted to some substance or being beat silly by pimps or boyfriends.
Strip clubs are a symptom of patriarchy of course. The four foot rule I figured would go by the wayside. I love Seattle by the way, but the promoted image of the city IS full of shit. It’s a secret cow town that started putting strip malls up in pastures and didn’t bother fixing the freeway system. And it rains like hell.
As disheartening as some of the abuse I get from patrons is, nothing, NOTHING hurts me more than the social stigma and just - well, the best word I can think of is venom - that I get fr