Another Lap-Dancing one

[LindenAvery]

Hi, I have been reading thru' some past threads on the subject due to OH going on a Stag do later this year and came across this

lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,2266504,00.html.

I have changed my opinion and think all OH's that go to these clubs should read article and comment on the statistics stated. They are not ones to be proud of.

Linden: to be completely honest, when I've been to the places I've usually felt kind of sorry for the women, not because they look obviously unhappy, sad or degraded but because it looks like bloody hard, miserable work having to go up to bloke after bloke being charming and interesting and trying to persuade them to part with £20 for a dance.

Objectively looking at it, I also feel sorry for them. Very few women want to end up working in a lap-dance club to earn money and no doubt many of them dreamed or still dream of better things. But, and this is the key thing, they're choosing to do it - whether by necessity or just for extra cash. In the original article, the woman might hate it, but she chooses to do it. Would I want DD to do it? Of course not. It's a shit job and I want the best for her. On the other hand, I also don't want to end up sweeping streets.

Am I happy that it makes I make it easier for other men to have a negative view of women? Hmmm, loaded question. If I see a woman wearing a short skirt and a low-cut top in the street, do I feel obliged to walk up to her and tell her to cover herself up as blokes are staring at her?

Policy: thanks for the link. Will have a look, although I'm not sure that porn and lap-dancing clubs are comparable in terms of influence. Will see if it says anything about it in the report.

...don't want her to end up sweeping streets (oops!)

By the way the problem was nothing to do with DH as I already know his views on the subject ( He decided not to go to two stag-dos last year in Prague because of what certain male friends were planning)and this was before he'd even discussed it with me.

This is a family wedding and as DH tells me everything I am placed in a position of do I keep quiet - because I shouldn't intefer in other people's relationships and yet it is this conspiracy of silence that goes on allowing lap-dancing to be seen as acceptable, and I am no longer sure that it is.DH would share views with other men at Stag-do and is old and wise enough to do his own thing, and yet he would still find it difficult to criticise other men's behaviour to their faces because it is not the done thing and own wife,kids are all that matters.

"it's the stuff quoted in this link. It's about porn, but I don't really see much difference between porn and lap-dancing (aside from the masturbatory/orgasm issue).

Of course it's from an anti-porn site, so is probably presenting a partial view"

sorry but this is why some form of objective investigation needs to be carried out. i would no more accept facts and data from a clearly motivated anti-porn site than i would expect people to accept a sociological report saying all porn is healthy and richly adds to our soceity from a study funded by playboy etc.

Thanks for your answers cestlavie, sorry if it was loaded!!

Just to be clear, BOD, the research wasn't commissioned/carried out/published by the anti-porn site; it's just that the page I linked to is a page on an anti-porn site. Have a look and you'll see what I mean.

i did have a look. my point is that the site is merely taking every statistic and hypothesis put forward by psychologists and surveys that suit their agenda.
much like if a pro-porn website wanted to do the same they could find surveys and psychologists that would back up their agenda.
my point was that i would take neither of them seriously.

Let's say LDCs do no harm, which I don't agree with, so what do they do? And what does this growing industry say about our society?

'also they only recieve one side of the story in which case how can you claim with validity that a rape has taken place or that a man is a rapist without giving him a trial in front of his peers? surely these are all alleged rapes unless brought to a court of law? '

how are rapists meant to be brought to trial when the majority of rapes go unreported,mainly because of views like this?'oh,we only have your word for it that you said no to your husband so we cant do anything im afraid'whatever way you look at it,the rapists win every time and carry on with their lives probably not even thinking theyve done anything wrong.

who the hell would phone/go to a rape crisis centre if they hadnt actually been raped?or are they just stupid women who think theyve been raped but it was all just a misunderstanding?

Ah well, I disagree with you there. Just because it's an anti-porn site quoting the material, doesn't mean that the research was bad or invalid.

theBOD: I'm afraid I'm also with policy on this one. The site may be selective in choosing which research it puts on its site but that doesn't make the research itself invalid. If it stacks up as independent research, then it has value (although I'm not sure how applicable porn is in terms of a lap-dance club debate).

PP: if you look at the research links which policy posted you'll see that the industry is actually declining, or at best stable. You can have a look at the link yourself but profitability and revenues at lap-dance clubs have been falling over the last 3-4 years (I'd add that the research isn't exactly non-biased either).

Cest I will look at the research but I would imagine revenue and profitability is declining is because there are more of them and they've flooded the market, so the prices are driven down. In Bristol we have about 4 in the city centre, disgusting.

and i can accept that reasoning but with something like psychological reports it can be very easy to cherry pick to support a position even if you rely on independent reports as psycholgy can be so subjective.

Have to say there was a thread recently where someone's DH had stimulated a lapdancer's nipple with his mouth and she had put her groin in his face. Some obvioulsy do not have a no touch policy that all adhere to.

PP: you're not wrong. That is part of the reason, but the report notes that the three major reasons are (a) decreasing acceptance by the public (meaning, for example, that businessmen are less likely to take clients there) and (b) a growing disclination/ awareness of risk of exploitation and trafficking amongst some groups of men to use lap-dance clubs and (c) stricter licensing requirements, at least in London.

posie nearly all lap dancing clubs have a strict no touch policy it is some dancers that dont.

the clubs need to stick to this rule in order to keep their license and not be fined large amounts of money. but there will always be girls who try to make a little more money whilst no one is looking.

i used to work in a lap dancing club and if any of the dancers were found to be doing this they were generally ridiculed by the other dancers and called some really ugly names as it makes the punters think that all girls dancing in that club will do the same. if the girl in question did not stop this behavior then the boss was told and the girl was sacked.

also if the customers touched they were warned if they did it again they would be removed from the club and banned for life, this was always followed through so touching was really not worth it on either side.

I can imagine the 'whooping' and jeering, the laughing at eachother whilst they egg eachother on in a who can be the most most vile stakes.

I have been giving this some more thought today and I think for me it really is the acceptance of these clubs and other types of pornographic/erotic imagery in everyday life.

It is not maybe just to do with LDCs but they are a sympton of a more general problem.

Some examples of how things have changed - these things I think would not have been commonplace 10-15 years ago:

• Men in my workplace (office job 50/50 male female split) will happily talk about going to strip clubs in front of female colleagues. They behave as if going to LDCs and discussing what happened etc are perfectly reasonable conversations to have in a mixed group. Women either have to protest (prudes) or join in (game). Or keep quiet and feel embarassed and disgusted (me). Most women I think feel uncomfortable with these types of conversations and the attitiude of the men that, if you protest, it is you who has the problem

• Men I know will admit to having sex with prostitutes when on stag weekends in Prague etc. There are still some reservations surrounding this as the men in question have only ever mentioned it when drunk. But still, surely this is not something the average bloke would have done so freely before, and if he had would certainly never have mentioned it to a female acquaintance

• LDCs - I am sure that they used to be seedy places frequented by sad men in macs. Now they are where the great and good choose to hang out. Especially on american TV - It just seems strange and so far removed from what I would consider to be a normal thing to do during the course of an average working day

• Many many tv programs and films seem to have rape and sexual assault as an incidental storyline which more often than not seems thrown in for the sake of it. A few years ago a rape storyline was a huge thing, and if it was in a film that was a large and shocking part of the storyline. This has definitely changed. Now sexual assault is bunged into almost every drama I watch, often for no reason that I can see

Sorry for the essay but I am just really trying to get to grips with exactly what I don't like and why.

The answer is that I don't like the way society shoves highly sexualised imagery of women on us all the time, and images of sexual violence.

That with LDCs, indulging a desire to see/do more with women working in this industry has become so acceptable that men will indulge these behaviours and then have no qualms about telling all and sundry about it. The use of strippers has become mainstream and nearly so with prostitutes.

This leads to a lack of respect for women in general which can only lead to a more difficult time for us. And obviously a man who has violent propensities anyway has society almost egging him on as it is now normal to view women as accessible bodies and nothing more.

Sorry for the essay but I think I feel clearer in my own mind now why, for me, LDCs are unacceptable. They are not just a bit of harmless fun whichever way you look at it.

CP, well said.

CP-good post.i have the same problem with it,and this is also the reason i have a problem with things like lads' mags-in the last 10 years its become commonplace for images of near-naked women(quite often in degrading poses)to been seen in mainstream media.gone are the days when porn was only available from seedy-looking back-street shops.

in a society where women are being asked to leave cafes or being verbally abused by members of the public for breast feeding their babies i think its pretty fucked up.

I also hate the lads mags and covers of certain newspapers, displayed at children's eye height more often than not. I am not looking forward to explaining to my DD why the ladies haven't got any clothes on.

CP: actually I agree with you in the broader context - the rise of celebrity culture, the vacuous desire for fame and money beyond anything else and the use of sex and female (and male) imagery to sell virtually anything from washing powder to cars. I agree also that LDCs are part of this wider cultural phenomenon - if you look at the report links which Policywonk posted there's some telling information about Tesco's selling home pole-dance kits for example, whilst pole dance lessons are increasingly popular (DW actually went on one for a hen-do!). That being said, I think we need to be careful of cause-and-effect here - what I don't think is that the presence of LDCs actually causes this as oppose to much wider sociological influences. In the same reports, the researchers (who I'd say are somewhat anti LDC) note that the number of LDC's over the last few years at the time of the survey (in 2007) has at best remained stable and revenues and profitability (certainly at the high-profile venues) have gone down.

But wider sociological influences means that what becomes 'the norm' then influences the future 'norm'. What happened to a stag-do being a gathering of male friends and family to celebrate someone's impending marriage to the stag-dos that have been described in detail on here as a drunken weekend of questionable behaviour, lap-dancing clubs and to the extremes of going abroad to sleep with prostitutes because that is what a stag do is supposed to now be about.

Is it possible that those men who need an excuse to carry out this type of behaviour use other men for that very reason? As in X is a happily married man with a lovely wife and kids, if he thinks it is ok to go on this type of stag do then then it must be ok to behave in this way. You all risk being tarred with the same brush by being with the company you choose especially if you are going with the flow ( sorry for excessive use of cliches).

Part of me wonders that even those women out there who have no problem with their OHs going to ldc's would feel about their OHs if they actually chose not to go. Would they respect them more? - and by this I mean OHs chosing for themselves not to go rather than out of consideration for their partners opinion/wishes.

Men and women are losing the skills to communicate with each other because of all the mixed messages out there. As a parent that totally freaks me out. I think all men and women need to be able to experience life but to learn lessons from it and confront the nastier aspects of it by taking a long hard look at themselves. Do men really like being questioned on their behaviour or are they more likely to become defensive and turn the arguement around because they are not happy about judging themselves?

Mumsnet easily shows that women seem to readily accept guilt and blame about all kinds of issues because they are more reflective, something which happens after becoming a mother, when in a lot of cases they have no reason to feel guilt etc. Maybe it's too much to request men to do the same, I don't know whether this is to do with the differences between us.

Sexual attraction is a powerful force - none of us would be here without it! and neither would our children. However it also gets distorted and used by other people for their own means with potential results that affect all of us as a society.