HARROGATE

[MrsClown]

Does anyone live near or visit Harrogate. I do not live there but I recently booked some theatre tickets for the theatre in Harrogate and find it is practically next door to a strip club!!!! I contacted Harrogate Council to comment on how rediculous it is and they have informed me that the closing date for objections is 26 January 2012. I wondered if anyone else would be willing to write to the licensing department at Harrogate Council to object. I mean, I did not really want to have to attend the theatre with my family next to part of the sex trade!

Please go on the OBJECT website which gives ideas on wording and further advice regarding objections to these establishments.

I am not deciding what other people can do. It is their choice obviously. However, it should be my choice not to be confronted by it around every corner in my home town. It is the normalisation of selling women that is the point. Men dont have to put up with it so why should I. Women in Iceland are not for sale so I dont see why we cant have that over here. I agree with it being boring, I wish it was not something I have to discuss even but unfortunately it is. I know the statement about buying women may be boring for you, it may be because it is true and you dont like to admit it. I could give you lots of other arguments but the buying of women is the basis for the growth of these vile places. Prostitution is linked to these establishments. I KNOW that there are strip joints who hire taxis for the Johns to go to brothels after the strip joint. A stripper (sorry I cant call them dancers it is offensive to dancers) who sadly still has to work in the industry who told me that. By the way she admitted to me that she hates it. When I was on the RECLAIM THE NIGHT march in Leeds there were women coming onto the street who had to work in the viscinity of these places thanking us for daring to speak out.

I am sick and tired of people like you who do not see the wider picture. The effect it has on other women. My friends teenage daughter recently had to endure jeers and catcalls from a group of men who had just come out of a strip club. She is 17 years old and is now scared to walk around in town. That happened during the day by the way. Call the police you may say. Do you actually think they would come rushing out! That is why you have to become offensive and make patronising statements because you cant be bothered to even find out.

My advice to you is to look at the wider picture.

End of discussion. Tony, dont be a troll, you will make yourself unpopular.

Actual I have been to venues over the years in London and I have never seen people shouting out to women, it may be a regional thing but I have seen men calling out from ordinary bars when outside smoking or in the summer. I certainly don't know what is going on in Leeds but in London I know the strip scene very well and over the years I have met a high number of dancers and I have yet to meet one who stayed in the job that didn't want to do it. As performers they have the right to dance or not to dance and the few that don't like it have only to stop there is no such thing as still has to work. And before we go on about me being a customer and girls saying want the customer wants to hear I have been invited to dancers weddings, been to their houses, met their husbands and boyfriends so I would say that I probably know a lot more dancers than you and none of them dislike the job. Yes they will have bad days but you get that in any job.

See the wider picture as I see it is not the same as the wider picture as you see it. Perception is a strange thing but I can only go on my own experiences. The other thing that is different is I prefer the more traditional strip pub rather than the chain LDCs, certainly they need better regulation to provide better standards for the dancers but in London most venues you could walk past without even knowing they are there. I have no issues with the removal of any blatant advertising but to shut them down? Even Object when they started was for better regulation and it was only when they came out as designer feminists they changed their tune.

If I was here to be popular I wouldn't have opened mymouth in the first place would I lol And did you read the blog and find out why I think of you as a designer feminist?

Shudder

Yes designer feminists make me shudder too

What on earth is a 'designer' feminist? Is this one of those times whereby people who don't have a leg to stand on invoke elitism in order to smear another person's point of view?

Please explain on this site, as I have no intention of giving your blog traffic - not least because that's clearly why you're here.

If you want to know go find out from the blog. I am not going to recite 5 blog entries to make the point. If you don't want to know well thats up to you. I don't know if there is a word limit but if there is this would definately fill it. As for the term a leg to stand on, as a bi-lateral amputee that is possibly one of the funniest things said. In terms of backing my arguments from my perspective I am more than able to. Lets just say Team Object - Feminism Police putting the F back in Feminism

Your post makes absolutely no sense. Ah well.

What part dont you understand? :)

I think you know I wasn't shuddering at any kind of feminist, designer or otherwise.

I know but fortunately I can see the funny side of anything.

So let me ask all the feminists here a question if I described a woman (in a derogatory way) as a bimbo what would you say I was?

Victor - I dont understand Tony either, thank God!

So ok you are not going to answer the simple question what would you call me if I called a feminist a bimbo?

Ok so more than once on this thread I have been asked who or what are designer feminists. This is a cut down version taken from the strippingtheillusion blog by Chasmal

The phrase was created to refer to certain self appointed 'elite' of third wave feminists that choose to focus on issues that are relatively unimportant on the landscape of feminist struggle, but are nonetheless worthy of favourable media publicity that can be later harnessed for the benefit of the activist(s) in question.

Designer feminists tend to be drawn from relatively privileged backgrounds and are very well educated and see themselves as a moral template that should be followed by everyone else without question.

Designer feminists obsess about female exploitation, but choose lap dancing clubs as their battleground and ignore anything that isn?t media friendly, such as the hundreds of office cleaners that almost certainly are exploited on a daily basis. The issue here is that there is no public outrage or concern about office cleaners, they are invisible and how many of them clean floors and tidy the offices of Object activists?

Designer feminists choose safe targets such as lapdancing clubs that they accuse being full of trafficked sex slaves and ignore the brothels in every town and city that are full of trafficked people. Its easier to take on a club with a law abiding owner than a gangster run brothel.

Designer feminists probably think that Elizabeth Cady Stanton is an expensive knitwear designer and therefore do not know that she said...

?Human beings lose their logic in their vindictiveness?.
'Were you paid by your pimps?' - Object activist (and don't we just know who it was) to pro stripper speaker.

'Woman will always be dependent until she holds a purse of her own'.
So forgive me if I observe that Objects most high profile campaign so far aims to make hundreds of women unemployed.

Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other.
A Mumsnet contributor referring to strippers as being 'gender traitors of the highest order....second only to prostitutes'

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.
Objects alliance of convenience with islamic conservatives in Tower Hamlets comes to mind here

There is more but think this is enough to give people an understanding of what some people are seeing as designer feminists.

So, your purpose in coming to the Feminist discussion board is to trash feminists. Right. I gathered that from the start.

No not to trash feminist, to trash designer feminists.

Dear Tony, sometimes people come on Mumsnet and other feminist sites to pose as feminists and say silly things to discredit them. Until you learn to distinguish between these and genuine feminist posts you are never going to have anything sensible to say about feminists ('designer' or not) based on what you read online and are going to look a bit naive into the bargain. If I were you I would start by reading a few mainstream feminist books. The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard is very good. Also try Living Dolls by Natasha Walter.
Hope that helps

Actually lets clarify that, I believe in equal pay, I believe in equal rights, I believe in equal standing in front of the law and I believe in freedom of choice so long as the choice does not break laws. For both sexes equally no matter colour or creed.

I am against those that would impose their will who do not have the mandate of the people and who bend the truth, lie or otherwise mislead people to support their own agenda. Remember in Hackney when two thirds of the people came out in favour of striptease? Where was the mandate for a nil policy under those guidelines?

I could go on but the point is I do not brgrudge women being equal it is to do with some of the campaigns I am against.

PMSL at 'begrudge'.

pmsl @ my spelling of it. And yes it is the wrong word. Bottom line so long as it is legal and honest I don't mind the who, when, why, and what. No one has greater rights than anyone else.

Ok Tony - I'm curious about something which you might be able to shed light on having known lots of girls who have worked in LDCs. How many of them were deaf? Amputees? Over the age of 30? Disabled? Had had a mastectomy? Performed when in the third trimester of pregnancy? Had DS?

First time I have ever been called designer anything. Does that mean someone made me, like a mannekin? Do you think I am a designer feminist Tony.

Mrs Clown, I think the only intention in labelling people is to patronise, nothing else.

Ticks quite a few boxes on this list of People You Will Meet In Discussions On Sexism On The Internet.

But don't forget to add to the list:

Mr You're Wasting Your Time On Unimportant Things. - Why are you getting into a lather about silly things like porn, prostitution, pink toys for girls? There's nothing wrong with these things. If you were really serious, you'd be doing something about sexism in __ (insert country or culture here) or things that really matter."

Mr You're Too Privileged To Understand What It's Like for Women Who REALLY Suffer. How dare you think that you know enough about working class/black/Muslim/Lesbian/disabled/abused women to say you know what they want when you're all privileged and educated. Everything you know comes from books and nothing from life.

LMAO Kritiq see why you got your name. I would surprise you with my background and have more life experience than you might guess but if it makes you feel better no worries. I have worked with Help the Aged, CAB, two refugee organisations, multiple social services. But yeah I know nothing. And I come from a working class family, got booted out of college and know a fair amount about being disabled. But of course your right.

Porn, prostitution? Never mentioned either but ok lets get to that... why do organisations like object do so much in the press about LDCs which are legal and yet for all the words have done so little about trafficking and brothels.

MrsClown middle class? Good background? Further Education? And this gives you the right to decide if other women work or not?

tone, just because you choose not to take part in the discussions about cleaning, childcare and care work being poorly paid and women-only, and choose to focus your entire attention on stripping, doesn't mean the conversations don't exist.

and, um, i think the fact that people focus on the legal side of the sex trade is to, um, change the law?

am loving designer feminist, btw. catchy.

lots of work going on about illegal stuff behind the scenes. much more useful to target the 'legal' stuff in the press if you are campaigning for real change. the illegal stuff is already illegal, and campaigning about it won't really help. (no-one is going to stand up in public and argue that trafficking is good - so it's a bit pointless to waste coverage on it) better to put effort into support and provision for trafficked and abused women and keep working with the law behind the scenes. potentially endangering to target illegal areas - given that the women may already be more vulnerable and the men may already be acting outside the scope of the law, poking them with a sharp stick might be unwise. i think providing evidence to liaison workers and support to women who manage to escape from such situations is a more measured and sensible approach. sad that it's necessary, of course. at least with legal establishments the proprietors are theoretically on the right side of the law and less likely to endanger their workers if they are splashed all over the front pages. but it might give them pause for thought about what their work actually entails, rather than hiding behind the 'legal' if ethically and morally dubious status.

maybe you will be starting a campaign about cleaners? i would love a link. it sounds like a far more worthy cause than the one you are employed on currently? and you seem to feel quite strongly that cleaners are being abused and would warrant more support and attention than strippers? i look forward to your campaign to raise the pay and profile of cleaning. maybe more men will take cleaning jobs as a result.