pole dancing for fitness

[hairyqueenofscots]

in my work i work with very highly qualified academics, i am support staff. they have all recently started these classes and burlesque. I have recently got very interested in the feminism on MN. I am saddened these woman are doing this ,they have everything going for them! Am i wrong? be gentle i am a learner :)

I'd guess Pole ( honestly it's all in that name isn't it ? ) fitness / dancing is seen as 'a bit edgy'. Like getting a tattoo on your lower back.

I went to one once and I had two thoughts in this order..

1. Oh God please put your clothes back on, I'm really not enjoying seeing your vagina two feet from my face !

2. Oh my God that is some impressive gymnastics even ignoring you're naked and wearing 6" perspex platform heels.

I am most disappointed about the demise of the cupcake

I'm starting a wet tee-shirt spa session if anyone's interested, it's very good for hydration.

The issue of damage to bodies has been brought up several times. If we separate the activity from the audience, is it still an important point (given that many sports, such as rugby and boxing, are inherently dangerous)? You could have women only audiences for ballet - would that remove the creepiness referred to and make it a legitimate activity, or would we rather see it stopped due to the stresses and strains in places on limbs and joints? Or can it be modified in some way?

Ballet is an interesting one. I had a g/f who was a ballerina a while back. She mentioned both a pervy nature to ballet's history with the upper classes basically ogling / choosing concubines from scantily clad ballet dancers, and all the unhealthy practices in actually being a ballet dancer. i.e. not really being allowed to eat much and pushing your body to it's limit.

. Here's the key question - do men feel the need to do pole dancing classes for "fitness"? No.

Do your research before you spout bollocks....lots of men do pole fitness, there are some fantastic male polers out there!

Get - again, this comes back to separating the audience from the activity. A jockey has a very harsh lifestyle in terms of fitness, diet, weight control and inherent danger to life and limb - broken bones, paralysis, death. What it doesn't have is the objectifying of the jockey, so again I would ask - should we segregate audiences by gender, or modify the activities, or ban them all together?

...and yes, if I were in a competition then I would have no problem "performing" in front on men although personally I would die of fright poling in public, nothing to do with sexuality but more to do with stage fright, same fear of any sort of performance in public.

No, I wouldnt girate, rub my tits against the pole and grind my crotch against it in front of men, but then I wouldn't do that at all because that is not (for me) what poling is all about.

Get - yes, I will give you that one........fannies being 2 feet away and all that

Betty with all due respect how can you avoid rubbing your boobs and groin against the pole when you're swing around it ?

I'm a man ( in case there was any doubt ) and tbh I really would find it hard not to think there was sexual connotation seeing a woman swinging around a large pole. It's inherently suggestive.

I don't really have any beef with anyone who chooses to do it but I do think it raises questions about just who is contributing to the objectification of women we see in our society. I don't think it's just the menz.

It's not uncommon to see a poster advised to leave their husband after he's been to a PDC . I wonder what the advice would be if he went to a pole fitness class.

Get - well no of course you cant avoid making contact with the pole but surely it's the manner you do it. To be fair, I dont swing round it that much as I prefer the tricks, the upside down and climbing aspect of it rather than the spins but that's beside the point. My DH is around when I use the pole at home and believe me, there is nothing sexy/sexual about it , it does nothing for him but he is proud of me and of what I have achieved as he knows how much effort I put into it.

I think if anyone advised anyone to leave their DH because he attended a pole fitness class would need their head tested to be honest but that's just my opinion.

...oh and I dont pole in heels or naked either :)

I had photos of me running races :)
Seen pictures of women doing all sorts of sports. Maybe not aerobics classes, but they dont really look as graceful as pole, or ballet or horseriding or suchlike.

Im a bit perplexed by the notion that we need to avoid anything that may have or may have had a sexual connotation somewhere along the line.
Then again, i am the type of feminist that likes a bit of free choice here and there and am pretty sex positive

because, of course, if you don't like the idea of swinging around a giant phallus for exercise, you must be sex negative

I guess out in the medjia world of polemics ( just look at the Sun website ) you have men looking all manly and muddy doing stuff, and women in their underwear looking all alluring. ( That's if you can avoid the picture of Alex Reid dressed as a woman , I guess that's post-modernism for you )

But I think the deeper issue is in different feminist perspectives.

Sex positive attitudes and more strident attitudes. It's not like this is anything new on MN.

On threads about sexual entertainment clubs there is a fairly strong voicing of the opinion that any man who goes to one is by default a woman hater, a wanker, scum etc etc etc. And of course the women participating are beyond criticism as they have to operate within the patriarchy and are in a sense victims themselves.

Having legions of women condoning pole dancing, and thus contributing to it's normalization, does make it problematic to keep simply blaming the menz.

A pole is a phallic symbol. Does that really need pointing out here ? I thought it was too obvious to mention.

Please don't bring "sex positivity" into this. People who think a bit more widely about how our youngsters are being influenced by the normalising and mainstreaming of sexual objectification of women are not "sex negative" and I take exception to that inference.

I've mentioned it three times ! I'm obsessed I tell ya.

< offers rosabud a cupcake >

A pole is a phallic symbol. Does that really need pointing out here ? I thought it was too obvious to mention.

AF - I have never ever thought about it like that! I don't get that.....at all!!! I think people read more into it than there actually is.

I like the way strumpet sees things )

but can I still have a cup cake please :)

AF I'm happy to defer to your terms of categorization. I'm hesitant to mention 'radical' in any sentence, or fun-fems. But clearly there are a number of different schools of thought.

< nom nom nom >

On threads about sexual entertainment clubs

This is not a thread about sexual entertainment clubs, or dancing in sexual entertainment clubs though. It's a thread about whether pole fitness can or cannot be divorced from sexual content if its for fitness, done with no sexual intent, with no audience and no money changing hands. I think it can, others think it can't - it's an interesting debate. But reducing the whole thing to 'blaming the menz' is not what this debate is about.

Betty, since you asked so nicely, you may have my least favourite cupcake. Chocolate. Cupcakes should not be chocolate...they should be pink and lemon and vanilla.

And no, that is nothing to do with my sexual tastes...what with me being sex negative'n'that