Article about strip clubs in the Guardian

FastLoris, my post was in response to NCG's request for the feminist argument. As a feminist, that is my argument. It isn't based on statistics because I don't believe whether assaults go up, down or stay the same is the key point. The key point, to me, is what the existence of such clubs, the granting of planning permission to such clubs, the continued attendance of some men at such clubs says about us as a society. I consider what it says to be as unedifying as the B&W Minstrel Show, as a racist or anti-Semitic joke, as a gay couple being denied a holiday in a B&B etc.

You consider personal freedom or whatever it is you like philosophically about the LDCs to be more important than the above.That's up to you.

As I said the moment it goes to court the clubs will win and no one apart from the club owners will be better off. Control is needed for LDC

Sausage If 'nil policies' effectively mean that existing clubs remain open, which clubs will need to go to court?

Do you mean future clubs-that-don't-exist-yet which are denied a license on the basis of a 'No' presumption in the future? I thought the law was that they can still apply for a license, but the starting point is 'No' unless the applicant can prove exceptional cirumstances, and that that is a perfectly legal position for a council to take.

Doctrine -

LDCs are a contributor to the objectification of women.
-A culture in which women are objectified/othered is not a good thing. For example, this objectification contributes to a culture where minor sexual assaults are acceptable (not just immediately outside the LDC but pervasively)

Repetition is not the same as evidence. Do you know of any evidence that LDCs increase the number of assaults on women?

These terms like "objectification" are so woolly. I'm yet to see any coherent explanation of how or why some feelings of sexual desire towards a person count as objectification and others don't - it seems to just be taken for granted that it's objectification when straight men do it, and not when everyone else does. Or why one person fulfilling a sexual need for another objectifies them when people fulfilling all kinds of other needs for each other all them time (financial, entertainment, other service-related, protective, whatever) don't.

And now they're being "othered" as well, whatever that means. As far as I can tell in the society I live in there is me, and lots of other people. They are the others, so I must "other" them. Sorry but this stuff just doesn't have anything approaching the objective meaning or coherence necessary, for basing rules about others peoples' lives on in a democracy.

Plenty of things are banned or have been discontinued because of a negative impact on wider society or incompatibility with modern perceptions (smoking in the workplace and the Black and White Minstrel Show being examples of the former and the latter)

Those are invalid analogies. Smoking in the workplace is banned because the health impact of passive smoking has been scientifically proven. The Black and White Minstrel Show wasn't ever "banned" (as in decreed by government that noone was allowed to make it) AFAIK. It simply stopped being made because it no longer reflected contemporary attitudes or tastes. Since it was made by a government funded organisation, there was an issue about being seen to support things that some people found objectionable. But noone's suggesting that the BBC should make a lapdancing show. Only that private organisations and individuals should be allowed to do so if they wish.

Yes, because dressing as a princess at age 3 is on a par with lap dancing culture. Or maybe not.

GetAll - so women (including your daughter) need to just get used to sexual objectification - because it's not going away. No point at all in fighting it?

Well I'm struggling with princesses and not wanting to wear trousers at the moment etc etc. My dd not me. I'd guess she gets those messages partly from her nursery, a bit from her mum certainly not LDCs.

But I can't ban the nursery or her mum. Nor would I want to.

But obviouly one picks ones battles, I'm yet to be persuaded that LDCs contribute in a big way towards objectification of women as a whole compared to religeon or advertising or a myriad of other example. I agree they do contribute to a degree, it's a question of to what degree and whether it warrents the effort and whether a ban would achieve the desired goal.

And as I said I think they'd just go underground anyway if you banned them.

So no I don't think there's no point in fighting negative attitudes I just feel there are far more pervasive and corrosive activities to challenge before lapdancing.

Sarcasm lost on you was it Daddancer?

While you're there can you answer my earlier question:

"Daddancer asks how many dancers have to come on here to say that they are happy dancing and do it through choice, before we will listen?

I would like to ask him - how many reports have to show the level of abuse in these clubs before he will listen, and stop going to them.

The Leeds study again: 40.1% of dancers report that customers are rude or abusive to them. 30.7% report that they have lost respect for men.

Daddancer - are you proud to be part of that? Proud to be part of the reason that dancers have lost their faith in men?"

^Stripping the Illusion - Undeniable truth.
Avon & Somerset Police - Lies.^

Agreed

Stripping the Illusion - Undeniable truth.
Avon & Somerset Police - Lies.

Sausage only believes statistics/anecdotal evidence if they support the use of LDCs, Sabrina.

Her neighbour - valuable insight.
Fawcett/Object - women inventing stories of sexual assault.

Oh well.

So you're happy to completely disregard evidence like hers - you think she's lying or unreliable? Well, then there's no hope for you, I'm afraid.

The woman writing that letter didn't hold out much hope for 'proper controls,' as you put it, being of any use whatsoever. WHat 'proper controls would you put into place that aren't there already?

I have seen that on the Object pages, bit worried about the I wish to remain anonymous. Very hard to check up the comments. It is also about taking men from clubs to a massage parlour. Not sure how checkable the story is. Not sure how far this goes back as it has been around for several years. The whole point is with proper controls this wouldn't happen. So lets get proper controls rather than banning.

As I said the moment it goes to court the clubs will win and no one apart from the club owners will be better off. Control is needed for LDC .

Ok bored with repeating teh same stuff to people who wont listen.

Is this woman lying about her experiences sausage?

Taken from here.

First stage of success for Fawcett Exeter campaigning for a nil policy. Here and here

I thought that Portsmouth and Newcastle allowed the existing ones to stay open?

The council policy where the number of LDCs acceptable in the area licensed by the council is Nil

Sausage, Can I please inquire again what you mean exactly by 'nil policy'?

Really depends if you believe MacKinnon and Dworkin that all objectification is negative or Nussbaum that Objectification can be positive. I am with Nussbaum.

AGree on the x-factor/celebrity culture front - I hate it too. I actually think that shows like x-factor contribute to a culture of bullying/laughing at people. After all, if Simon Cowell etc do it on TV, then how can it not be ok to do it in the playground/workplace?

There's probably no statistical data to support my feelings on this but it doesn't mean it's not a contributory factor. But anyway, I digress.

FastLoris - I think your question was answered eloquently by running's and Doctrine's posts.

Read Doctrine's post again, namechangeguy. Things that are damaging to people and society can be and are stopped/banned.

And I agree with you about celebrity culture - I dislike it intensely but that doesn't stop my whole family entering me into an X-Factor sweep stake without consulting me

But I don't why, just because celebrity culture exists, LDCs have to exist.

Absolutely. I don't like certain people's political views. I think they add to tension and disharmony within society. Not much I can do about it though, and very difficult to prove.

I don't like celebrity culture and reality TV. I think it leads to a dumbing down of society and objectification/worship of talentless, vacuous individuals. This feeds into a wider culture of people wanting to get rich and famous by not doing very much, and therefore a reduction of academic or artistic aspiration that might improve our society and culture. I think this stuff does at least as much harm to young women as the choice of whether to be a lap dancer or not.

But we can't stop it just because I don't like it.

Daddancer asks how many dancers have to come on here to say that they are happy dancing and do it through choice, before we will listen?

I would like to ask him - how many reports have to show the level of abuse in these clubs before he will listen, and stop going to them.

The Leeds study again: 40.1% of dancers report that customers are rude or abusive to them. 30.7% report that they have lost respect for men.

Daddancer - are you proud to be part of that? Proud to be part of the reason that dancers have lost their faith in men?

Yes, it is a sad state of affairs that sexual assaults happen anywhere and everywhere - even sadder that they are most likely to happen in a woman's own home by someone they know and trust.

Do you not think that the sexual objectification of women in society is in some way responsible for that though? That women are the sex class - not someone with rights over their own body, but fuck toys that men can buy? They are just their for male sexual gratification - look men can go along and pay some half naked chick to wiggle for them, or just be part of the background decoration. Do you not think that men with that attitude towards women in LDCs have that attitude to all women?

-LDCs are a contributor to the objectification of women.
-A culture in which women are objectified/othered is not a good thing. For example, this objectification contributes to a culture where minor sexual assaults are acceptable (not just immediately outside the LDC but pervasively)
-Plenty of things are banned or have been discontinued because of a negative impact on wider society or incompatibility with modern perceptions (smoking in the workplace and the Black and White Minstrel Show being examples of the former and the latter)

A culture in which some men pay for women to talk to them in skimpy clothing and then to get naked and spread their legs and gyrate in their faces and this is called light entertainment is just wrong. Wrong enough to be protested, wrong enough to be banned, wrong enough to fall on its arse and die just like the B&W Minstrel Show. It should be so outdated that no-one can believe it still happens. But somehow, it isn't. And I don't know why not.

I'm saying that the whole social acceptability of having clubs where women can be paid to stand around half naked, dance suggestively for a tenner etc feeds into the whole sexual objectification of women in wider society - that it is ok for men to grab a woman's arse in a nightclub, to rape a woman because you bought her drinks and dinner etc etc - after all, that's what women are for, they all love it don't they?

So assuming by "feeds into", you mean "has a causative effect on exacerbating" . . .

I don't suppose there's any point in asking, after 28 pages of this claim being repeated over and over again, that someone might provide some evidence for it?

Otherwise, all talk about what "feeds into such and such a culture" is just making up stories to suit whatever chain of cause and effect you want. Which is easy to do can sound very convincing, if you ignore all the assumptions (about the nature of the interaction in the LDC; about how mens' brains work and which experiences cause which actions; etc.) that ensure that your claim is going to confirm the conclusion that you started with anyway.

I could probably come up with a hundred things I don't like about other peoples' actions because of how I perceive they "feed into this or that culture". That's no basis for law or social policy though, unless you're Mao or Pol Pot or someone and trying to unilaterally engineer you ideal society, without needing to justify your feelings about it to anybody.

Let me rephrase points 1 and 2.

1. Sexual assault can/do happen outside LDC's.
2. It can/does also happen outside a pub or nightclub, a chip shop or a racecourse.

I am not accusing anyone of making it up. I am questioning the causality.

Sausage. So the women that reported sexual assaults outside LDCs - who went and reported these to the public consultation by Coventry Council were making it up??

You say they were making it up because Object told them too??

Riiiiight

Namechangeguy - do you also think that the women who reported sexual assaults outside the LDC in Coventry were making it up?

Can I remind you that women are extremely unlikely to make up stories of sexual assault - they are far more likely not to report them.