pole dancing for fitness

Circus skills are a better choice. Or Gymnastics.

Wilson How can you have a discussion about pole dancing / fitness and not mention pole dancing clubs ?

There are a number of posters bringing this into a wider social context.

AF - Mmmm, would rather have vanilla please :) Ta!

I agree Wilson. Rather than say it is wrong end of...I think people need to seperate the two issues. Like I said to AF I am hoping that by the time my son get to the age where he might realise pole has a seedy side he will just be conditioned to the fact that actually it is not seedy at all and can be used in a really positive way by both men and women.

Honestly, when I am hanging upside down or clinging on by my armpit he doesn't bat an eyelid, he is so used to it. It's a shame really that his view may be tainted by people trying to make it something it doesn't have to be.

Betty, since you asked so nicely, you may have my least favourite cupcake. Chocolate. Cupcakes should not be chocolate...they should be pink and lemon and vanilla.

And no, that is nothing to do with my sexual tastes...what with me being sex negative'n'that

On threads about sexual entertainment clubs

This is not a thread about sexual entertainment clubs, or dancing in sexual entertainment clubs though. It's a thread about whether pole fitness can or cannot be divorced from sexual content if its for fitness, done with no sexual intent, with no audience and no money changing hands. I think it can, others think it can't - it's an interesting debate. But reducing the whole thing to 'blaming the menz' is not what this debate is about.

< nom nom nom >

AF I'm happy to defer to your terms of categorization. I'm hesitant to mention 'radical' in any sentence, or fun-fems. But clearly there are a number of different schools of thought.

but can I still have a cup cake please :)

A pole is a phallic symbol. Does that really need pointing out here ? I thought it was too obvious to mention.

AF - I have never ever thought about it like that! I don't get that.....at all!!! I think people read more into it than there actually is.

I like the way strumpet sees things )

< offers rosabud a cupcake >

I've mentioned it three times ! I'm obsessed I tell ya.

Please don't bring "sex positivity" into this. People who think a bit more widely about how our youngsters are being influenced by the normalising and mainstreaming of sexual objectification of women are not "sex negative" and I take exception to that inference.

A pole is a phallic symbol. Does that really need pointing out here ? I thought it was too obvious to mention.

I guess out in the medjia world of polemics ( just look at the Sun website ) you have men looking all manly and muddy doing stuff, and women in their underwear looking all alluring. ( That's if you can avoid the picture of Alex Reid dressed as a woman , I guess that's post-modernism for you )

But I think the deeper issue is in different feminist perspectives.

Sex positive attitudes and more strident attitudes. It's not like this is anything new on MN.

On threads about sexual entertainment clubs there is a fairly strong voicing of the opinion that any man who goes to one is by default a woman hater, a wanker, scum etc etc etc. And of course the women participating are beyond criticism as they have to operate within the patriarchy and are in a sense victims themselves.

Having legions of women condoning pole dancing, and thus contributing to it's normalization, does make it problematic to keep simply blaming the menz.

because, of course, if you don't like the idea of swinging around a giant phallus for exercise, you must be sex negative

I had photos of me running races :)
Seen pictures of women doing all sorts of sports. Maybe not aerobics classes, but they dont really look as graceful as pole, or ballet or horseriding or suchlike.

Im a bit perplexed by the notion that we need to avoid anything that may have or may have had a sexual connotation somewhere along the line.
Then again, i am the type of feminist that likes a bit of free choice here and there and am pretty sex positive

...oh and I dont pole in heels or naked either :)

Get - well no of course you cant avoid making contact with the pole but surely it's the manner you do it. To be fair, I dont swing round it that much as I prefer the tricks, the upside down and climbing aspect of it rather than the spins but that's beside the point. My DH is around when I use the pole at home and believe me, there is nothing sexy/sexual about it , it does nothing for him but he is proud of me and of what I have achieved as he knows how much effort I put into it.

I think if anyone advised anyone to leave their DH because he attended a pole fitness class would need their head tested to be honest but that's just my opinion.

Betty with all due respect how can you avoid rubbing your boobs and groin against the pole when you're swing around it ?

I'm a man ( in case there was any doubt ) and tbh I really would find it hard not to think there was sexual connotation seeing a woman swinging around a large pole. It's inherently suggestive.

I don't really have any beef with anyone who chooses to do it but I do think it raises questions about just who is contributing to the objectification of women we see in our society. I don't think it's just the menz.

It's not uncommon to see a poster advised to leave their husband after he's been to a PDC . I wonder what the advice would be if he went to a pole fitness class.

...and yes, if I were in a competition then I would have no problem "performing" in front on men although personally I would die of fright poling in public, nothing to do with sexuality but more to do with stage fright, same fear of any sort of performance in public.

No, I wouldnt girate, rub my tits against the pole and grind my crotch against it in front of men, but then I wouldn't do that at all because that is not (for me) what poling is all about.

Get - yes, I will give you that one........fannies being 2 feet away and all that

Get - again, this comes back to separating the audience from the activity. A jockey has a very harsh lifestyle in terms of fitness, diet, weight control and inherent danger to life and limb - broken bones, paralysis, death. What it doesn't have is the objectifying of the jockey, so again I would ask - should we segregate audiences by gender, or modify the activities, or ban them all together?

. Here's the key question - do men feel the need to do pole dancing classes for "fitness"? No.

Do your research before you spout bollocks....lots of men do pole fitness, there are some fantastic male polers out there!

Ballet is an interesting one. I had a g/f who was a ballerina a while back. She mentioned both a pervy nature to ballet's history with the upper classes basically ogling / choosing concubines from scantily clad ballet dancers, and all the unhealthy practices in actually being a ballet dancer. i.e. not really being allowed to eat much and pushing your body to it's limit.