The Economy of Strippers in Portland

Trix, Your story is typical. It would apply to any city. It's also somewhat typical of other industries where employees work on commission. However, the part that is unique to strip clubs is the high predictability that dancers are generally poor money managers. Your second paragraph is the best example of how most dancers are perceived.

I have noticed most of what you mention for many years now. The thing I don't understand is club owners in P-town who constantly create bad situations for the dancers (i.e. lousy not so private dance areas with cameras or old broken down furniture) It seems as though they don't understand that if the dancers don't make money and the patrons don't enjoy the experience they will both move on to a different club.

Are any of the Portland clubs 24/7?

@samsung- none of them are

Very insightful. Great article.

Lots of wisdom in your article. But most girls who think that rationally about stripping probably become accountants instead.

Sadly not many dancers are as sensible and as economically minded as you seem to be, trixxi.

Samsung- most of the lingerie modeling places are 24/7 ... read reviews for places like G spot, Secret Rendevous, Stilletto Lingerie, Aphrodites, Club Fantasy ... There are a few clubs that open at 7am, more clubs open at 9am, and a few afternoon clubs open at 1pm and more evening clubs opening at 6pm+ with most closing at 2am - 3am with others that close late like I think its 4am at Golden Dragon.

Trixxi,

I believe that you are being straight about the money and how it works. But most of the time if one talks to dancers, they exaggerate. They will say something like, "I make $1,200 per night." When in actuality that happened once, and it was because of one guy who had way more dollars than sense. Most of the time what they get is far less than that.

They see the money as validation of their attractiveness and of their personhood, so they emphasize the upside. I believe that the reason for this is that their occupation is still stigmatized, and so they need something to offset that condition.

Likewise, I agree that most strippers and all variety of sex workers squander their money. It is a rare few who see that their current occupation has to be considered temporary as it has a low retirement age, and so they need to be both saving money and preparing for something else. Only a few do this.

Some of the women are just young and silly. But then often those on the day shifts have kids or are even married. They opt for days so that they can try to maintain family life. Usually these women are more practical, though less likely to accept OTC offers.

Long ago one dancer told me something I have considered much. She was one of the smart girls, as you obviously are too. She said that to use strip clubs as a source of sexual gratification was perverted.

Now we were at a zero mileage club in Sunnyvale, CA. But she had worked in the hardest core places available and we had talked about these. So what she was referring to were the high and extreme mileage venues.

The way I see this is that strip clubs are not a good place to get sexual gratification because one does not really know the dancer, the cost is too high, and the quality of the encounter is always going to be constrained. Also, it really does not solve anything.

What strip clubs are good for is not providing sexual gratification, but for teaching a sexual aesthetic. The aesthetic is there in the girls' costuming and makeup, and in the fantasy they promote of instant and complete gratification. But the reality of the gratification is going to have to happen some other place and in some other way.

I see this as applying to the zero mileage clubs which are just for looking and talking, for the high mileage HJ and BJ places, and also for the FS - ITC places. No matter, it is still the aesthetic that is learned, and then has to be applied in other situations.

I can go to a strip club and interact with a dancer I am really turned on by. This will cost money. It will cost me more money than I would otherwise spend on most days. But so long as I am not doing all the time, this does not really matter. Likewise, it does not really matter if she and I just talk, or if there is far greater mileage in play. I am still imbibing the aesthetic and I will look for ways to recreate this outside of the strip club.

Stripper are our version of the priestesses of the pagan temples of the ancient world. They show us how female sexuality is supposed to be. I guess you could say strippers and porn stars, but most of us don't have too much face to face access to porn stars. Porn stars probably don't have the people skills that stripper need to have either.

It doesn't matter that the strippers own personal life and sex with her boyfriend may be very mundane. When she is on the job, she is still teaching an aesthetic. She embodies this, even if outside of that role she is not able to live up to it. It is just as the ancient world's pagan priestesses would stand in for or trans impersonate the Goddess. They are there, not in their own name, but fulfilling a role which goes far beyond themselves.

So I don't think it healthy for a guy to have a heavy diet of strip clubbing, especially at the higher mileage places.

I see two reasons for a guy going to strip clubs:

1. To learn sexual aesthetics

2. If for some particular reason one wants to have outside relations ( P4P or civilian ) with strippers.

Either way, the in club mileage does not really matter as one will be taking what one learns and applying it outside, and the cost does not really matter either as one will not be doing it that often.

Strippers are rebels, of a sort. I do not agree at all with the MRA, MGTOW, or PUA people who indict feminism. These guys are just wrong. There is a type of feminism which is moralistic and puritanical, but this is just one form. The more radical form creates freedom, including sexual freedom. So strippers, at their best, are not just women trying to earn a decent living, they are pro-sex feminists.

What I have learned from time spent with strippers, whether it be just talk or more physically intimate, is that when women want to, they can be extremely sexually appealing. Of course then the next logical step is to recognize that money has no direct relationship to this. Rather the money issue is there because we have created a situation where both women and men are always in fear for their economic security.

So my position is that one should not accept any lesser grade of sexuality from women, as it is laden with manipulation and just plain bad.

I tell people all the time when they are going to a strip club, that unless they find a stripper who is also a licensed and qualified divorce attorney, she is not going to be able to help them with their problem.

Strip clubs and strippers are a resource, but they are not the solution. There needs to be a third way. The first way is the normative boy girl relationships which are still seen a preparation for marriage. The second way is P4P sex. But neither of these works very well. So to create something else, one draws from various of the more radical social realms and tries to find allies. Some of these are going to be strippers and I plan in the years ahead to be building personal alliances with a number of strippers in various locations. But one also wants alliances with men and women from other walks of life, in order to build some new social forms.

Right now, the options are limited to P4P sex, or getting the girl to go off of the clock. Often they want to go off the clock. Shadowcat posted about one who wanted instructions on how to cook his breakfast. If he accepted that then their session would have been converted in to the girl auditioning to be his civilian girlfriend. If he consented to this, but was not in fact potentially open to this type of relationship, then she would be seriously hurt and righteously pissed. So we have P4P versus civilian. There needs to be a third way opened up. It will never come from MRA, PUA, or MGTOW voices. These people think they are somehow outsmarting women. It will never work this way. Instead, it has to be a new form of alliance between women and men which we create. We are not there yet, but I know that strippers and the aesthetic which they embody will be a key component.

So nothing you say about strippers getting a decent amount of money, but then finding that their self esteem depends on it, and then squandering it, is new information.

Three things which do not have any real built in cost are knowledge, spirituality, and sex. But nevertheless, most people spend their lives trying to accumulate money because they believe that that is the only way to have these things. It may look like that is the only way, but this is because we have set it up that way.

I've looked at the web site for your club, and at some for the others in your town. I've read the things some of the girls write with their pictures. The place you live is cool. The people are open minded and forward looking.

SJG