Strippers and Domestic Violence

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.

Wow, I enjoy reading JayJays comments but I guess it's different for everyone. I was getting a couple of dancers yesterday from a girl who went on about how she hates her job so much that she has to have a few drinks to keep going but she can't find anything else to do. With 3 kids and recently divorced, she's gotta do something. I think it would be really refreshing to meet a dancer who didn't have the sob story I've heard so many times.

But why are they so prone to be the recipient of violence? Poor self esteem? " he'll, I deserved it" or the nature of the job? " "I'm nothing but a piece of meat for theses pathetic losers to salivate over". Or is it the drug and alcohol abuse? Is it the obsession with sex? How many commons ave we all heard? "Oh, you're so big" , you really know how to please a woman." Does the attractiveness of the women factor in? With the majority of us pl's being less than GQ models, are dancers becoming incurred and therefore provoking the men around them?

I'm not going to read the study--boring, badly-written academic papers are one of the reasons I left academia.

Violence against strippers, however, is a serious problem. Dancers have told me stories of husbands and boyfriends and customers who have abused them and sometimes nearly killed them. The abusers belong in jail.

I don't know why some men beat women. But it is wrong to lump all men together as the problem. Most men do not beat women even when women treat them like dirt. Let's focus on the criminals.

I also don't know why some women put up with domestic abuse. Perhaps they have low self-esteem or feel they have no other options. Why has Rihanna gone back to Chris Brown?

Q Why didn't Rihanna win a Grammy? A Chris Brown beat her.

I think many women in the stripper world were damaged before they got there and were already in abusive realtionships. It is the chicken or the egg. Are damaged girls strippers or does stripping cause the damage. Or do damaged girls in stripping damage the girls in stripping who are not. Abusing a girl in a club is a sure ticket to getting your skull cracked by a bouncer. Almost every "intellectual" I have ever met is too stupid to wipe their backside but thinks they are an expert on every one else. Its like a nun teaching sex ed.

"Strip club customers are described as normal men who use strip clubs to avoid adultery" - You all KNOW my stance on this!

"So, are we all just testosterone driven misogynists?" - No, there are many men who do fit this description, and many are members here. Again I have expressed how I BEHAVE in a club, and it is NOT misogynistic despite what certain attacking members here will say about me.

I have known at least one dancer really well who had Family/domestic violence issues in her past. With others, the subject has not been discussed.

i think you guys missed the main point here. this author is a feminist with an axe to grind about male domination in society in general:

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."

that is her real issue, the strip club analysis is just being offered up as evidence that all men in society are pigs, not just those who go to clubs. i don't mind pigs as long as they bring home the bacon!

Unfortunately a lot of strippers are in abusive relationships, but as much I want to do something about it, I realize that trying to do something about it will most of the time make it worse.

Regarding the 'research' there is a puritanical subset of feminism that simply cannot accept that a woman might choose to trade on her sexuality for profit. It is the same group that thinks that ALL prostitution must be 'human trafficing' because it couldn't possibly be voluntary.

So to them when a dancer rubs her breasts in my face I must be sexually abusing her through some sinister exercise of male power over her. It seems to me that some sort of power is causing all those twenties to fly out of wallets and it isn't a power that the men have over the women.

The report also seems to regard it as commonplace certain harrassing and questionable business practices and having the dancers being abused by managers and owners. These practices were never as universal as they are presented here and now that lawyers have found that dancers can be a fruitful area for workplace lawsuits they are becoming even less so.

Still, I have long felt that customers should be concerned that clubs are being operated in a socially responsible manner and having management sexually harrass the dancers definitely does not qualify as OK. In the bigger picture though it is shortsighted by owners and managers to allow that. Clubs have to compete for dancers and the club with the fewest hassles will be able to attract the best dancers.

Same percentages with poverty.

I can't help but wonder what Ms. Holsopple would make of me. Would she consider me exploitative and a misogynist too?

C'mon Ms. Holsopple....I triple-dog-DARE-you to psychoanalyze me!!!

Ranukam wrote: "Unfortunately a lot of strippers are in abusive relationships, but as much I want to do something about it, I realize that trying to do something about it will most of the time make it worse."

Thanks for the input man. Can you give an example of how trying to help can make it worse? I can think of examples, but just wanted your personal experience and/or perspective.

Just the other day this girl I was trying to do OTC had obvious signs she was in a fight or what have you. Her "exboyfriend" who is a convicted felon she says takes half her money. She says her attitude is that she will just make more.

That is a turn off to me. I ain't tipping her no more, if half that shit is going to a low life loser.

One dancer told me a month ago that a customer who she saw OTC (no play apparently) hit her while at the club and she didn't say anything. So I guess that kind of shit does happen. I'm not naive, just didn't give it much thought.

@sonic- a couple of examples: 1. if their boyfriends find out about it the girls will get beat up even worse, 2. sometimes the strippers will turn on you if you try to butt in her relationship.

The feminist perspective is all about being anti-male and the article mentioned on this thread came out at a time when Providence was all agog about sex trafficking occurring in the strip clubs, which of course wasn't happening anyway. If the author wanted to experience stripping and prostitution in Providence she need only work at a club.

I know several strippers that have been in & out of hospitals due to there bf,pimp beating the shit out of them

this is a reason I'm more then happy to teach a stripper/dancer how to shoot

"his is a reason I'm more then happy to teach a stripper/dancer how to shoot"

So she can end up in prison for killing someone.

I do think that many strippers lead destructive lives. Maybe some of them don't see it as so, but I do.

I don't think the author of this study would have actually had sex with any customers. I don't think she would have done anything that she found that she liked, with customers.

She would be the exact opposite of @carolynne who writes on her profile about all manner of things she likes doing with customers.

Someone has got to really want to be a stripper and to really want to show off their looks and their dance abilities and to be into the makeup and the shoes and the costuming, and also it will mean really liking giving guys all the things they want. So for one who really wants this, there is nothing abusive about it. It is all in the realm of what adults can consent to and partake in freely.

Now why do dancers often lead destructive lives? With some of them it is because that is the way they grew up. They were used and abused. I see this more with the white dancers, that they were the family scape goat.

Now if they understood this, then they could speak out and organize and fight for legal redress. But most of them don't understand this. And so they have internalized this unworthiness. As such they dance and do all that is wanted of them, but that still cannot restore their civil and social standing. It is just money. They still are living without legitimacy. The wound is never healed. They never have their identity restored because they, and not the perpetrators are looked upon with suspicion. So they try to avoid it with substance addictions. They go on to be in horrible and abusive relationships.

It is the same sort of person that the Christian Evangelicals go after and try to get hooked on a more serious addiction. If these Christians get to them, then any hope that they will ever be able to face the truth is gone forever.

So what will change things is when people understand that someone just does not screw up their life, that there had to have been something behind it, some way in which they were abused. And then for this there must be legal redress.

I see this less often among the Black, Latina, and Asian dancers. Often they are very heads up people who have found a way for themselves to function in a world which is completely unfair. They are not the family scape goats, they are people displaying adaptability and talents.

There are different schools of Feminism. One of them is moralistic and judgmental. This comes from Puritanism. This strain is well caricatured in the types known as Uplifters, in D.W. Griffiths 1911 film, Intolerance. He is relating them to The Pharisees of the New Testament.

But the more effective strain comes from Existentialism in the person of Simone de Beauvoir. It encourages us to look at the choices we make, and to see that we have choices, and that it is we who have to create values. So when it comes to women the issue is to see the types of fixed categories we have put them into, and then to find ways to break the walls down. It is this type of Feminism which has allowed so many to cross over lines and become extreme mileage sex workers, and to be proud of it, and to live healthy lives.

I like Carolynne's attitude about it all, the pride she brings and the types of talents she obviously takes joy in demonstrating.

is FS-ITC so good that it replaces escort sessions? tuscl.net

legal issues in raising SC service level tuscl.net

Blue Balls? rejecting the "extras" model and instead acting upon the dancer tuscl.net

DFKing, why wait for the VIP Room, do it in the main room tuscl.net

More than just test driving, get her completely off script tuscl.net

SJG

so I gave her just a little kiss youtube.com