Over at Feminist Law Professors, Bridget Crawford has recently asked, Is lap-dancing prostitution? It really is a squillion dollar question, with so much of the world interested in restricting prostitution that involves intercourse in some way or another, while promoting lap-dancing as mere entertainment. It is a question that just keeps on being raised without ever reaching a conclusion, but one thing is for sure – it just can’t be beaten off.
The legal definition of prostitution goes along the lines of “the sale of sexual favours, or the exchange of sexual favours for money”. So what are sexual services? Is arousal a sexual service? What happens when you “grind” on the lap of a customer and he cums? Is that a sexual service?
I guess the question could be, “When is a sexual service not a sexual service?”. The answer to that one is “when it happens in a strip club”. Our culture has been working over time in its efforts to underplay exactly what lap-dancing is. We have made stripper shoes a fashion accessory, public displays of nudity a right of passage and pole dancing an exercise class. We have sold young women the notion that empowerment comes in a diamante g-string, not in political power and smashing the glass ceiling.
Crawford goes on to wonder if the difference between prostitution and lap-dancing can be drawn along workplace safety lines. Women who sell their bodies for intercourse do face a higher level of risk (one that I would call an unacceptable level of risk), from violence and disease, but lap-dancing is by no means free of risk.
During my own time as a dancer in a “Gentlemen’s Club” (haw haw) I was the recipient of unwanted, let’s call it forced, sexual aggressions. I had fingers thrust inside my vagina while stripping on a podium in the middle of a crowded club, I was held down and hit on the vagina with a ruler during a “school girl fantasy dance” for a bucks party that was performed in a small private room without surveillance or security, I was forcibly and painfully dry fucked while fully naked by a fully clothed maniac on the same occasion while the 12 other men in the room cheered him on, I was forcibly kissed and had my breasts groped and pinched on too many occasions to count and narrowly escaped penile penetration during another private fantasy dance on another occasion (only that time I was a nurse… urgh). This all occurred in an establishment that was strictly “no touching”.
Crawford finishes her article speculating about the differences in the way the power balance is perceived in the lap-dancer/customer relationship. She mentions the “unarticulated belief that the roles of exploiter and exploited are reversed in the lap dance scenario”. While I agree with her that this belief does seem to have an amazing staying power, I do not think that it is unarticulated. The belief that women who sell dances are in someway empowered by that experience has been discussed fairly widely by many commentators, Ariel Levy notably took that belief out into the larger world and looked at the way women’s sexuality has been constructed by the media to suit this hollow lie.
Putting aside the questionable notion that dancing on demand and stripping for cash is somehow empowering, I can only guess that this belief is somehow propped up by the idea that a woman flaunting her sexuality without having sex is somehow getting away with it. That she is flipping the bird at the men who crave her yet can’t have her. The harsh bubble breaking fact persists – men can buy her and when they run out of money, or she runs out of dances and excuses, they can rape her. That is why these places are full of bouncers and regularly escort their dancers to their cars.
I’ve got $50 in my pocket – anyone feel like powering up and getting naked for my cash?
12 Comments
July 20, 2009 at 11:50 pm
OBJECT’s campaign Stripping the Illusion is all about this issue, read more here! http://www.object.org.uk/index.php/campaigns/about-the-campaign
this is a great blog, we will tell our activists about it , thank you for doing what you do and helping to open space for other women to speak out
July 21, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Thank you so much for your feedback. I have gained a lot from your site, too – it really helped me come to terms with my experiences as a lap dancer and reframe them intellectually… Not sure that makes sense, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was difficult for me to say “what happened to me in that club was sexual assault”, instead of feeling responsible and ashamed.
Reading sites like yours made me realise my duty to speak out, to heal, and to help others come to the same realisations.
Thank you.
July 21, 2009 at 5:46 am
Although this may be the legal definition of prostitution – I have come to believe that being living porn that men choose to pay for is prostitution. So I would say lap-dancing is prostitution.
Anyhow, the men don’t care about legal definitions as choose to abuse lap-dancers as much as they can get away with.
The managers don’t care as they choose to turn a blind eye to sexual violence which is the norm in many clubs. All they care about is making as much money as possible.
Working in clubs is not safer, it is just hidden from the public gaze.
July 21, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Rebecca, I agree with you 100%. With all your points. Absolutely, lap dancing is a form of prostitution – there is no doubt in my mind either.
Managers turn a blind eye to as much sexual violence and exploitation they can – up to the point that it begins to harm their chances of keeping their license, then they place the blame squarely on the stripper and use her as a scapegoat.
The concept that strippers are empowered by working in these clubs blows my mind. They work as freelance agents, without sick pay, without any type of industrial protection, they are fined for ridiculous misdemeanors designed to channel yet more of their revenue to the clubs, they pay for the right to work, they have little protection from patrons and staff, it is total shite. Not that I need to tell you any of this sad tale.
Thank you for your words. x
July 22, 2009 at 2:37 am
Not that I need to tell you any of this sad tale.
It may seem redundant but it bears remembering now and again.
As more laws defending men’s rights to sex workers emerge we’ll see a continuation of what Hooters has done by calling its waitresses ‘entertainers’ in order to skirt the women’s rights hard-won by women’s liberationists. Two years ago in Portland a 37-year old Internet pornographer murdered the 18-year-old he was making porn of for several websites, and the local alternormal weekly labeled her “his live-in girlfriend and model”.
Porn models and girlfriends are not sex workers, lap dancing isn’t prostitution, Hooters doesn’t have waitresses, pornography isn’t filmed prostitution, escorts aren’t prostitutes…
Historical precedent has shown that where the legal right to strippers, escorts and “sex workers” gets affirmed, their numbers decrease and the number of money-taking burlesque artistes, money-taking therapeutic sex surrogates, and money-taking professional girlfriends increase. I have paid attention to women who do the latter three activities as they pleaded with naysayers to acknowledge supposed gulfs of differences between them and hookers.
Whether by women’s distaste for being labeled whores or by capitalist chicanery, when sex workers rights are on the books the women get relabeled non-employee freelance entertainers and those new laws get sidestepped like anti-sexual harassment laws are sidestepped at Hooters.
July 22, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes!! Thank you for your addition, Sam. I nearly nodded my head right off
July 23, 2009 at 3:38 am
Thanks so much for making the connections between working in clubs and prostitution.
I read the testimonies on the Object’s report, and was highly moved.
I started prostitution through working in a club. Like too many private clubs for men, it was outwardly respectable. But when it was know it was outside the public gaze it was a very ugly place.
It was a club that catered for men who wanted under aged prostitutes, especially it catered for men who were sadistic.
But the public view of the club was it like a wine bar. Respectable.
Only if you look carefully, it would seen that the men sit separate from the girls.
Look harder and you see that the girls were not allow to talk, were told not to move. They were on show.
Look even harder and see that the men took away the girls at the night, without talking or looking at them.
That is how many gentlemen’s clubs work, prostitution made invisible – but just straight-forward prostitution.
I can never trust or believe that men-only, men mainly clubs do encourage prostitution.
I know to me it does not matter, coz whether there is the cliche view of prostitution or not – the managers all the customers to finger-fuck women, allow “pretend” rape, permit derogatory language aimed at the women, let men follow women outside and some turn blind to sexual abuse and or rape.
This is prostitution made invisible.
Sorry if I am repeating myself, but I am very upset and furious.
I am so sick of living in a world where women and girls in the sex trade are just living porn-toys.
I have some on my blog, coz my rage is exploding.
July 23, 2009 at 10:07 am
I too, was very moved by the testimonies on the Object’s site. It sends me into a ranting maniac thinking about the position that lapdancing has gained in our culture, too. It defies all logic, reason and right.
Anyone who has ever worked in one of these clubs knows how strongly they encourage prostitution – in a number of ways I think, firstly they are breaking grounds for the women involved and let’s face it, stripping is often part of an indoctrination process and clubs are recruitment grounds, and secondly they make men feel entitled to buying sex, make the men practiced in expecting performance for money, reinforces the concept of Women as Whores, and thirdly and obviously, puts them in the mood. Men were forever propositioning within the club despite there being clear guidelines not to, and we were forever directing men to the brothels conveniently located nearby.
Rebecca, don’t apologise for speaking your message and showing the world how it is. You tell a hard truth and you do it very well. Don’t stop. xx
July 23, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Thanks so much, I feel like my heart is breaking when I know my experiences in that club ans a few others was just part of “normal practice” in the sex trade.
It is very hard to live with the trauma that time put into my body and mind.
All we can do is campaign as hard as we have the strength to do, and continue to speak our truths.
July 23, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Flipping FANTASTIC post, S! Thank you, I needed a bit of a shake up.
July 30, 2009 at 4:21 am
Lap-dancing is prostitution because the women dancers are ‘on display for the men to buy.’ Another aspect commonly overlooked is the fact the female lap-dancers are commonly totally naked whereas the male customers/Johns are fully clothed.
Now reverse the situation wherein it is men who are the ones totally naked and performing sexualised dances whilst the women are fully clothed. Being totally naked in a room full of fully clothed men immediately creates a power imbalance but hey ‘women removing their clothing is supposedly empowering is it not.’ So why are not men working as lap-dancers and dancing totally naked since it is sooo empowering.
Conveniently women working as lap-dancers in these Johns clubs are all self-employed which means legislation concerning males sexually harassing women within the workplace does not apply, since the women lap-dancers are not employees. Ergo, the Johns can commit any sexual offence they wish against the female lap-dancers knowing their actions and behaviour will either be condoned or ignored. Only if the Johns sexual violence against the female lap-dancers is such that the ‘reputation’ (sic) of the male owners is threatened will the bouncers step in and even then claims will be made ‘it was the woman’s fault’ because the Johns’ sexual violence against the women dancers has to be excused or invisibilised.
After all, lap-dancing clubs are nothing more than brothels where men can gather and demonstrate to other males their ‘masculinity’ by treating women lap-dancers as men’s masturbatory aids or else as dehumanised commodities whose sole purpose is to sexually service male customers.
One thing which always surprises me is the common misogynistic sexualised insult ‘that women are whores.’ If that were the case, why then do so many men believe it is their right to have sexual access to ‘whores’ since the term itself means the person is dirty or filthy.’ Why do so many men want to contaminate their pseudo pristine cleanliness by coming into contact with ‘dirty dehumanised females.’ No, the ones who are the whores are the Johns and those who label women as either ‘madonnas or whores.’ I suggest the men who call women ‘whores and other misogynstic names take a long hard look at their own sexual practices and beliefs before engaging in sexually insulting women.
Reality is, women are not ‘whores’ but complex, diverse human beings. But then patriarchal society has to invent a dehumanised sub-section of humanity in order to have a pseudo higher valued group – because there cannot be a dominant group without a subordinate group. That is how patriarchal society operates.
Look at the demand side – why are so many men buying women’s bodies and masturbating into them? Why are so many men believing the myth it is their innate right to buy women’s and girls’ bodies? Could it be that any challenge to this pseudo male-right goes right to the centre of male-supremacist society and threatens to reduce men’s power as a group over women as a group.
August 9, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Thank you so much for your thoughtful and insightful reply, Jennifer. And YES! to your final question. Absolutely. I think that this underlies the whole precarious construction, precarious, yet seemingly cemented construction… It is the leaning tower of pisa in terms of logic, it just doesn’t stand up, yet it won’t fall down.
Only if the Johns sexual violence against the female lap-dancers is such that the ‘reputation’ (sic) of the male owners is threatened will the bouncers step in and even then claims will be made ‘it was the woman’s fault’ because the Johns’ sexual violence against the women dancers has to be excused or invisibilised.
Absolutely. I was gutted when this happened to me, repeatedly. Why the power balance issue isn’t clear to the “pro sex” lobby is beyond me.