Article about strip clubs in the Guardian

LineRunner the police said no but did not say why the figures went down after the club opening. So if it wasn't Wiggle what happened at the same time to cause crime to fall? I am guessing the police wouldn't want to put on paper that clubs decrease crime as we have seen from Inspector Drummond they would rather make up claims of an increase. Sorry but crime drops after a club opens and the police think the crime just disappeared for no reason?

I'm sure it's possible to obtain the entire transcript of the Portsmouth Licensing Policy Committee meeting earlier this month, including the Police evidence, where the Committee decided not to allow any further SEVs in the city (i.e. to take 'No' as the starting point in respect of any further applications; and obviously to be able to review and remove the few existing licenses where deemed necessary.)

A agree with jothehot these threads tend to follow the same path and become v dogmatic. The only thing missing is empiricle experience which tends to be roundly ignored.

I do find that the anti group commonly start to revert to insults when their arguments start to wane.

Interesting when you see groups who talk about myths a lot perpetuating their own.

Yes, the lure of easy, instantaneous money is cited in the Leeds report as being the main reason the women do the job. However, I think that the money turns out to be not so great all the time - particularly during the recession - since the money (never knowing how much they will earn) is also a reason cited for lap dancers' dissatisfaction with the job.

Oscar Owide (owner of the Windmill in Soho) says he wants many, many girls there so that the clients have a good choice. This pits the girls against each other - having to compete with one another to earn money from the suckers customers. All this with their 'fee' in mind - the amount they have to pay to the club to just be 'allowed' to work there. They have to make their fee back before even breaking even for the night.

Plus - I would wager that many dancers do manage to get out of the industry, or want to get out of it. 70% have been working for less than 5yrs - however, many cite the '5 year myth' ie that they only planned to lap dance for 5 years - but ended up doing so for longer - I don't see many lawyers/doctors/teachers saying that about their careers.

I've lurked on these threads for a while, and found them to be dogmatic. I know from the secondary literature that the subject is more complicated than misogyny, patriarchy exploitation and objectification, but I don't know the literature well enough myself to take on the hard-liners. It's really informative to see someone injecting some data and analysis into the debate. Thank you sausage.

That's interesting, Linerunner - you don't think that sausage could have been twisting the facts to fit her argument, so you?

significantly sorry typo

Sausageeggbacon

Wiggle in Portsmouth in its submission show a 95% downturn in violent crime in comparison to before the club opened.

It is my understanding that the Police who gave evidence to the Portsmouth City Council Licensing Policy Committee, when specifically questioned on this, confirmed that crime rates in the central area where Wiggle is located are down sigficantly in general, and when pushed by a councillor on whether Wiggle's presence had caused the downturn said No. It was all minuted and recorded.

The average wage for a shift is £232, I am guessing that every dancer will have bad shifts. The fact that the average is more in 1 shift than a lot of people earn in a week. If they weren't earning they wouldn't stay would they?

I also think the pro-lap dancing lobby are picking and choosing the parts of the Leeds that they like.

Sausages point above: "Dancers are stupid, poorly paid, trafficked and don't enjoy their work"

Lets take the first point - has anyone said dancers are stupid? No - well if they have can they please show me the quote because I haven't read it on this thread.

Poorly paid. Well, the Leeds study certainly does say that the main reason cited by lap dancers for entering the industry is MONEY. Instant money (presumably paid at the end of the shift) and more than a shift in Tesco I'm sure. But read a bit further in the study and you come to these negative points about the work:

59.1% of respondents said that the worst thing about the job was never knowing how much they will be paid.

Furthermore, lifted directly from the Leeds study:

Financial Exploitation: Fees, Fines & Commission

• Dancers had to pay ?house fees? ranging from
  £0-£200, though it usually was around £20-30
  in the North and around £80 in the South. On
  dancer explains: In the clubs the house fees
  are so enormous it puts you in such a stressful
  position to start up with; it?s not a good
  attitude to go and start working from.
   Commission on private dances ranged from 0-
  66%, though it was usually 30% commission
  on each dance. In the North, a 3 minute dance
  usually cost £10, with the dancer taking away
  £7.

• 70% reported losing money at work.

Yup, that says 70% reported losing money at work. Not looking so lucrative now is it?

Sausage why do you see insulting someone in a discussion as objectification ?

Okay here are the things that I will respond to about facts.

1 Violence and rape are linked to clubs, the Lilith report has been proven to be inaccurate, the Holsopple report is over 20 years old and comes from America which is a totally different set of circumstances. Inspector Drummond's claims for Newquay were not based on fact he just thought it sounded right and in fact the figres show a downturn of rape since the clubs opened. Wiggle in Portsmouth in its submission show a 95% downturn in violent crime in comparison to before the club opened. The claims that Bristol shows violence is based on the fact the area that 3 of the clubs are in have been designated a crime impact zone and is full of night clubs and bars, the police and councillors have laid no blame on the clubs or they would have been shut.

1. Dancers are stupid, poorly paid, trafficked and don't enjoy their work. The 2009 Leeds research shows all 4 points to be fallacies.

I am sure there are other things that will bug me but realistically I got involved because of the facts so that's what I will challenge people about. Your beliefs are just that and just like a religious mantra you can think what you like. Just remember every time you want to force your views onto others it is one thing but trying to silence opposition by insults is a form of objectification. Does defeating objectification by objectification seem a valid and reasoned solution?

FastLois - a quick google of the writer of the article in the op, Susannah Breslin, tells me all I need to know about her viewpoint, and her agenda in writing that article - be it in the Guardian or not.

I linked to another guardian article HERE which I suspect shows a much more realistic picture of the scene in lap dancing bars.

Why are some of the posters who agree with lap dancing emphasising that some of the women have higher education qualifications? So what? With 40% intake to university these days degrees don't mean that much any more in terms of intellect, except as an aid to getting a better (hopefully) job than those who don't make it to university.

As it does not take a degree to qualify for taking your knickers off in public I find it sad that university places are being taken up by women who don't appear to want to make use of their education but are depriving others of doing so.

If lap dancing is a socially acceptable, freely chosen career as is being asserted, why don't these club owners offer apprenticeships in lap dancing and proper wage structure?

I wouldn't ban lap dancing just because I dislike it and think it is seedy and exploitive as I am wary of censoring things just because of my personal views; exhibitionists and voyeurs will always have ways of finding each other, so it's probably better than it is done legally to give women at least a semblance of protection, however flimsy.

[hhmm]

would you like it if i was ?

nah in all seriousness it's to demonstrate that striptease can be enjoyed by people regardless of gender, sexuality etc. and it's not a case of the gender war that is being portrayed by many people on here.

Both hands on the keyboard, eh ? [hwink]

oh, I love a sweet little cupcake, myself [hsmile]

DD, not all women play down male stripping

Do you think LDC's are sweet little family-run businesses like my favourite cupcake shop in Cumbria ? Or do you think they are part of the massively male-dominated sex industry with links to drugs, porn, human trafficking, prostitution and all-round general misery?

Take your pick

Sorry are those my only options?

I certainly don't think the University of Leeds is "part of the massively male-dominated sex industry with links to drugs, porn, human trafficking, prostitution and all-round general misery?" I have no reason to suspect it is. I don't even know whether the researchers were male or female.

Somehow I can't imagine you eating cupcakes, MotherFucker

But yes absolutely to all your points above. I would add that the comments/arguments from you, Kritiq, Sabrina etc are also really valuable for people like me who are instinctively uncomfortable with strip clubs but haven't yet thought through all the issues involved.

What do you all think about women who go to see male strippers, or girls who hire a male stripper for their b'day party? Are they "objectifying" men?

Frans i posted something similar a few pages back in the thread, and noted that a fair few customers are indeed female. I do love how the objectors always play this down and make out that it's only a bit of fun when women are watching male strippers but with men watching women it's something more sinister. I also wonder what people think of women watching women (hetro/bi or lesbian) and couples who visit lap dancing clubs?

and just to throw another spanner into the works i wondered what people thought to 'host' bars?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19570750

I say whatever floats your boat to all these activites

The Guardian I believe is experiencing some financial difficulties

it's not difficult to see how "shockjocking" will bring in the readers

and every link to the article, from every website like this one brings in more attention and advertising revenue

think about it, you are being manipulated, we all are

It's the same continuum, Loris.

Women as commodified pieces of meat for the male gaze (and their handmaidens)

Do you think LDC's are sweet little family-run businesses like my favourite cupcake shop in Cumbria ? Or do you think they are part of the massively male-dominated sex industry with links to drugs, porn, human trafficking, prostitution and all-round general misery?

Take your pick

Sabrina,

But the article that started this thread was from the Guardian - a usually leftish, capitalism-challenging and feminism-friendly source - reporting on an academic study from the University Of Leeds.

I know nothing about the University of Leeds other than that it's a university and therefore probably interested in maintaining whatever reputation it has for objectivity and rigorousness in research. The only way the observations you make would colour it, would be if the people doing the research were all secretly in cahoots with the lapdancing industry. In fact, given that one of the main functions of university media studies departments, politics departments and the like is often to challenge the status quo in society and encourage students to question it, I'd think it more likely that the opposite might be the case.

At the very least, I don't see how we can conclude that the study and/or the reporting on it are biased in the way you describe without some evidence of the fact.

I think may some people are finding it difficult to accept because they naturally lump it in with prostitution and porn. But the clear dividing line in terms of physical contact must make a huge difference. It's much easier to believe that a certain number of women are relaxed about taking their clothes off on stage and consider it worth the money they get, than that the same women would be relaxed about having sex with strangers every day.