Article about strip clubs in the Guardian

[SaskiaRembrandtVampireHunter]

Never read such a load of twaddle in my life:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/19/strip-clubs-new-normal


"Is it good or bad that for young men, going to a strip club is the new normal? I'd venture that it's a good thing. It's a place where they can step outside the anxiety-fraught dating scene and talk to a woman who, as long as he keeps tipping, will give him the time of day. It's a world where women parade around nude or nearly so in which doing so doesn't get anybody arrested or elicit gasps. It's a private room wherein a lap dance is on the table and a man expressing his sexuality isn't going to be met with a sexual harassment lawsuit."

Oh yes, because thanks to the feminazis it's now illegal to talk to women

[Wallison]

Wow. I would have thought it would be obvious to anyone with half a brain that objectifying people is a problem, whether or not they then go on to commit or not commit crimes within half a mile or whatever of a lap-dancing club. Have you listened to yourself recently?

[PosieParker]

a link showing research findings between men who buy sex work and men that don't Men who don't buy sex are the sort of men who wouldn't buy a lap dance.

[PosieParker]

I would also guess that men who visit lap dancing clubs are more likely to visit a prostitute.

[FastLoris]

Wow. I would have thought it would be obvious to anyone with half a brain that objectifying people is a problem, whether or not they then go on to commit or not commit crimes within half a mile or whatever of a lap-dancing club. Have you listened to yourself recently?

It may be. Unfortunately human history is littered with corpses of ideas that were "obvious to anyone with half a brain" but turned out to be wrong. The observation that the sun revolves around the Earth, and the idea that women are less intelligent then men just for a start...

To be clear I'm not actually arguing that mental objectifying doesn't cause problems in how people act towards each other; just that one can't assume that it causes any one particular set of problems. That assumption seems to be based on an outdated model of the brain that imagines a little homunculus sitting in the middle of it, coordinating all thoughts and perceptions and therefore affecting them all with each other. The brain doesn't really work like that.

To go any further than that I suppose one would have to clarify a number of factors. What does "objectifying" really mean? Is it something that's under conscious control, or not? Is the way we do it about sex any different from the way we do it about other things? Does doing it a bit lead one to do it more, or satiate the desire for it so one actually does it less, for a while? Does the fact that some people do it in a more obvious way (like going to a lapdancing club) actually mean that they're doing it more than other people? What other activities do with think it goes with, and is there a reason to believe that the link is causative, and not just correlative?

Or of course we could just say we don't like lapdancing clubs because they're gross. :)

[Sausageeggbacon]

Posie here is the proof about Drummond's claims obtained under a freedom of Information request by a local paper here

So the debate about should clubs shut has become a matter of opinion as the figures don't work. Over 3,000 people responded to the consultation in Portsmouth 116 of which were for the banning. When the vast majority of people vote against the banning of venues guess we see which opinion is in the majority.

I find it interesting that all the councils that have assumed nil policies never had clubs in the first place so there was no challenge. Hackney had 67% in favour of the clubs there and it rose to over 75% based on the ward. Seems that people, in general, are much more in favour of the clubs. I don't know of the breakdown between male and female but when the nay sayers with a lot of preparation (judging by the stories on the web) can't get 35% of the people against it never mind 50% it does show that most people don't hold the view of some of the feminists here.

So as I see it now we have just points of view, the validity of any claims of violence has disappeared from the information available. And off these boards the majority of people are for the clubs. Be interested now if there is a way of changing minds when the core claim is no longer available.

[PosieParker]

I don't think it's at all a coincidence that the market for lap dancing rises along with porn, lads mags and a general culture of objectifying women. I think it's much harder to be a young woman in 2012 than in 1982. We are really going backward pretty damned fast.

[rosabud]

^Finally avaboosmummy your comment, "Get a grip love" is offensive.

LOL. And this isn't:

Where is this invasion of pricks coming from? ^

Why is it it LOL - why is it funny to be offensive?

And you have implied that the comment about the invasion of pricks was mine which it wasn't and I think you ought to acknowledge that.

As for the accusation that Your argument seems to be based on a number of assumptions about connections within peoples' minds/brains that aren't actually true. I believe that they are true, that the way we are encouraged to think about people/things most definitely affects how we threat people/things. There are lots of examples of this such as black people being thought of as a lesser species which made slavery seem all right, disabled people being seen as not having feelings which allowed them to be put away in asylums, unmarried mothers being thought of as immoral which made it seem OK to take babies away from them and so on. Similarly, the way we treat people affects how we view them in general so not allowing gay people to stay in all hotels would imply that there is something a bit wrong with gay people. Allowing women to be objectified by men implies that women should in some way serve men's sexual needs. I believe it is obvious that there is a very clear connection in people's brains between treatment and opinions, if I didn't believe that then I probably wouldn't think there was anything wrong with lapdancing clubs (provided, of course noone was being coerced into it) and I wouldn't think there was anything wrong with letting some landladies veto gay people. But I do believe in that connection and so I would take the choices of the lapdancers and their customers and the anti-gay landladies away.

[PosieParker]

Bristol:

A police report showed that in a set period sexual crime and violence against women rose by 45% , 82% in the areas near lap dancing bars (50m)

This was the findings of a police report.

[Wallison]

I don't think it is a good idea to be objectifying women. If this point of view puts me, in the eyes of wankers (ie visitors to lap-dancing clubs) in the same category as people who believe in a flat earth, that doesn't much matter to me. I would still say that objectifying people is wrong, regardless and will happily disregards the views of the wankers.

[Sausageeggbacon]

Posie you seemed to have ignored the article that shows the arguments Drummond created in his on mind are not in fact reality. If you going to pretend the proof doesn't exist please just admit it.

Fortunately Rosa the majority do not hold all the things you believe to be their truths, I would agree stopping anyone based on their sexuality is totally wrong. It is religion that causes persecution which is interesting as reading more about the whole banning thing we see Object (a very small group of people from what I can see) teaming up with the salvation army and a group of Muslim clerics who want to shut down clubs. There are supporting a group that has clerics that preach domestic abuse is okay. One cleric who preached that had his sermons giving out by tower hamlets council and Object went along with the tower hamlets speakers. I mean really enemy of my enemy is my friend even if they are worse offenders when it comes to the key claims.

So one again you put your beliefs forward and I don't agree with them. I believe in the long term by stifling choice you will weaken women's freedoms. I know you don't agree with that but when consultations take place so far we have seen a strong turn out in favour of the clubs (or is that a weak turn out against?).

[Sausageeggbacon]

Posie you do know that the 3 clubs you are referring to are inside a crime impact zone with a lot of night clubs, the subject was brought up in front of the council and the police even with that info made no complaint about any of the clubs. It is also interesting that the one club outside the area had practically no crime associated with it.

HTH

[PosieParker]

Wow.... one person may have lied or misinterpreted stats.

They are not actually, I live in Bristol.

So Sausage do you take your clothes off for money?

[PosieParker]

Now am hiding the thread. I meet enough arseholes in my real life who defend lap dancing, I don't want more dicks in my online life.

HTH

[Sausageeggbacon]

Actually Posie according to the council the clubs are. But hey hide the thread if you need to. Really find it interesting that when the debate is not one sided how some people run away.

[Wallison]

There is a long history of women running away from wankers. Don't think you're special.

[DadDancer]

'I would argue that it would be better for sociey as a whole if men didn't have fantasies about objectifying women '
Assuming that we could read peoples minds and that's what us men all really do, how do you intend to change that? employ the thought police? All sounds a bit Orwellian to me.

When there are people on this forum making silly, offensive coments like Wallison for example, and the hyporctical actions of groups like 'Object' i think we should be considering the effects caused to the wider society by these people rather than keep picking on people who support lap dancing clubs.

[digerd]

Posie
I agree with your many posts. The one at 12.43, is exactly what crossed my mind - as these clubs sexually arouse the men who attend - they wouldn't do it if it didn't-, then afterwards some could be like a male elephant in musk - aggressive to say the least with no self-control.

[FastLoris]

@ Rosa:

And you have implied that the comment about the invasion of pricks was mine which it wasn't and I think you ought to acknowledge that.

Ah, sorry. I was replying to posts by you and PosieParker and got them mixed up. Something about "Rosa" and "Posie" I suppose.

My apologies.

[Sausageeggbacon]

Some people behave like DS2 when he doesn't get his own way. I always worried about how he could turn out, will work harder on him.

So digerd if the men are in heat how come rape figures haven't gone through the roof in the locale of the clubs? DH is more than capable of controlling his urges and I expect it is likely to be young men coming from night clubs that are going to be much more sexually aggressive. Its only my opinion but I would put money on the fact that sexual crimes are more likely to occur near night clubs rather than strip clubs.

[DadDancer]

digerd any your evidence for this is......................

[digerd]

Watch animal programmes. I did say some men could. You are a man, you should know the biological need once your testsoterone is raging through your erm blood vessels.

[GetAllTheThings]

Animals have strip clubs ?

[rosabud]

Fortunately Rosa the majority do not hold all the things you believe to be their truths,

Sausages, you are not following my argument at all. You seem to think that I am arguing from some sort of religous perspective which is not the case at all. The "truth" I was talking about (although I didn't refer to it as a "truth," I referred to it as a "belief" and I mean belief as in, I believe global warming is connected to human activity though others think it's a grey area - that kind of "belief") was the genreal belief that the way we treat people affects our opinion of them and our opinions of them affect our treatment of them. This is not some odd new age notion, it is quite an accepted way of viewing things, hence my examples quoted above and hence why a lot of effort goes into changing society's treatment of people in order to change opinions about them or vice versa. I really don't think many people would believe otherwise, ie that it is possible to treat people in one way yet have a low opinion of them in another. For example, it would be very difficult to treat a black person as badly as slaves were treated if you did not also have a very low opinion of them. In this case I would argue that it is very difficult to have an opinion of women as equals in society if you are treating them in a way which suggests they are there to serve men's sexual needs - quite unequal treatment.

Of course, I don't think such a change of opinion and treatment can be achieved by Orwellian thought police, but I do "believe" it can be changed by not promoting the kinds activities which do suggest that women are there to serve men's sexual needs such as a lapdancing club. I would also try and change this opinion by promoting activities which do NOT suggest that women are there to serve the sexual needs of men, for example perhaps ensuring that women who are stacking shelves (an activity which does not promote the idea that women are there to serve men's sexual needs) get paid more money than women who are lapdancing (an activity which does promote the idea that women are there to serve men's sexual needs.)

Does that explain the connection between opinions of/treatment of people a bit better for you? Eventually, just as ending slavery and discrimination against black people changed opinions towards black people to the extent that they are no longer thought of as subhuman (ie opinions were changed by changed treatment rather than thought poilice - which would probaly have been quite difficult), so ending the circumstances where women are shown to be sexual objects to serve men's needs, such as lapdancing clubs, will lead to changed opininions of men towards women regarding objectification/there to serve their sexual needs etc, again not through thought police but through changed treatment.

[Sausageeggbacon]

Welll you made your point Rosa I just disagree with it, sorry I don't see the clubs as some threat to society that needs changing. You have your belief the same as people believed the world was flat. Just saying that not everyone agrees with you and IRL that seems to be a large majority.

As to the debate you have you opinion and I have mine, interestingly none of the key fact that I based my initial discussion on has changed, however data thrown up by people has proven so far to be misrepresentations. When people use data that has been disproved you create an environment that is more flat earth than slavery.

[rosabud]

So you disagree with me on the point that our treatment of people will have an effect on our opinions of them?

In real life, lots of people may well agree with you or they may agree with me but the point of a debate in "real life" is to discuss the issues and attempt to change people's opinions as a result. Lots of people agreed with slavery but eventually, by persuasive debate, opinions were changed. Putting forward, "lots of people agree with me" is not really a serious avenue of argument.