Article about strip clubs in the Guardian

And this on the armpit hair, Somerset.

Pixie Lot also caused a storm in the summer by being caught with about a mm of stubble under her arms - the Metro talks about 'whether she's learned her lesson'

And in contrast to Daddancers claims : Here

People don't want streets in their town centres, near schools and churches to become 'sex streets.' I'm an agnostic atheist, so I have little time for christian societies in general. But here they proved themselves useful :)

No need to take me quite so literally, larry. Going without make-up is clearly not up there with front-line combat in the bravery stakes...

However. You're wilfully missing the point. You work (worked?) in banking? Are you honestly telling me that if one of your women colleagues came in every day with zero make-up, a mono-brow and hairy legs, she wouldn't have had the pissed completely ripped out of her and been the butt of a huge number of jokes? You're telling me that your LDC-frequenting mates and you would have taken her at face-value and not blinked an eye at her state of being....? Right...

Julia Roberts sported underarm hair at a movie premier once, and it was front page news around the world. I don't think anyone's dared to do it since.

But sure. You tell yourself that women aren't conditioned to wear make-up and de-fuzz themselves and that no-one cares if they don't. You tell me that it doesn't take a certain amount of guts to be that women. The hairy one, who's always bare-faced and never, ever on the receiving end of judgment and sniggering. You tell yourself that.

Interesting article featuring an interview with a lap dancer. Contains positives and negatives regarding the job including quite a few of things that have been mentioned on here from both the pros and the anti:

www.sunderlandecho.com/lifestyle/lap-dancer-tells-why-she-chose-to-entertain-men-1-5081923

Going back to supply and demand, i do believe that in the case of LDC's their popularity has been more to do with the supply of them. Over the years these clubs have popped up in quite a lot of smaller towns. For me and my mates we used to have to head to Birmingham for an LDC, which is quite a trek and so we wouldn't bother unless it was for something special like a stag do. We would instead just go for nights out at our local town and head to the usual bars and nightclubs. Then a lap dancing club opened and thought we'd give it a try. This has now replaced the nightclub to become our usual end of night destination. I do reckon there's a fair few people who go out of curiosity too. LDC's have now become more mainstream and i am seeing and hearing more girls going to them, especially Burlesque themed nights.

I think when they introduced SEV's a couple of years back people like Object thought that most of the clubs would get closed down, however what they didn't allow for was that the general public weren't really opposed to them. The number of objections received for most clubs has been tiny. Our local club got around 60 objections last time. To put this in perspective, Sainsburys wanted to convert a pub to one of it's convenience store on the same street as the LDC. This however received 450 objections. So you can see where peoples priorities lie, when there are more objections to a supermarket.

just to add we now have a 2nd LDC that has recently opened just around the corner from the other one. It calls itself a 'ladies and gentleman's' clubs and features male dancers and drag acts. Both clubs are owned and run by women too. So i fail to see how people on here can keep blaming men for all of this

Namechangeguy, I don't, personally, think that holding the men that go to lapdancing clubs responsible for the demand for LDC's is 'hitting all men on the head with the big feminist hammer' or whatever you said.

I don't actually hold all men responsible for lap dancing clubs - just the ones that go to them, and the ones that own and profit from them. So it's not about bashing all men - just the ones that endorse the whole mentality that says that going to LDC's is a normal and acceptable behaviour. It's not.

There are plenty of men that don't think LDC's are the norm.

Ah, but in Jurrassic Park they were all female.

Well, before it all began to go wrong anyway. [hwink]

Given dinosaurs are male and female Sabrina I'm going to whole heartedly agree.

:o

Well, the dinosaurs would only have themselves to blame, GetAll, for creating the demand for dinosaur strip clubs....

[hwink]

Now a dinosaur strip club, that's something I might be tempted to visit.

GetAll, this is a wider issue within many political movements, and indeed many religions. 'If all you have is a hammer, then everything has to look like a nail'. Some strands of feminism lay all the ills of the world at the feet of the patriarchy, which pretty much defaults to 'men'. Those strands do not seem to give women agency or autonomy - these freedoms apply only to men. So the patriarchy is the hammer that is constantly used to bash the male 'nail'. All other prejudices and handicaps - racism, disability, class, wealth (or rather lack of) - pale into insignificance.

This isn't a whinge, it's an observation about a political doctrine. I have my own ideas as to why, but then I'd be castigated with the quaint 'mansplaining' accusation.

Dinosaurs this time - not gorillas?

Sorry, my last post in response to one of Larry's more bizarre analogous arguments involving dinosaurs

somerstoneil yes it is obvious that you can't tell which dancers are there out of their own free will. Which is why I asked specifically about workers who were there 'of their own free will'. Perhaps I should have added 'and aren't drug addicts or abuse survivors' to have been clearer.

I'm just interested as to why on these boards there is no criticism of women who objectify themselves freely, who are not drug addicts or abuse survivors.

I'm not advocating the blanket criticism of a wide group of people. And personally I wouldn't call any of them names.

If your criteria to escape criticism is 'feelings' and 'needs' then fine. And a fear of shaving your legs. ... I can't really go with that myself tbh.

Larry - if dinosaurs still existed - would they be to blame for the demand for their roasted meat?

Yes Tunip - Oscar Owide was all cheerful and welcoming to the Guardian journo at first - then he found her talking to the dancers on their own and got very shirty, and threw her out. One wonders what he might be wanting to hide.

You are welcome, Tunip. However, it's a pity that your ideology only lets you see a part of the whole picture.

Sausageeggbacon, one of the main findings of the Leeds study was that verbal abuse and unwanted touch was frequently experienced.

To refresh your memory, among the disadvantages of the job listed, 40.1% said 'Customers are rude or abusive towards me.'
30.7% said 'I have lost respect for men.'
It is clear that Danns' experiences were in no way atypical. And this is the study where the biggest limitation in the methodology was that they only went into clubs where the management allowed full access to dancers by the researchers. I don't need to spell out how that is likely to skew the results of the survey....

By the way, does anyone know the proportion of men and women lap dance club owners?

Larry - if you don't give 2 hoots if all lap dancing clubs were closed tomorrow, why do you argue for them so vociferously on these threads?

What does it matter to you if I think men that go to LDC's are low lives or not? It's a fairly commonly view held by many women and men.

And as I said on the last thread - we are not in the 'animal kingdom' anymore - we are in civilised society (apparently) where women should not be paraded around clubs half naked for the amusement of men, and for the profit of club owners.

'Men going to these places by default support exploitation of women who are there against their will, and it is wrong.'

Thank you for putting it so clearly, Namechangeguy.

I am not denying it though. Men going to these places by default support exploitation of women who are there against their will, and it is wrong. Such exploitation should stop and the full force of the law should be brought against those who traffic human beings. I can be no clearer. Are you deliberately ignoring that aspect of my posts?

I wonder if the Wiggle protesters in Portsmouth shouted at any of the women councillors on ther way into the meeting.

Tunip you do know that Danns was promoting a book co written by Object. Object also got the publishing deal for her. Everything is likely to be coloured.

So there are 10,000 dancers in the UK, assuming a life span of 10 years (I am sure some leave a lot earlier and others stay longer) that means 1000 dancers leaving the industry every year. So Object have 2 testimonials from dancers over the last 10 years out of 10,000 leaving the industry. That is way too small a data set for me to take what they say as gospel for everyone.

Nowadays the clubs have to have security supervising or CCTV so the customers can't get away with anything. Make changes to protect the dancers seems a good idea and it is what Leeds recommended.

Damn done it again.

It's not the first. Derailing discussion of bad stuff men do by squealing 'Sometimes women do it too!' is a boringly standard tactic from people who can't cope with focusing on harm done by men.