to find some modern aspects of feminism patronising to women?

[glitterkitten]

I say "modern aspects" as i am more than aware that historical feminist activism has led to my being able to work in a professional job, has given me choices, has improved the general quality of life for women since etc etc.

An example of what i find patronising to the extreme is the recent protest by feminist groups at the opening of the Playboy Club in London.

wild haired, wild eyed women waved placards and protesting about how playboy exploit women, how evil men were manipulating women and that essentially, women who worked within such industries needed to be saved.

how can these women think that they need to save other women, who are simply exercising their right to make independent choice regarding how they make a living?

these women will deny / ignore the fact that some women working in such an industry (in all its guises) CHOOSE to earn a living that way. they earn a good wage, shock horror, they may even ENJOY it!

i find it so patronising. Intensely.

as i said above, i work in a professional career. i have no issues with strip clubs, lap dancing bars, playboy etc. i have accompanied my husband to such clubs on occasion. those women if anything, are taking advantage of the men who sit and dribble at them. the women have the last laugh with the money they make which is undoubtedly higher than the national minimum wage. would a feminist seek to tell me i am wrong??

It is those who wish to expand the role of the state further into peoples lives, trampling on the rights of individual citizens and those wish to undermine judicial independence.

madwomanintheattic,

I thought your contribution was interesting too. "The chicken and the egg" was the part I thought was in need of clarification. Further to that, you mentioned four who were "recruited" Do you know how they fared?

I don't think the abuse you have gotten here is fair OP, you wanted a debate. If someone thinks you are wrong they should tell you why.

I agree a lot of what I read on mnet in the feminist section I find very patronising. But I also agree that many sex workers (probably most) don't want to be in that job. But I also live in an area with many strip clubs and there are actualy a lot of women who pay for college that way. They could work else where for less pay. Theyre happy for the "easy" money.

What makes me angry is when people say women who say they enjoy their work are just deluded and have been tricked in to beliveving it blah blah blah. That I find very patronising. I would find it less obnoxious if they said those women who do enjoy it shouldn't do it because they think its degrading to women as a whole. Not try and absolve them and blame men for their decisions. It gives men too much power in my mind.

wikolite Wed 08-Jun-11 00:49:32

It is those who wish to expand the role of the state further into peoples lives, trampling on the rights of individual citizens and those wish to undermine judicial independence.

Wikolite,

Can you expand on that? There are attacks on the independence of the Supreme Court at present and there are always those who wish the state to interfere, often under the guise of "protecting" others.
Are you relating that to the subject of this thread in particular or making a general point?

no idea about the other three. i didn't know her at the time, but was aghast that a tutor was suggesting students take advantage of a particular employment opportunity of this nature. it seemed wholly inappropriate, particularly from an authority figure at a time when the young people were first living away from home. and an authority figure who they would (presumably) look up to and admire at that... i'm not altogether sure i'd be dead chuffed if i sent one of my dd's off to uni and found out that a tutor had recruited her to an 'exotic dancing' club. whether it was a man or a woman...

i thought i had been reasonably clear about the chicken and egg? all i know is that now she has mental health issues which affect her life to a large degree. i have no idea whether she has always been fragile, or whether her job played any causative role. either way, she is quite a damaged woman, despite being, on the face of it, a case study of a nice young gel earning a bit of extra cash to put herself through uni.

So... In summary.

• Some women choose to work in the sex industry from their own free will and enjoy it.

• Many, many women do not choose to, and hate it.

• We have no way of knowing which women are which.

• We do not live in a vacuum. One woman's free choice is womankind's backward step.

• The proliferation of the sex industry and the objectification of women impacts on ALL women, not just those who choose to make a happy, fulfilled decision to enter the sex trade (and lap dancing falls into the sex trade).

• Women who work in strip clubs and lap dancing clubs sneer at the men stuffing money into their g-strings (as you even admit in your OP). The men leer at the women; the women sneer at the men. If nothing else, doesn't this just sound like the most soulless, depressing, un-fun-night-out scenario you can imagine? :(

glitter kitten - your entire OP is based on some women. Can you see that this is where your argument falls down? As soon as we acknowledge that not all women choose to participate in the sex trade we're on a slippery slope if we condone it at all.

I thought I would chip in as I have actual experience of having made the "choice" to work in the sex industry.
My choice was made when I was seventeen and desperatly unhappy. The relationship with both my parents was beyond dire and I was currently living with my father and his long term girlfriend. I recognise now that I was very depressed but at the time just masked it by getting drunk a lot and taking drugs. I was desperate to move out and during a row my father challenged me on how I would be able to raise the money for a deposit on a flat.
In one of the magazines that my father/girlfriend had brought home for me to look for jobs in, there was an advert asking for escorts.
Being rather naive I knew that there might be some sex involved some of the time but mostly it would be hanging on the arm of a man looking pretty.
I went and met the person who had placed the advert Len Black.
He explained at the "interview" that yes they did have "girls" who only did dinner dates but that they didn't get much work and that if I wanted to be able to earn the fantastic amounts of money on offer I'd have to be willing to put out. I said I would go home and think about it and I would tell him the next day.
I went home and took an overdose. Over 100 pills, mostly piriton and some other things mixed with a bottle of wine. I had a truely awful night with dreams and hallucinations but woke up the next day feeling bad but not dead!
After another row with my father and a phone call to childline (not much help at all) I decided to do it.
So the second stage of the "interview" process took place. A dinner date with Len's brother Peter. That would be it though, yeah right!
Having been wined and dined I ended up at Peter's flat (He was in his fifties by the way and knew exactly what he was doing) and had my roadtest.
Within a week I had earned my deposit money. I ended up leaving my fathers house by the back door after another row and staying with Peter whilst I got my crappy studio flat sorted.
Needless to say I lasted six months and it was one of the worst periods of my life and between the two of those men my head ended up completly screwed.
So that is how one ends up choosing to work in the sex industry.
Also over the six months there were various attempts to get me hooked on drugs by at least four different people. The crack cocaine I refused and I was lucky not to get hooked on cocaine.
It's not something I would want my daughter to do and things like The Playboy Bunnies glamourise something that is really not.

I'm sorry Frieda. :(

The thing of it is, I'm not going to go on about sex having to be with your loving spouse or whatnot, but you'd think at least there could be some sort of human connection. Just a mutual, "I fancy having sex with you" at the very least. Not "how about I throw some money at you and you act the way I want to get me off."

I have a friend who is a prostitute. She professes to love it (well, right now she's facing some serious fines and/or jail time, so she's not happy about that) but I've known her since she was three years old. I know how sad she was when her parents got divorced because I was there. I know how abandoned she felt by her father because I was there. I was there when she was twelve and starting to realize that if she dressed a certain way and acted a certain way, boys and men would give her all the attention she wanted, for a time. And I'm here now when she's thinking about doing something else but can't, because who wants to have all those missing years of employment on a job application? So she's stripping again while she awaits her trial. And I'm here now when she's 25 and starting to get "older" (25 FFS) and wonder how much longer she can do this, and I know how much her appearance and her "sexiness" (not as it relates to her own pleasure, but how much she can give others) are tied up with what is literally her own worth. And I'm afraid for her, for what happens when she can't do it anymore.

All this nonsense: prostitution, lapdancing clubs, lad mags, stripping, Playboy...can you not see how it looks, how it gets into people's minds and makes them think that is only the young, beautiful, "hot" women who are worthwhile, and then only for how sexy they can be. Can you not see how it sends the impression that women are always up for it? So if a woman says no, she must mean yes, because they always want it, right? So if a woman is incapable of saying no because she's had too much to drink, she'd have said yes anyway, wouldn't she, because women are always up for it? Right?!

You will claim to love it while you are doing it. It is a way of deflecting criticism/encouragement to move away from it.

I went to Thailand recently and it totally changed my opinions. before, and as the neglected child of a Greenham Common mother, I would have agreed that it is a choice women are entitled to. However, unless you have seen it you could not believe it. Mostly British, hundreds and hundreds of men in one street, elderly men, groups of stag lads, married couples bartering with revolting men for the girls. the girls are tiny, teenage and terrified. My friend and I were offered a boy in y fronts, he couldn't have been much older than 10, the "seller" pulled them down and made him stand in the road. Anything that contributes to the normalisation of this trade should be treated with disdain. I don't think it's a feminist issue, it's a human rights and exploitation issue.

Sorry, what a stupid thing to say, OF COURSE it IS a feminist issue, but also just as importantly, human rights and exploitation.

Well, I agree with the OP entirely. Many of the "feminist" viewpoints expressed on here seem to me to be utterly potty and more likely to alienate women than get them to embrace feminism. TBF there is not much genuine oppression of women about now - girls do better at school and are over represented in the professsions. I would not necessarily disagree that for some a really good move is to mary a rich man - if it is a positive choice.

I have a professional qualification, have worked all my life and brought up a family too and from what I see the "seduction" of girls into low paid jobs such as beauty therapy and care, where they can seldom hope to earn enough to be fully independent financially is far more deprimental to their equality than being a playboy bunny. Surely any adult is aware that if you want to be taken seriously - at a job interview or if your opinions are sought on television - for example people are going to take you more seriously if you are properly dressed and presented. The protesters at the playboy club did their cause inestimable harm.

Jasmine how sickening. Just so, so sad.

'TBF there is not much genuine oppression of women about now'

BabyReindeer If you genuinely believe that then I think you are very naive.

As for properly dressed and presented...WTF? The woman interviewed on the BBC report looked properly dressed and well-presented to me. What exactly was it that bothered you about her appearance?

and are girls overrepresented at the higher levels of those professions, BabyReindeer, or just the bottom rungs?

babyreindeer - over-represented in the professions? I've had 15 years of working in professional services and I can assure you that is not the case. Once you get above senior manager level, women are very under-represented indeed

One more thing. I didn't return to the UK for two years after first moving to Qatar. Obviously we are not exposed to the same types of thing here (censorship is another issue) and I remember feeling a bit sick at Fleet services that Zoo, Nuts etc are at child height next to the sweets. What on earth is going on with all the betting shops/bingo/casino and lap dancing clubs springing up in the high streets? Page 3? Really, in 2010?
It seems to me that there is much revenue to be gained from all of these exploitative industries. I personally find the acceptance and normalisation of these extremely degrading images sickening and believe them to be unhealthy for a so called civilised society. Maybe I am just out of touch with the real world and a prig.
Oh and also, how is it ok for magazines like Chat to have naked men on the bingo page and a column called aren't men daft?

Frida chose to be a prostitute - which is a rather extreme job choice.

I don't understand why, why I have postgraduate qualifications and have practiced in two professions - one a caring profesion - that if I post in a way which is in opposition to certain die hards on here I am asumed to be naive or brain dead!

Women who practice in medicine, law and accountancy would be very unfortunate to earn less than £40k, and - when looking around the three firms of accountants, four firms of solicitors and the local GPs practices the sexes are about equal in medicine and accountancy, with more than 50 % female partners in the solicitors. The real exploitation is that which results in women making ill judged career choices on the basis of trying to be nice and caring and feminine, and thinking self sacrifice is a virtue. They end up worjking for the minimum wage in care homes. They can't afford to live on their own and continue to have to live with parents or if they have one, a partner. They can never afford to be truly independent.

Low wages in traditionaly female forms of employment may be a less glamorous and controversial topic, but it is where the true oppression takes place. These are the ladies who are wiping your grandparents bottoms for earnings of less than a coffee at Starbucks would cost, per visit.

Frida posted that her 'choice' was made in a desperate attempt to get away from an abusive father. She wrote that her employers messed with ther head as well as her body. I think, Babyreindeer, she was indicating it was a choice made when she had no choice. I'm amazed that someone as intelligent as you hasn't managed to understand Frida's and Jasmine's posts.

I have a friend who was a really, really expensive prostitute. For her, the sex with not-very-nice men was worth the benefits of the millionaire lifestyle she enjoyed. Only a very tiny proportion of sex workers get that; the vast majority just get exploited.

On an only slightly related note ... I am banned for life from Playboy clubs. For card-counting

"No choice?" !!!!! She does not mention any effort at all to find any other type of work - what about living in as a chambermaid or waitress, or working in a shop and saving the deposit for a flat, or staying with a friend. I have no intintion of feeling sorry for someone who seems to have made no effort at all to sort out her life - drink and drugs seem to be regarded as an excuse for everything these days!

I agree with LolaRennt's post, Wednesday at 01:32. I find it staggering that some posters think they have the right to tell a woman - or anybody else - what they do or do not feel about their circumstances. It's beyond patronising.