Margaret Atwood defends women's right to work in strip clubs because she thinks it's 'empowering'

[stumbledin]

Speaking to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 5 Live's Headliners, the 79-year-old said women who work in strip clubs can 'feel in control of the room' and earn more money than coffee shop staff.

Ms Atwood, whose new book The Testaments was published this week, told BBC Five Live that people protesting against the clubs should 'put their energy somewhere else that's really really important – like with environmental protests.'

The author said it was important to ensure women were not exploited, adding: 'Some of the most empowering women in the American West were the madams who were running the brothels because in that era they were saving up the money up for the girls, they were setting them up after they made that money they were taking care of them and it was much better than having a pimp.'

Ms Atwood also spoke out about different kinds of feminism, adding: 'I don't refuse the label of feminism, I say, 'which kind are you talking about?'

'I am the kind that endorses organisations like Equality Now. I am not the kind that says things like all men should be pushed off a cliff or all that all male babies should be killed at birth.'

(This is the Daily Mail so not sure if accurate transcript. Did anyone listen to the interview?)

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7457063/Margaret-Atwood-defends-womens-right-work-strip-clubs.html

Funny as 70s witch 😂😂😂

Not a fan of Atwood's style. Handmaid's tale was somewhat topical because of the rise in power of the puritanical misogynist religious right in the West as well as the Middle East.
I thought Oryx and Crake was derivative rubbish.

I came back to this thread to respond to some comments earlier on, including some made to me.

But they are lost in a forum equivilent of Denial of Service (a DOS attack on a web site is when too many people try to access a web site and the server cant cope). Although it was in this instanct one person.

Is there the option, as on facebook, of blocking posts from people you dont want on your timeline?!

Or maybe we should go back to old consciousness raising groups where you all got the same number of beans / counters as the start of the meeting. Each time you spoke you gave up a bean. When your beans ran out you couldn't talk any more. This was to stop the loud mouth over confident speakers give way to those who aren't so domineering.

It is so easy for mumsnet threads to become incredibly boring because one or two people just cant stop going on, and on, and on, and on ...

So great that the thread had returned to sanity!

Any way back on topic.

Thanks to whoever gave me the correct spelling of caricature - I dont mind being corrected. I left school at 16 many decades ago and the tedium of having to flick through pages of dictionaries meant I didn't really try. And then thanks to the arrival of PCs and word processing I never had to think about it. Except of forums. (Strange it doesn't have an "h" as in character ... )

Also, just to say I have a soft spot for Margaret Atwood because of the Edible Woman. This made me accept that feminism was right. And I suspect she didn't right it as that, but as an honest reflection of a young woman trying to survive as an independent person. Not sure if it would still be relevant to anyone entrying adulthood today.

But I did see somewhere that this is to be made into a tv series. I am sort of dreading that.

I never really got into her futuristic novels. I sometimes wonder if she isn't a writer's writer, or for literature fans. In fact I struggled to read the Handmaid's Tale but was interested enough in the theme to persevere. Radio 4 Extra are broadcasting a reading of it at the moment and I am hoping to catch up with it this weekend. Wonder how I will find it now. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008jzy

I always misspell it with an h and then give the shock face at the red underline.

@stumbledin

I don't The Handmaid's Tale on tv - it has become too farfetched in my opinion

Winterlife we also read Alice Munro (Lives of Girls and Women is great) and Margaret Laurence smile was your course at Reading Uni by any chance?

I remember reading Alice Munro & Margaret Laurence at Hull back in the 90s. That was when I discovered Katherine Mansfield as well. She could create incredibly real women in a very few pages.

This has all spurred me to read "Stripped: The Bare Reality of Lap Dancing" by Jennifer Hayashi Danns, Sandrine Leveque. It has a range of women's experiences in lapdancing - amazon link below

Start reading it for free: amzn.eu/9P743iB

I would also recommend Joan Smith's The Public Woman to Margaret Atwood - it explores the 90s/00s push for women to own their sexiness to men, to view it as empowering and use it to gain success. Excerpt:

an academic study carried out for Glasgow City Council in 2004 included interviews with customers who went to clubs specifically looking for an opportunity to buy sex: Approximately half the customers in Glasgow came to the club looking for sex. Four of the regular visitors claimed they had had sex with a dancer on the premises, and a further two said they had arranged liaisons outside of the club with the dancers by swapping mobile telephone numbers.17 The Glasgow study focused on four lap dancing clubs in the city and two in London. Some of the dancers reported pressure from management to create an impression of ‘sexual availability’ even if they weren’t actually expected to sell sex, while researchers saw the following in one club: Every dancer, during their performances, displayed the inside of their genitalia by spreading their legs above the customers’ heads. This seemed to be an established part of the routine. As one customer put it: ‘What’s the point of seeing a strip show and not getting a bit of fanny? The fun part is seeing her cunt. You can open the Sun if you just want tits.'

I’d forgotten so many brilliant women writers. I’m going to have a lot to look for when I go to the library later.

I’m always trying to get people to read The Woman’s Room. It was such a revelation to many of us Crones.

I’m always trying to get people to read The Woman’s Room. It was such a revelation to many of us Crones.

Noted.

A PP (Barbarastrozzi) mentioned the narrator's mother in THT, the absent Cassandra figure. I think of her all the time now and like you, didn't pay much attention to her the first time. I feel like her when I get smug young libfems telling me "sex work" is just another job, and men can be women, and we should treat them as sisters and pander to their needs, kicking sisters out of our own movements whio don't obey.

I haven't read Alice Munro - I will now. This thread turned out useful and interesting in the end. :)

I’m not of the it’s empowering mindset but would ‘defend’ their right to do so. What the fucks it got to do with others? I’ve always been a you should be free to do what you want unless it directly hits others. So no to murder, stealing somebody else’s property etc.

There’s a school of thought that this distorts men’s views on women so affects me but that’s too abstract for me. That’s just poor logic on the mans part for not being able to distinguish not everyone is the same

The Woman's Room is indeed a fascinating read. Very much of its period (and a real insight into that period), and also of its class, but with themes that still resonate today.

The scene that always sticks with me is the one where every week she gets the canteen of cutlery they got as a wedding present (but never use because it's for best) and polishes it - because she's looking for "make work" because now she's married she can't go out to work, but being comfortably middle class she hasn't got loads of housework either.

Sorry I have not read the entire thread but I would still be interested in hearing from Courtney555 about her experience of strippers and pole dancers involved with new age cults

I am asking for a number of reasons

I have heard from women I know who worked as strippers and pole dancers that many such performers in London are involved in neo-tantric / yoga cults.

The cult dancers are often trained in hypnosis and the "art of seduction" as part of their "awaken you inner goddess" style training, so they are not simply women trying to earn a crust. They are trained to seduce people, especially people of influence such as police, politicians etc.

Courtney555

What do you think of yoga, neo-tantra, the "law of attraction" etc?

Would you care to dispute my allegations about pole dancers and strippers being involved in cults and (this bit is important) giving most of their earnings to pimping gurus?

Of course the revenue streams are not the only valuable things to the cults

Possibly the most valuable asset to the cults is compromat - something that cultic sex workers are skilled at harvesting, especially given their training in persuasion, seduction and the like.

I would be very intersted in hearing about Courtney555's experiences in this respect

Courtney555

I saw this video and thought of you :)