do you have any evidence to support the above?
Re the difficulty of retaining the belief that woman are NOT consumables
Set a side the enormous amount of data collated and analyzed by bodies such as WHO and UNICEF which allow us to pinpoint repeated trends the world over.
Set aside that most people's basic general knowledge allows them to see that typically countries with low social barriers for patronizing the sex trade also legislatively, economically, medically (see data re access to abortion) and socially view the entire female gender as nearer to chattel than equal citizens.
Specific to the UK, specific to the increase of lap dancing clubs, data has been collected by councils and local police forces which provides a comparison of the local area BEFORE and AFTER licensing was granted to a new club. The results show an increased incidence of behaviors typical of the commodification and objectification of women when new establishments are created and the geographical data links that behavior specifically to the clients of the club.
a) Reported sexual assaults in the area underwent a significant or dramatic increase. When you take on board that sexual assault is highly under reported, so the figures available for analysis do not represent the actual rate of assault, those findings are a major red flag.
b) The effective creation of "no go zones" for women NOT associated with the sex trade. The (non sex trade) women working or living in the vicinity of a lap dancing club report an extraordinary rise of sexual intimidation, sexually charged insults, harassment and generalized abuse to the extent that they have to limit\change their movements during the clubs opening hours. Again you have to bear in mind that most women DO NOT report incidences of intimidation or abuse, so as notable as the figures are, they do not represent the true level of incidence.
c) Where a license is granted for a lap dancing club the police find that the incidence of brothels and street prostitution in the vicinity rises in tandem. In order to cater for and feed off a newly created client base.
All this data is available through individual police forces and local councils. It hasn't been pull it together into a single body of work AFAIK.
most people's characters are fully formed by the time they go to this kind of establishment
As far as I as a non medical person am able to understand, it is almost impossible to make somebody into who they are not by the time they reach adulthood, but behaviors and attitudes within a fully formed character are plastic if you change the environment and encourage them to respond to that.
It works because a character or personality is a complex and contradictory thing. For the most part the visible nature somebody's behavior and thinking is only part of the picture, there will be the potential for behaviors and attitudes as yet unseen because they haven't been triggered. This is because we are to some extent prone to adapting to our social environment.
I do not think decent guys become unfaithful misogynists, nor do I feel the removal of lap dancing places would turn unfaithful misogynists into decent chaps
That is an overly "tidy" vision of the human condition and our inherent fallibility.
Normalization causes people to reassess their lines in the sand. If the social barrier taints sex trade users as "sad misogynist gits" and the sex workers as "exploited" then somebody who does not want to view himself as a misogynist, desperate or exploitative will find that barrier hard to step over and will likely abstain.
Re-frame entry level sex trade as "perfectly normal, reasonable, innocent fun that nobody other than an uncool, suburban, cardigan wearing, old fashioned, sexually repressed kill joy would object to" and re-frame the sex workers as "empowered by your custom" and the same man may well find that the social barrier is now low enough to step over and dive right in.
Which is why the sex industry makes normalization their primary tool in terms of PR and marketing. Cos its a numbers game. It is the engine that drives growth. All they need to do is normalize entry level venues in the mainstream cos they can rely on the micro-society within the venues to normalize the next step up and so on and so. As a strategy it makes good business sense and has shown itself to work very well indeed.
In addition, I don't think people generalize from lapdancers to all women any more than they would from telling a random woman to clean for them because they employ a cleaner at home
In a UK context a cleaner role lacks the service+servility aspect of a lap dancer.
In parts of Asia for example a cleaner DOES offer service+servility. Walking around in a bowed position when passing Sir or Madam, to keep the head lower than theirs. Kneeling at the feet of Sir or Madam to hand them something. That sort of thing.
Where you take somebody out of their normal environment and plonk them in that reality you quickly find that many people's principles and standards demonstrate great flexibility in the face of being proffered service+servility.
It's terryfiying how fast some expat ladies who lunch can descend into viewing all people of a specific class or colour as consumables, less than fully human. To the point where they become unrecognizable as the person they were at arrival and morph into a bad imitation of Lady Muck in the last days of the Raj.
To my mind that is basically what happens when you lower social barriers to the consumption of women in the sex trade. It is not the tits or vagina that define the process. Sex is only relevant because as an "intimate act on demand" (showing your private parts or using your private parts to stimulate on the clients' terms) it brings the servility to the service+servility equation.
And it is the servility that impacts the clients self image and their perception of those they associate with being servile.
Interviews conducted with men who participate as clients at entry level demonstrate a tendency to become resentful of the the sensitivities they are required to show towards women in general. In the home, in the work place, in public. Part of what they come to value in the clubs is the "traditional" role of male authority offered to himself and the presence of females who are submissive\respectful of his male authority. Expressions of increasing anger and a growing intolerance of female expectations in the home and the workplace NOT to be required to take part in outdated power balances, were a notable feature of interviews.
So no, a man won't go to a lap dancing clubs\hire a cleaner and then demand some random woman gyrate\clean for him.What happens is more subtle but no less insidious and is not confined to internal changes in the single guy. It affects all the women around him.