Margaret Atwood defends women's right to work in strip clubs because she thinks it's 'empowering'

Atwood has always leaned in a little to the pubic acceptable face of feminism.

Sorry, Pankhurst, but the inadvertent irony of this made me giggle. If it's any consolation, just before I submitted my PhD thesis I had to do a find and replace for "pubic" / "public" as I constantly kept mistyping the latter.

Apologies for lowering the tone. As you were . . .

Until yesterday I believed that although Atwood is a very mediocre writer (which is only an issue when set against her reputation as some towering literary giant) at least her heart was in the right place.

But there you go.

Well in my sheltered comfortable little life I’ve only met one pole dancer: DD’s mate from six form college, thrown out of home by abusive alcohol mum, struggling to pay rent on a bed sit and stay in college. Struggled to get enough hours doing care work.

Got a job pole dancing in a club, was plied with coke and very much pressured to do extras. She was 18.

She went back to the care work but ended up dropping out of college. Didn’t sound very empowering to me.

Any of the places I've worked that should say.

And I guess it could take a bit of the sting out of the likelihood of you being beaten/abused/assaulted by a customer much higher than me by my customers.

And yet in ten years, neither myself or anyone in any of the places have encountered this. How can that possibly be???

It’s a tone-deaf statement at best and, on the surface given the source, jarring but she is in line with current liberal feminist thinking that the sex industry should be regarded as just another job therefore viewed as a legitimate and unstigmatised career for the women who work in it. I think in the wake of the hype around the televising if THT, we tend to forget she is a privileged middle-class writer of fiction, albeit fiction which pays lip service to feminism, not an adherent or exponent of feminist theory but I’m still not giving her much of a pass. She bloody well knows better or she should.

Of course, like many liberal feminists whose hearts are in the right place if their heads are totally not, she’s largely missing the point that most women in the sex industry are not there through active choice, no one dreams as a little girl of growing up to be a sex worker or, at least, not for very long*. They’re there because they have very few other options and often because they’re forced/coerced. Fiction writers are of course entirely free to write (make up) whatever they want, sex work and workers have been romanticized, glamorized and palatably sanitized in fiction since forever but she didn’t do that in her own bloody book so why is it ok for her to do it in real life?

*Disclaimer: when I was 10 or 11 I saw the movie Gypsy and was immediately fired by an ambition to one day hold huge audiences in glittering concert halls in thrall with a suggested but not actual exposition of gorgeous nudity like a latterday Natalie Wood. That this goal was almost immediately supplanted by a burning desire to swan around in a flowing white habit in emulation of Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story says something about how influential on young minds portrayals of women are in the written and performing media, not sure what.

“I think she's acknowledging that a lot of women call themselves feminists who have strange ideas of what that means (hating men etc) ”

Why would she acknowledge something that only exists in the minds of anti feminists?

Nah. She posited 2 types of 'feminism', one which exists and the other which doesn't. But which people hostile to non-wishy washy feminism pretends exists. I'm not saying she's actively hostile, but that was an outstandingly stupid comment at best.

I saw that a bit differently. I think she's acknowledging that a lot of women call themselves feminists who have strange ideas of what that means (hating men etc) and she's saying "nope, I'm not a man hater but i am a feminist". The ire is then directed at those who are clearly man haters (you can tell by what they say)

If she's done nothing else she provided the source material for something which has grabbed people's imaginations and has wakened people up to the fact that these things don't happen overnight. The VERY best thing about the Handmaid's Tale on TV has been watching the flashbacks of the slow creep of the erosion of women's rights. People are now comparing that to what is happening to us (in the west/global north) and realising that it really might be the start of the slippery slope.

But she's also a writer and a human and therefore nuanced and flawed like the rest of us.

And coupled with her “pushing men off a cliff/killing baby boys” comment....
You don’t have to call yourself a feminist, but ffs don’t hand ammunition to the anti feminists!

I'm so tired of people saying stuff like Attwood did. Its not about the tiny minority of the privileged who choose, it's about the vast majority who have no realistic alternative.

Well I for one am completely convinced having read Courtney55’s whole truth and nothing but the truth account of her real experiences. I’ll be back to comment further, I’ve just got to feed the unicorns and speak to my accountant about my billion dollar investments first.

If a pimp or club owner wanted to push some propaganda about how empowerfulising and profitable stripping was, and how trafficking and abuse was a complete myth, how many posts would it take before some nuggets of misogyny accidentally slipped out directed at the women countering his bullshit?
How long might such a person be able to stay in character, I wonder?

#saggytits

About 5 minutes?

Together with the carefully constructed sexy, six foot customer and concluding the only reason the roles aren't reversed is because men are too heavy.

That well known barrier to male empowerment - weight.

*clicks plural (one click wouldn't be worth it)

Back on topic. Atwood has always leaned in a little to the pubic acceptable face of feminism. She is an author more than a feminist, a very skilled story writer unlike someone like Germaine Greer who is an active feminist.

She may have said this but context is always crucial - Greer's words, for example, are almost always taken out of context for shock value and to suit the slant/bias a journalist wishes to put on her words. It generates click.

I suspect if you really went into it with Atwood she knows what it is like for women and she knows they are objectified and oppressed through biology but she is likely susceptible to the whole 'lived experience, empowered woman' trope which is pushed by mainstream media - and she wouldn't be the only one.

I like her books because I like her writing. I don't necessarily read Atwood for her feminism, I don't agree with her on a few things but I enjoy most of her books As for what I read for feminism there are other people I prefer for that - including many articulate women on here.

You cannot know someone is trafficked by looking at them. Or necessarily by talking to them. They may not have a haunted expression or a brand.

The stereotypes around trafficked women can make it harder for them to access help.

This with bells on

I have met women who claimed to be trafficking survivors who were not.

I have also met women who claimed to be empowered sex workers but who are actually trafficked

It is a very complicated and nuanced situation

That's it from me for now

Wasn't there an AMA from an exotic dancer recently?

:)

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3288751-retired-lap-dancer-ask-me-anything?pg=32

Wasn't there an AMA from an exotic dancer recently?

in a decade I have never met a trafficked [girl]

[Not addressing this to PP, just a PSA:] You cannot know someone is trafficked by looking at them. Or necessarily by talking to them. They may not have a haunted expression or a brand.

The stereotypes around trafficked women can make it harder for them to access help.

Anyone dancing their way through college is a myth

Eh? I know women who danced and others who escorted while at uni.

Fortunately for men who are just lonely and want a chat we have these people called therapists. You pay them some money and chat away, no need for anyone to get naked if you just want to pay for a chat.

Yep 😂.
Or they could volunteer to befriend elderly people living alone, they’d get to have nice cup of tea and a lovely chinwag. Oh hold on, that doesn’t involve them getting their sexual kicks though does it?
Lonely and wanting a chat my arse, sleazy and too cowardly to admit what they really want is probably closer to the truth.

Fortunately for men who are just lonely and want a chat we have these people called therapists. You pay them some money and chat away, no need for anyone to get naked if you just want to pay for a chat.

There is a massive industry of sex worker / therapists. See "sexological bodyworkers", "intimacy coaches", "love coaches" and "tantric therapists". Some of them also work as strippers

Of course what both industries combine is that clients tell them their secrets.

Anyway, I'm sure there are men who say they are just lonely and want a chat. And some of them may even be telling the truth. I'm not sure what difference that makes.

Fortunately for men who are just lonely and want a chat we have these people called therapists. You pay them some money and chat away, no need for anyone to get naked if you just want to pay for a chat.

Well, after 5 pages of discussion, the one thing I can say with certainty is I’m very glad indeed Courtney isn’t my accountant.

When it's men dancing for women, it's a completely different sort of thing though.

Of course it is

Power, patriarchy, money etc

There are similarities though

This scene is intersting insmuch as it can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on the POV

One one level it can be perceived as a group of men are supporting their friend who is suffering from anxiety and self doubt about his ability to make women happy - because al they want is to make women happy

On another it's "cheer up love might never happen"

On another is is a maniac wrecking a shop an indulging in antisocial behaviour