Reply #63: Many posts here are anecdotal - statistics tell us this lifestyle is HARMFUL to women:

[Kalyke]

The message that working in the sex industry is normal, exciting - sometimes even empowering - is a popular one in our culture. Over the past few years, lap-dancing clubs have proliferated, branding themselves as a respectable part of the leisure industry. At the end of last year, Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler magazine, opened his first British lap-dancing club in Croydon; Manchester has its first student lap-dancing bar, the Ruby Lounge, and a former stripper has been shown giving a topless lap-dance on Big Brother. Music videos by mainstream artists including Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams and Justin Timberlake, have featured lap-dancing or pole dancing, while job centres advertise lap-dancing jobs alongside the more usual calls for human resources managers and chefs.

Yet academic research has linked lap-dancing to trafficking, prostitution and an increase in male sexual violence against both the women who work in the clubs and those who live and work in their vicinity. A recent conference in Ireland highlighted the use of lap-dance clubs by human traffickers as a tool for grooming women into prostitution; the clubs also normalise the idea of paying for sexual services. And a report by the Lilith Project, run by the charity Eaves Housing, which looked at lap-dancing in Camden Town, north London, found that in the three years before and after the opening of four large lap-dancing clubs in the area, incidents of rape in Camden rose by 50%, while sexual assault rose by 57%.

SNIP

Was Elena ever verbally abused, or propositioned for prostitution? "Just by being there," she says, "you're acknowledging that you are something that they can pick and choose from, in that dehumanising way. A lot of men are totally blunt, and will say 'I like bigger tits than you've got', or 'How much for a blowjob?' Sometimes men try to persuade you to go back to their houses or to a hotel room for sex. There's a lot of blurring of the understanding of what it is you're supposed to be doing and whether you're actually a prostitute.

"The clubs maintain a veneer of no touching, but touching is more standard than not," she continues. "If I had a boyfriend now and he said he was going to a lap-dancing club, I would consider it to be infidelity. The fact is that if you break the rules, you make more money. If one dancer starts breaking the rules then the pressure is on others to do the same. Otherwise a bloke would think, Well, that dancer charged me £20 and stayed three feet away, but that one charged me just the same and she put her breasts in my mouth and sat on my crotch. Once you've been there a while, you learn that certain things are profitable, and no contact is the first rule you learn to break. Eventually you start to wonder, what is the difference between me and a prostitute?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/19/gender.uk


Testimonies of stripping's impact on womens' lives.

http://www.object.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4&Itemid=29

This one is what we women have ranted about here:

I then worked in various solicitors, and the blatant sexism continued. One Christmas party we went out for a meal. Straight after dessert was served all the men in the office left to go to a strip club with a few of the secretaries in tow, leaving the rest of us at the restaurant. One of the secretaries went simply because she was having an affair with one of the solicitors and wanted to check what he was getting up to. Another went to fit in “with the lads” and seem cool. Only one man didn’t go, and I have always respected him for not following the crowd.
I have had conversations with other women who hate the whole “lad culture” in the
office but, faced with such entrenched attitudes it is not easy to bring this to your
employers without suffering derision and further propagating the divide. My present
employers know I am a strong feminist and my feelings about strip clubs, and
prostitution are well known. However, even in what is a comparatively moderate
environment, any discussion on these topics still serve only to distance me from the
others, as it’s still “just a laugh”, nothing to be taken “seriously.”
I feel I am sidelined, and I know I am talked about behind my back as the “prudish, funhating” employee. Personally, what this does makes me feel worthless.
I feel I am judged only by my appearance and not by my abilities. I have spoken to
countless “professional” men who only stare at my chest while talking to me; I have
had comments about what I wear, my hair; my lack of makeup. It seems that it is
perfectly acceptable to comment if I wear trousers more than skirts, or if I do wear a skirt I’m “getting my legs out” for clients or for the office. I am public property. I have never heard any similar comments being made to men.

http://www.object.org.uk/files/Testimony_Della%281%29.pdf

Sorry guys... all your bloviating about this being empowering to women, how it's quite all right if someone wants to be a stripper (it would be, btw, if it didn't carry over into workplaces were women didn't want to be gawked at), how it doesn't cause crime (proof that it does provided by a reputable British newspaper above), and all that garbage. It's not all right.