It seems to be at least marginally relevant what percentage of strip clubs, and strippers therein, perform sex acts as opposed to simply erotic dancing.
If I understand Indygrrl, the claim from her is that strip clubs in which the dancers also are available for sex acts are a rarity, not the rule; one part of the claim from the “feminist” blog is that they are the standard.
There also may be some difference of opinion as to what constitutes a sex act – can I propose as a working definition that a sex act, in this context, is when there is body-to-body direct contact between the dancer and the patron, with the intent to cause orgasm for the patron?
Is that definition reasonable?
Under that definition, are sex acts available in most strip clubs?
Really? I admit I don’t have much in the way of …er… hands-on experience here, but I was given to understand that there are websites devoted to the discussion of various strip clubs and the opportunities once might find in them.
(Replace the apt xxx with www for the actual link)
These discussion may be completely fabricated, but they don’t have that tone; they appear to be men trading info and reviews of Miami-area strip clubs in which sex acts are available.
And they don’t appear to be acts so fleeting that only a premature ejaculator would reach climax.
I admit it’s possible I’m missing something, and I admit I have no first-hand knowledge to back any of this up.
And of course, what i can’t tell from a cursory review is: are there 100 strip clubs in Miami, and these people are discussing the ten that are also brothels, or are there fifteen strip clubs in Miami and these people are discussing the ten that are also brothels?
I’ve never thought women in the sex industry were “exploited” or “victims”. They CHOOSE to enter a field that pays very well, for very little work, and if they don’t like it they can always wait tables at Denny’s.
Some, however, are forced into the trade by abusive boyfriends, or pimps. That kind of things seems unambiguously victimization.
Some are addicted to drugs, and find that only through prostitution can they make enough money to feed their addiction. That seems less clear, since one could argue that they chose to begin taking a habituatiing drug, and thus chose their life – but to me, that “choice” seems a bit more attenuated than the 26 year old graduate student who chooses to strip to pay off her college costs.
And when the sex worker is, say, 16 when she “chooses” to begin, I question how much weight society should give to that choice, even if she’s now 18 and saying she chooses to continue.
Let me approach this from the “anecdote” standard.
About a decade ago, I used to be a pretty horny and sexually amoral college student with a ready supply of cash and ability to travel. I have been to several dozen strip clubs across central PA, Philly, Pittsburgh, Harrisburgh, Atlantic City, Maryland, West Virginia…
Exactly one of the clubs I visited had opportunities for orgasm other than premature ejaculation from a lap dance in which I remained clothed. Either that, or there is a secret code/menu to requesting such things of which I am still not aware. And even the “one” was a case where a fraternity brother of mine (not me, that place was a pit) ended up paying well over $300 for a handjob in what he characterized as an extreme failure of negotiation.
Heck, I would characterize strippers in general, in my experience (I spent a lot of time talking to them, attempting to find out if the aforementioned additional services were available) to be on average smarter and better educated than the average bear. Most of them were either college students earning money or women who’d made one mistake and ended up with a kid they needed to support. Most strip clubs are fanatic about checking ages and IDs for their dancers, because most law enforcement agencies look askance at strip clubs.
In my experience, in summary, strip clubs are strip clubs and brothels are brothels (or “escort services offering the ‘girlfriend experience’”).
I have lots of experience of Florida strip clubs, although admittedly not much experience of Miami strip clubs, and I’ve never even visited one club with opportunities for non-premature orgasm.
I did hear a “friend of a friend” story once about a guy who supposedly banged three strippers at once in a secret room at the back of a club, but neither the source nor the secondary source were what I’d call reliable.
A woman is being beat up by her boyfriend, sexually abused by her father, having her life threatened by a pimp, and she’s a drug addict.
And the help that’s offered to her is having her workplace closed. How is a lower income going to solve any of her problems? Stripping wasn’t her problem; stripping was her means of surviving her problems.
Of the four strippers I know, one is a single mom (high school graduate but no skills- dancing is an excellent way to pay for she and her son to live while affording her a lot of time to spend with her son) and three are in law school. One of the ones in law school is actually wanting to be an attorney who specializes in working with people in the sex industry.
Only the first one ever got into drugs, but she’s the kind of person that she would have gotten into drugs if she was working at a library- stripping had nothing to do with that choice, in my opinion. None of them do any extras and they all claim that no one in their various clubs (in California and Nevada) do that stuff either.
Most importantly: they all are perfectly aware of the choice they are making. None of them are coerced.
So yeah, I guess my long winded point is that your OP completely fits my anecdotal experience.
He must have edited that post, because I didn’t see anything about drug habits or baby daddies, abusive or otherwise. Nor any speculation on the legitimacy of anyone’s offspring. You might want to dial back the righteous indignation a notch or two.
I mean, yeah, guy strikes me as kind of a simplistic dipstick, but I can’t in good conscience say he’s WRONG! ALL WRONG!!! about strip clubs. If nothing else, I have to agree that strippers are just women trying to get by and sometimes support their kids as well…the same as the rest of us. Vanishing few people of any profession are independently wealthy and just work a job for shits and giggles, ya know? And some folks in any profession have kids who tend to need things like food and clothes and a place to sleep. And people who are not independently wealthy and might have kids typically don’t benefit from having the only local job source in their chosen field shut down.
No, her son was one when she started dancing and he’s three now. If she’s giving his classmate’s lapdances, there’s a much more serious problem at hand.
In the greater Detroit area, ALL the strip clubs are whore-houses. Pure and simple. The owners, employees, “dancers” and every single customer in the joint all know what goes on. The sex takes place in the V.I.P. areas in back, where “private dances” are supposed to be happening. Everyone knows what is going on because everyone takes a piece of the profit. I had a very good friend who worked as a stripper at a club in Detroit. The stories of what goes on in these places is truly startling.
So it’s apparently regional? I wonder why this doesn’t happen in other major cities I’ve been to strip clubs in (where, admittedly, you have “escort services” openly taking out full page ads in the phone book like in Atlantic City)
That also starts to bring up the other big question – if everyone is in on it, how much abuse is taking place within the system vs. how much plain consensual (if illegal) sexual activity. (willing, independent-contractor prostitution doesn’t strike me as “abuse”)
It was like this in Memphis for a while too. The girls were pretty much all hookers. But the laws have changed and it’s apparently been cleaned up somewhat. From what I hear anyway.
