Over the past few years I have gotten to know two strippers very well. We have met OTC on many occasions and have shared details of our lives.
My ATF is 27, the mother of a 7 year old (who is being raised by his grandmother) and the "baby daddy" has been in and out of the penal system. On several occasions he has beat her up (usually for infidelity) with the last time ending with him dragging her into the street by her hair which resulted in a parole violation for him and a return to the hoosegow.
The other young woman is 24, divorced from a police officer who used to beat her regularly and recently separated from a sugar daddy. Last week she was beaten up by her mother for not sharing her money. Their plight started me thinking about why they are both physical and emotional punching bags and whether their actions contribute to the violence or if they are just victims. Both are frequent drug users and both have tempers which can only be described as fiery.
I googled "strippers & violence" and found what I expect is a doctoral dissertation on the University of Rhode Island website titled Strip clubs According to Strippers:Exposing Workplace Sexual Violence by Kelly Holsopple. Ms. Holsopple worked as a stripper as part of her research and is the author of Pimps, Tricks, and Feminists. She doesn't state whether she worked as a prostitute to better understand their plight. Some of the foundation of her paper include the following:
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"Strip club customers are described as normal men who use strip clubs to avoid adultery and therefor find a safe outlet for their sexual desires in balance with their marital commitments." Speaking for myself, I go to strip clubs looking for opportunities for adultery.
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"Strip clubs...reflect gender power dynamics in greater society." I don't think so. When one of these babes has me salivating and so f-ing hard I think I'm going to burst, she has all the power. That's why I go home with an empty wallet so frequently.
3."The entire analysis of strip clubs is located within the context of men's domination over women." "The strip club elicits and requires direct expressions of male domination and control over women."
- In order to dominate or control...male dominated institutions and individual men utilize violence."
Wow. I didn't realize that I was such a pig. I thought I just loved beautiful women. I thought that a woman's breasts, buttocks, hips, turned me on. Little did I know.
So, are we all just testosterone driven misogynists? Ms. Holsopple goes on in her study to describe in some detail some of the heinous activities these poor women are subjected to, never mentioning the huge amounts of cash being forked over by us, the pathetic losers who are tired of bopping the baloney and hope to play hide the pepperoni. If you want to read the entire study its at uri.edu Be interested in others' thoughts on this topic.
I have mixed reviews about this paper. I can see why the author may say that strip club patrons exercise control over the dancers (y'all are the ones accepting us or rejecting us), but at the same time I'm pissed about the way the author is saying how consuming and how mentally explosive this job is. For me, this job is actually a relief from the tedious life the military was/is; stripping is a walk in the park compared to the military. Also, the data used is extremely small; only eighteen dancers! Most importantly, this paper is from the late 90's and most of the references used are from the early 90's, so a few things had changed. However, the part that really made me cringe in this paper was the drinking part; not all of us need to drink to do this job. I much rather do it sober. Why? To avoid dehydration and to avoid looking like an idiot on stage.
In other words; this paper is BS. It just keeps perpetuating the stereotype that strippers are just damaged women who do that because they have nothing else to do.