Why strip clubs are so wrong

[bodenbiscuit]

A male friend of mine is annoying me because he apparently wants me to go to a strip club with him.

I am very surprised at him because he's a cerebral and generally decent person. I thought better of him to be honest.

I said to him that strip clubs objectify women the same way that prostituion does and he said they are a form of art - I mean seriously what disingenuous bolleaux.

Now he is saying that I'm not being mature about it because I won't change my mind. Apparently the men are the ones being exploited (eye roll) oh that old chestnut.

So how do those of you more eloquent than I argue your point on this one?

"So if people want to close clubs it seems to be more like a moral crusade than feminism"

This is a totally erroneous interpretation, but we are as unlikely to change your mind as you are to change ours.

How about that 3%?

could an organisation like the East London Strippers Collective form if dancers had no choice.

You said all strippers are there by choice. My response was not no strippers are there by choice. If I had said that, your example of some strippers saying they were there by choice would indicate I am wrong. But I didn't say that. I said you can't say that all strippers are there by choice. The existence of some strippers doing it through choice does not mean all strippers are doing it by choice, no matter how much you wish it to be so.

You pick and choose your evidence without any analysis, so long as it supports your viewpoint and your sexy cool neighbour's sexy cool job.

I know a number of women who have been strippers. They would not claim to have any dancing talent, except one who was a dancer in another field and started stripping coz she thought it would be cool and easy money. She did it for two days and left as she didn't like the men telling her she was too fat and they didn't want her to dance. (She wasn't fat.). This was told to me by a mutual friend also a stripper who said that the other one was too thin skinned to be a stripper as she (gorgeous with very long hair) had guys regularly move her hair away from her breasts then say "no thanks". She was a friend of mine before she started stripping and knew my views on it so she didn't need to pretend it was lovely and empowerfulising. At the time she said she chose to do it but afterwards talked about how her EA arse of a BF kept pestering her to do it because he got off on the idea of other guys watching his GF. Now she doesn't talk about it at all.

I know someone else whose husband used to drive her to some dive in an industrial estate near Heathrow to do a shift dancing there while he sat and watched. She also said it was her choice. They are now divorced.

And YY to Buffy that second wave feminism was not about women obtaining the freedom to present their bodies for objectification.

I was a second wave feminist and you are wrong Sausage. It was not about freedom to prance around in strip clubs for pervy blokes. It was about equality, equal ops, equal pay and liberation from centuries of patriarchal attitudes. The last thing that we feminists of the 60s/70s wanted was to perpetuate the idea that we were there to continue being objectified. The women who were doing the prancing in those days were about as far removed from feminism as you could get.

I would say majority of strippers are there by choice. Forgetting anecdotal evidence on both sides because it may have been said to affect an opinion why not go speak to dancers at the exhibitions. Find out it they are there by choice. You can actually speak to real current dancers.

The Leeds University research is the largest ever done in the UK and it was funded by the government so the results are not paid for by the pimps (depending on your opinion of politicians). The majority of dancers who were interviewed had a positive opinion of their work. Now I am sure there are some who would like to think all the dancers are brain washed or suffering Stockholm syndrome realistically the overwhelming positivity of the respondents would "suggest" that most are there by choice. Arguing about lack of choice would apply to most people who work.

I could go on but we are now entering the land of dogma rather than scientific research so I will bail out unless research or statistics come up.

. Could you respond re the 3%? Thanks.

sausageeggbacon111, if you don't address the situation in Canada where hundreds of young Romanian women were legally trafficked to work in strip clubs, you are not debating in good faith.

Without a response from you, I must conclude that you really think Canadian women are too prudish, too ugly and/or too stupid to know what great jobs await them in stripping. I say that because you're concluding that women here, myself included, are too prudish and too stupid to know what a great job stripping is.

You seem to think this about the majority of women since the majority of women understand the misogynistic harms of men paying to make women get naked and jiggle, so the clear conclusion is that you think most women are too prudish and too stupid to know what's good for them.

Second wave was all about freedom to do what we want with our bodies and yet now feminism wants to police what women do when they are exercising free choice? The right wing christians will be so pleased.

So, you are unmoved by factual observations of your behaviour on this and any other thread you can give your views on, but you feel it's appropriate to make poorly researched and plain wrong remarks about women who are actually concerned about women.

Flora what is EA?

As in her EA arse of a BF kept pestering her to do it because he got off on the idea of other guys watching his GF. Now she doesn't talk about it at all.

What man could do that to a girlfriend or wife?

For the other couple, I know someone else whose husband used to drive her to some dive in an industrial estate near Heathrow to do a shift dancing there while he sat and watched. She also said it was her choice. Well They are now divorced. says it all. And I think what I was getting at when I said how I thought people may think about stripping is that there is the idea it is sexy and fun and for someone you want to see you naked! But if that person also wants a whole room full of men letching at your... the mind just boggles!

I wonder if it is not easy for men to see the significance of this because they may not view their bodies in the same way, they may not feel so vulnerable when naked. I wonder how they may feel being vulnerable in a similar situation, which would not be a club where men strip (IMHO) because men may view this differently.

sausageeggbacon re I would say majority of strippers are there by choice. I think you must know how very silly this sounds, both from the act that a man (you are a man aren't you?) who has one stripper neighbour would know why the majority of strippers were stripping, and yes you have read some research, don't you think women can lie? Lie to themselves even.

I sometimes hate my job (which is not stripping) - guess what I say sometimes, 'I quite like my job' because we all want to feel like we are doing something that is of value or is not beneath us!

But stripping is not of value, to me, it is beneath women to be degraded.

It can be dangerous and degrading and anti social hours, so it is not going to be the top of anyone's hit list of ideal jobs. It may be the best they 'feel' they can do, or it may be the only option they 'feel' is open to them, that is not the same thing as being there by choice.

sillage excellent comments.

I think sausage is female.

EA means emotionally abusive.

I'm not a second wave feminist or a third wave feminist or a radical feminist or a Christian or a follower of any other religion (right wing or otherwise). Neither is my son or my husband.

You don't need to be any of those things to see that men paying women to take their clothes off so the men can leer at the women is wrong.

I would be interested in reading some solid research and evidence on the background of women who find themselves working as strippers or 'dancers', if that's preferred (why?) terminology.

I, for one, would never choose it, because I come from a happy, loving family that enabled me to make positive choices for myself; choices that continue to support my view of myself, and my self-esteem. I'm lucky enough to have had good experiences with men - I don't make unwise choices in that area, that have eroded my ability to look after my own wellbeing.

I have no history of abuse, of alcoholism in the family. No history of mental illness myself, nor in my family. I've never been raped or sexually abused.

I'm also in a financially secure position, so haven't needed to make 'choices' based on lack of funds.

In other words, unlike like a lot of women, I am extremely lucky and advantaged in life. People like me don't end up stripping.

I hope my DH and I are raising our DD in a similar vein. I would be heart-broken if she ended up working as a stripper. And let's be honest, unless something devastatingly unpredictable happens, it's unlikely that she will. Because she is thus far being scaffolded from making such a 'choice'.

So yes, some women do 'choose' to become strippers, but provide me with their full back story, and then I'll make a judgment on their 'choice'.

sausage can you post a link to the Leeds study you have mentioned several times? Could you also comment on the methodology and analysis in the study and how the authors dealt with the concept of choice and the women's histories and potential for cognitive dissonance?

Answer came there none...

Well you will need to look at several publications but why not start with a more recent one and I recommend you start here and if you really need more let me know. I do love the paragraph about the assumptions made by the police. And also it is interesting about people not viewing dancers as part of a community and the silencing of dancers voices. Let me know when you are ready for more if you want it.

As for the issue of cognitive dissonance, I have no idea, of course assuming that 200 dancers are all suffering the same issue is a stretch but then maybe the 10,000 dancers in the UK all suffer. Having read the Leeds work and read the work by Bindel on the Glasgow clubs I know which one is likely to be more accurate. But given the positions and amount of research that Hardy and Sanders have do on sex work and the number of articles and publications they have between them I would assume they are pretty good in their methodology.

I can't access that. Any more?

And, as requested, any research into the background/profile of your average 'dancer'?

The more I think about this I am not going to sanitise stripping by using the term dancer.

The link is difficult to read on a mobile as the pages jump but from what I can make of it , it seems to be extremely biased from the outset. It seems to be bending over backwards to treat stripping as a valid career choice.

This sets the tone fairly early on

Dominant choices: the ‘anti-lap dancing’ feminists and the morally anxious

This is followed by an attempt to rubbish concerns of communities who don't want to live in the vicinity of strip clubs (in Edinburgh certainly there are strip clubs located in residential areas.)

The paper goes on at length about how some strippers are offended at being treated as part of the sex industry.

The final conclusion seems to be that because some strippers think stripping is OK any damage done to the general good of society, perpetuation of misogyny and objectification of women is irrelevant (and after all it's just the lunatic fringe of feminism, moral majority crusaders and nimbys who don't like it)

The parenthesis is my own summary.

The last thing that we feminists of the 60s/70s wanted was to perpetuate the idea that we were there to continue being objectified.

Yes, to this. I am also a second wave feminist. The do-what-we-want-with-our-bodies aspect of women's liberation had to do with reproductive rights, not stripping for the pleasure of men.

Thank you Seneca for articulating that!

Okay well here is the research that was asked for in pdf form here

Hardy and Sanders have never said the industry is perfect but they seem to come down on the said of the dancers more than anything else. And shame people couldn't access the more recent research. One might almost think there is a worry that it may cause cognitive dissonance. There is tons more from Leeds and we have the recent UK research from Kent and Loughbough to add to the discussion. I have also started to read work from Australia on suburban sexscapes and the impact on the communities (if any) which I am sure people here will want to discuss

I think the difficulty, so far as I'm concerned, is that I believe the commercial exploitation of sex is debasing and dehumanising not just for the seller but the consumer as well and ultimately all of us, although it is the seller who suffers immediately in the front line.

I'm not a right winger and/or a religious person. There are certain things (abortion rights, death penalty, factory farming) I have made my mind up on.

I'm not particularly interested in considering whether abortion is wrong, the death penalty should be re-intoduced , factory farming is ethical or the commercial exploitation of sex is just another job.

You really need to address the questions raised about the 3% statistic you gave and about the Romanian women imported to Canada.

You should refrain from further participation in this discussion until you are prepared to honestly address those questions because every post you make without addressing those questions screams, "I AM SO WRONG AND DON'T WANT TO ADMIT IT" to everyone reading along.

Having read the Leeds work and read the work by Bindel on the Glasgow clubs I know which one is likely to be accurate

How did you come to that conclusion? You didn't answer my questions about the methodology or analysis. Nor did you answer the questions about Canada.

There's really not much point discussing the research with you. You just take what suits you and ignore the rest.

I'm old enough to remember when Miss World was shown on a prime time Saturday night slot on BBC1. It seemed normal and then the Bob Hope incident happened. Looking back it feels as if quite soon after that people, not just "wimmin" started thinking "this is crap and it's wrong"

I'd love to live in a society where people think the same about strip clubs.