The False Empowerment of the American Strip Tease Dancer

*Sorry this wasn't posted yesterday my mother is in the hospital again*

This one time I wrote a thesis it took about 3 years of research and revision but I wrote it. Sounds simple right? And this thesis has now been copyrighted and published. So here is the intro to my thesis because well I can.

Also you can buy my book here! http://gradworks.umi.com/15/25/1525167.html
Introduction

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate an argument made since the beginning of feminism’s

Third Wave: that the work of female strippers is empowering to the women who perform in strip clubs. Pro-sex work feminists such as Carol Leigh, who coined the phrase “sex worker,”Jill Nagle, who wrote Whores and Other Feminists, and Katherine Frank, who wrote From G-Strings to Sympathy, argue that women who strip are taking control of their sexuality and defying patriarchy. These feminist thinkers also hold that strippers are empowered because they hold the power in relation to the men they encounter in the clubs. This thesis will focus solely on the American female strip tease dancer who works within clubs. This focus was chosen because while stripping is arguably the most socially accepted form of sex work, the area of strip work is severely lacking in research and academic study. This thesis will name and systematically explore the key elements of the strip industry that serve to disempower female workers: the lifestyle which the women engage in, the protocol of the clubs themselves, the club customers, the connection strip clubs have to organized crime, and the mental and emotional state of the women within the industry. Feminism’s main goal is to try to create equality between the sexes mainly by empowering women. And in order to understand where feminism is now in regards to exotic dancers, we must first understand how feminism has evolved in regards to the sexual revolution. First wave feminists believed that women would be empowered when they had the same education level that their male counterparts had and when women had the same legal rights as men. This belief was carried on by second wave and radical feminists, with the added belief that women’s
reproductive and sexual freedom, brought on by the invention of oral contraceptives, would finally empower all women. Oral contraceptives gave women the power to control their own fertility. A woman being able to control her fertility has helped women enter the work force and stay there without having unwanted pregnancies limit the female potential in the public sphere. At the same time Roe vs Wade gave women the right to safe and legal abortions, which was yet another alternative to undesired pregnancies. But because of this new found sexual freedom two distinct factions began to emerge with very different ideas on the subject as Ariel Levy explains in her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture:

On one hand there were antiporn feminists, and on the other, there were the

women who felt that if feminism was about for women, then women should

be free to look at or appear in pornography. Screaming fights became a regular

element of feminist conferences once the ‘pornography wars’ got underway in

the late seventies. The term ‘sex-positive feminist’ first came into use at this

time. It was employed by the members of the women’s movement who wanted

to distinguish themselves from the antiporn faction. But, of course, all of the

feminists thought they were being sexpostitive...[Antiporn feminists] felt they

were liberating women from degrading sexual stereotypes and a culture of male

domination and—consequently—making room for greater female sexual pleasure.

(62-63)

 Third wave feminists saw more women entering into higher education than their male
counterparts, this also meant even more women in the workforce. Due to both their college and work experience, women now had new access on a sexual and romantic level to more men. In the Third wave there still remained the problem of women’s empowerment, carried over from the second waves “pornography wars.” During this time in feminism, neo-liberal sex positive feminist politics and ideology became the dominant voice of the feminist movement. Kim Price-Glynn in her book Strip Club: Gender, Power and Sex Work discusses some of the cultural changes that were taking place at this time in American culture: “Since the late 1990s, print media and film have lavished attention on stripping and erotic dance performances, collapsing the space between deviant activities and everyday life”(34). Price-Glynn goes onto say that shows such as Howard Stern and The Girls Next Store have helped to market sex work to the general public, propelling sexpositive feminism along with it(34).

Unlike previous feminists, liberal sex positive feminists, such as Carol Leigh (In Defense of Prostitution), believe that sex work is empowering to the women who perform it and they hold that sex work is like any other job. Liberal feminists, such as Sheila Nevins the President of Documentary Films at HBO and Robin Quivers from the The Howard Stern Show, believe that equality will happen when just as many women are doing what men already are. This ideology is flawed to radical feminists, such as Catherine Mackinnon and Susan Brownmiller who were leaders of the antiporn movement, because liberals endorse the masculine as the norm that all women should strive for, and in the process alienate the feminine as “other,” which already occurs within patriarchy. Also if one carries the idea out fully then liberal feminists want as many female serial killers and rapists as there are male, whereas radical feminists want to eradicate serial killers and rapists. Neo-liberal sex positive feminist philosophy holds that strip work elevates the selfesteem of women performing it. A study done by Bernadette Barton showed that initially strippers experience higher self-esteem levels than before they started dancing (145). It also showed that stripping itself does hold certain monetary advantages, and money does give a certain amount of power to the one making it. On average, people who lack a college degree and work fulltime make approximately $21,000 a year according to the National Center for Educational Statistics website for 2010(U.S. Department of Education). However,
strippers who have this same underprivileged background stand to make on average $26,000 a year working fewer hours per week than any other legal job available to them (Price-Glynn 57). And, unlike many other jobs, stripping does have very flexible hours which makes it perfect for both students and mothers alike. The third wave’s view is that these conditions make strip work empowering for the women who perform it.
The problem that other feminists have with this argument is that stripping reinforces the idea that women are only valuable based on their sexuality: a sexuality that someone else has made and packaged for them to sell. By no means are strippers performing their own sexuality, especially those who are lesbians and perform for male clients. The research by Barton has shown that strippers do experience a self-esteem boost initially but, after dancing for six months to a year, their self-esteem takes a dive (145). And while some strippers become wealthy and can move up in the world, those women are the exception not the rule. Strippers now face a problem due to new technologies that allow men to take photographs and videos on their phones and post them on the internet, a former stripper stands to lose her job if this kind of evidence surfaces,
which will be addressed in chapter 4 with news articles from the past several years, that went public after professional women were revealed to have been former strippers and were fired from their jobs.

Since the question of whether or not strip work is true empowerment is a complex question with many avenues to explore, this thesis will focus its attention on different aspects of both the strip club industry and the lives of the women who work in these club instead of just focusing on one or the other like researchers of the past have tended to do. This thesis will also incorporate stripper narratives in order to make its argument, which is something that has never been done before. The strippers who wrote these narratives are shedding light on what the strip industry is like from the perspective of someone within it. And, while these women are not objective, they are currently the only experts on the topics of stripping and their lives. Their voices are needed in this arena because if strippers’ voices are ignored, then feminists are coconspirators in their oppression.

This thesis will focus only on narratives that appear after the 1990s because during the 1980s the industry changed into what we see today. In the late 1980s some dissent started to occur in feminist communities due to ideological shifts from radical feminism to liberal pro-sex feminism. Because of this, during the 1990s, a new wave of feminism emerged. The 1990s pro-sex liberal or neo-liberal feminists focuses on the individual and centers on individual agency. Problems arise from this idea of individualism because everything then becomes a ”choice”and any questioning of that choice means that one is eliminating an individual’s agency. Liere Keith has stated publically, at the annual Radical Feminist Conference hosted by Gail Dines which I attended in June 2011, that neo-liberalist feminism makes women compliant with their own oppression. Keith was kind enough to provide me with a transcript of her slide show for the use in this thesis. Keith explains in the slide show that radical feminists see the group as the basic unit of human society, not the individual. She also points out the radicals see that “social life is comprised of a complex political determinism and the oppressed do not make or control conditions” (Keith 1-2). Keith goes onto say that liberal feminism discounts these outside factors, such as social conditions, as having any bearing on these decisions.
This is important when it comes to the sex industry because with liberal feminism there is no delving into what outside factors influenced a sex worker to make that “choice,” if she had other options available to her, or what social constructs she would have to conform to. There also is no research currently about what happens to women who work in the strip industry after they leave it. There has been no study to show how this industry affects the lives of women later on in life. Radical feminism refutes the point that outside factors do not contribute to a person’s decision and holds that a person is limited by their social standing if they are among the oppressed which women, as a group, are. By denying classification to groups, neo-liberal feminists cannot see women as a class or group, which is at odds with all feminist ideas that came before because by definition, “Feminism is the political practice of fighting male supremacy on behalf of women as a class” (Dworkin qtd. in Keith 7). Radical feminists believe that the erosion of women’s rights that has gone on since the 1990s is due greatly to the influence of third wave/neo-liberal sex positive feminist thinking. Once neo-liberal feminism came to the forefront of the feminist movement the sex industry and sex trafficking both have seen a major boom in business. Erin Kuntze states that “between 1987 and 2000 the number of exotic dance clubs in the United States doubled” (9). This is not to say that third wave feminism is what created the sex trafficking and the strip industry boom; however, the conceptualization of women’s sexual liberation supported, instead of contested these ideas and cultural shifts. The sex industry has pushed its way into mainstream culture without ever modifying the power dynamics or the treatment of the female workers within the industry. Feminist thinkers and activists such as Gail Dines have started to bring light to the issues of power dynamics, racism and abuse within the sex industry. However, these feminists usually focus on one particular area of the sex industry; for example, Dines’s area of interest focused solely on pornography. The increased numbers of sex trafficking victims and the sex industry boom is a link that some feminist scholars and activists are just now realizing and exploring.
There are three kinds of research on strippers and the strip industry: studies of strippers, accounts by strippers, and researchers who pose as strippers. As mentioned before, no other work deals solely with the false empowerment of strip tease dancers, and for those works that do, they use this false empowerment as a justification for another point that they are trying to make. Most of the research done on strippers deals with life inside the club and the abuse the dancers face, whereas the narratives explore the strip clubs and dancers’ lives outside the strip club more thoroughly. In her article “Keeping Women Down and Out: The Strip Club Boom and the Reinforcement of Male Dominance,” Shelia Jeffreys discusses how strip work keeps women in a submissive role in American male dominated society (Jeffreys 183). During this decade there has also been a large number of stripper memoirs published, such as Flesh for Fantasy, which is a collection of stripper essays, and Sarah Katherine Lewis’ Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire. These works are useful as they give firsthand accounts of the lives of a strip tease dancer giving the women a chance to tell their point of view. Both of the above memoirs tell of the horrors and joys of being in the strip industry and also how they each found their way into the industry and the effects the industry has had on them. Because this thesis is researching empowerment, the voices of strippers and their firsthand accounts need to be included. The dancers may state if they believe they are empowered or not; however, their self reporting of their feelings towards empowerment is not what is always important here – but rather the stories they share of the interactions in the club and outside of it. These narratives are, in essence, long interviews that the reader can look to for insight into issues of empowerment and agency. Bear in mind that because these are firsthand accounts about the author’s lives and experiences, their views may be skewed because of how they are naturally embedded in their stories.
There is another avenue of research, and that is student researchers posing as strippers, usually for their doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis. Katherine Frank’s dissertation G-Strings to Sympathy at first focuses on the women who strip and the policies that the typical club has. However, her research and fascination quickly turn to the men who come into the strip clubs as regulars. Frank inquires as to why these men keeping coming back to the clubs, and for the customers who are married, she questions what their relationships are like with their wives. The beginning of Frank’s book focuses more on what she as a stripper encountered and then her focus shifts to the men who are her regulars and what these men think and feel about strippers.
This shift is an important element as to why stripping is false empowerment for women. The men interviewed clearly state that they come to strip clubs because they view the clubs as keeping men in their rightful place, in control. The customers are the ones with the money so the dancers must please them and act as the customer feels that they should, thusly reinforcing certain gender stereotypes. Throughout the academic research that has been published on strippers using firsthand accounts, there is one common factor: all of the women make sure that everyone in the club, including the male patrons, knows that they are there as researchers and that stripping will not be a career path for them. The repeated public announcement of their role as student/researcher and not a “real” stripper is very important as it affects the way in which not only their coworkers and customers treat them but also how they think of themselves. Both Frank and Kuntze at different points in their work, after having a bad night, reassure themselves that they are not really as strippers/waitresses but are there as students. They both find comfort in this and are able to reassure themselves of their worth – unlike most female strip club workers who do not have many other career options. This thesis will name and explore systematically the key elements of the strip industry that serve to disempower female workers. These elements will include the lifestyle which the women engage in, the protocol of the clubs themselves, the club customers, the connection strip clubs have to organized crime, and the mental and emotional state of the women within the industry. 




So that's it folks as far as the intro goes.

A Male Feminist What is This You Say?

I have decided to try something out. The idea came to me because I know so many wonderful feminists. About once a month I am going to interview someone. This month I went with an unlikely feminist, my dear friend Sean. Sean is not what people imagine when they hear the word "feminist" but he wears the title proudly. (We actually have match bumper stickers that say "This is What a Feminist Looks Like"). Sean is a conservative, christian male and he's heterosexual. Sean and I met in college and if I completely take credit for taking him under my feminist wing. We've gone to feminist conferences together and have done a mock rape trial. Sean and I disagree on different issues, mainly abortion, but we still both fight the good fight and proudly call ourselves feminists.

Q: How did you become a feminist? A: While attending college for my bachelor’s degree I had been taking classes that were cross-listed as women’s studies courses. This was also around the time I met my good friend Sabrina. I recognized women’s right, but did not understand that equality was something to be grasped, and I did not see how saturated our culture was with misogyny until having many of those late night “academic” pontificates with Sabrina. She basically gave me the lingo to describe what I was feeling and observing about the world around me, and the name of the movement working to change it: Feminism. Q: Do you feel it is important for men to identify as “feminists”? And why? A: Identifying as a feminist means that I acknowledge women as equals, and that I support the equal treatment of everyone. Without putting a name on it the values are more easily made fluid and able to slip away. That’s why we label things, so that we know what to call something, and how to categorize it. If I identify as a feminist and a man, then others will ask question and start to see what feminism is all about. Men will also be more held to that standard in community with other feminists. Q: Have you faced any challenges as a male feminist? If so, what? A: Yes. Mostly I deal with shock and awe of being both a man and a feminist, which follows an explanation of what feminism is, and why I am one. I haven’t faced many challenges, but my sexually has often been questioned. (Sabrina’s favorite response to that is: “He’s not gay, he’s religious,” which seems to satisfy any curiosity). In 2011, I attended an international radical feminist conference on Stop Porn Culture that was hosted by Dr. Gail Dines at Wheelock College in Boston with Sabrina. She knows exactly what I’m going to say. Feminism has prejudicially been mislabeled as a group of women who hate men and burn bras. Although I’ve never seen the bra burnings, I have experienced the man hating. I had asked a simple question in regard to men getting involved in rape prevention and this young woman from across the room interrupted and gave me the finger. Taking this at face value one might get the wrong impression of feminism. To give you the full picture, this woman had announced earlier how she was repeatedly raped in adolescence and force to make porn. This was not the case of a feminist hating men (nor is it the norm among feminists), but rather of a deeply hurt woman lashing out at anyone who might resemble or support her attackers; however some prejudice does come up when hurt people are looking for a medium by which to seek vengeance rather than restorative justice.  


Q: What does being a male feminist look like to you?

Being a man and a feminist means that I should embrace my sexual and gender identity of being a man without using that status to look down on others; men are no better than women, and I am certainly no better than anyone. Not only am I a feminist and a man, but I’m also politically conservative (meaning I prefer a smaller federal government), and a Christian. Wait a minute… What? Yes, I’m a conservative, Christian, feminist. Hear me out on this. Feminism is the movement to take back what men in predominant cultures and peoples have stripped away from the women, children, and the less fortunate throughout history. As a man my greatest role model is a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus Christ, who ate with the beggars, tax collectors (traitors), and women (who were property in the 1st century A.D.). The best example of this comes from the gospel of John 4:1-26, when Jesus encounters a Samaritan (half Jewish, hated by the Israelites) woman at a well in the middle of the day. It’s VERY hot midday in the Middle East, so she was out when no one else would be, and the woman admits to having had 5 husbands and currently living with a man she wasn’t married too, which is a HUGE stigma. This is the equivalent of a white man in the south during the 1950s politely acknowledging the existence of a black woman in Alabama. So this event describes a man in the first century tearing down the barriers of sex, race, and social stigma. Jesus approached the woman bearing the scarlet letter with boldness and humility, and he didn’t judge her. This later continued with the early church acknowledging women as people, rather than property, and supporting widows and beggars. Ok Sean, I don’t own people, and I’m not a bigot, so what are you getting at? My point is that feminism is about restoring what the Jews referred to as shalom, or the natural peace that was meant to be found in the interwoven fabric of society. That’s what Christ came to do, and that’s what I want to be a part of.

Okay, Okay I Give

Alright internet you win. Hobby Lobby. Here we go.

So as I said last week, I was not surprised that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby. I also have been sitting and waiting to see what else will pop up because of this ruling and sure enough other cases are now coming up siting the ruling which include detainees and their rights to their religious practices. It'll be interesting to see if the law is upheld when it is not a matter of Christian beliefs. I feel like everyone has been overloaded with discussion of this whole issue so I am going to skip over the main part of the argument where it blows that this happened. 

And go to the backlash....

Since the ruling came out people have been going into Hobby Lobby and rearranging things to say "Pro-Choice" and so on and so forth. When I first saw this I thought it was clever, the first time. However, as this has begun to catch on I can't help but think that it is really stupid and doing absolutely nothing but punishing the people who work at Hobby Lobby who are already being punished because their birth control is not being covered. I know that no one wants to think about the employees in this context and I swear if you're thinking "why don't they quit?" you clearly have no idea about the economic climate. I am not about to blame the people who are working in the stores at Hobby Lobby or about to make their lives more difficult because it's not their fault. If you want to do something then do something that will annoy the higher ups and not the people in charge of stalking the shelves. 

I am also a fan of simply not buying their stuff. I LOVED Hobby Lobby. I spent so much time there getting stuff to make jewelry and various Christmas presents. I am also an avid scrapbooker and went there ALL the time for their deals. However, since this whole controversy started when Obama care first went into effect I have not set foot inside one of their stores. Boycotting works. Does it make a huge difference that I by myself am not spending money there anymore? No. But if everyone who is upset about this decision decided to spend their money elsewhere then, yes, a difference would be made in Hobby Lobby's profits. Would it reverse the decision by the Supreme Court? No. We are going to have to wait until something else fights its way up the ladder to the Supreme Court to see if any change will happen with that ruling. 

  

We Found the Anti-Christ! And It's a Woman. Damn It!

I know most of the feminist blog-o-sphere is centered on the Supreme Court's decision on birth control and it is a very important issue that does deserve outrage. However, I was not surprised by this decision, choices that uphold the patriarchy are not shocking, disgusting but not shocking.

What I am writing about did both shock and disgust me. And I am going to systematically rip apart a very racist, sexist piece of garbage but first let me say this. I don't watch soccer. My boyfriend is in love with soccer so I can now say since the World Cup has kicked off my knowledge about soccer has increased exponentially. I had very little interest in watching soccer because with the exception of pro-wrestling(I know, sports entertainment blah blah blah) I don't watch sport on TV. This being said, Ann Coulter's attack on soccer, women, anyone who doesn't speak or rather doesn't look  like they speak English, or anyone who doesn't look like what Ann Coulter would like to believe the average American should look like, is disgusting and an embarrassment to the United States. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, this is America after all, but she is both wrong and a moron.

 Now please keep in mind I have only watched two soccer matches at this point and both have been World Cup matches and the USA played in neither of them. But from what I saw and simple logic Coulter's first point does not hold water. "Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls — all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate[...] In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms." [..]Do they even have MVPs in soccer?" My first thought upon reading this was "What about the goalie?" You know that person standing all by themselves before that big net? One of my best friends who happens to be a blonde hair, blue eyed, white, conservative, feminist male was a goalie in high school.There is a ton of individualized pressure on the goalie. Also the one game I watched the goalie received a ton of praise due to his amazing, cat like skills. There are also MVPs in soccer. MVP, you know, MOST VALUABLE PLAYER. Hmmm, that sounds to me like an individual being recognized to me. And maybe before writing an ill researched column Ms. Coulter should do a basic Google search to check on things instead of sounding even more idiotic. As for the scoring, it is true that scoring doesn't happen as frequently as other games. But soccer is much FASTER than any other sport I have seen. Every other sport drags its feet whereas with soccer there are literally feet flying everywhere. Time seems to melt away(unlike let's say football where I ever so slowly lose my mind).

"Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level." .....I......how......what....gah....fuck you lady. On behalf of women every where I demand that you hand in your ovaries as you are clearly a traitor to the vagina and should not be reproducing. So, apparently, if females can play a sport, it's not a sport. I don't have words for this. This is literally a kindergarten level attempt at an argument.

"You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!" You don't use your hands in hockey or lacrosse either only the goalie can. And goalies do use their hands. Even if you submit to using Coulter's bizarre "logic" she already refers to hockey as a real sport, thus nullifying this entire bullet point. Next.

" I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer." This point along with the rest of her paragraph is stupid, it's called marketing. I resent that someone pays her to write a column.

"It's foreign" That is literally a reason she lists for not liking soccer, I'm not sure if she is aware but just about everything in the United States including white people are FOREIGN. English is a foreign language in the United States. Native Americans were not walking around speaking English, French, or Spanish(let's not forget that Spain did settler parts of the North America), they were speaking their languages. Almost everything minus driving on the right side of the road is foreign including most American foods, minus things like potatoes. Potatoes are a new world plant and they are not native to Ireland. Ann Coulter does not even try to hide her racism at any point in her poorly written column, "If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time." And allow me  to tell you that yes, they are watching soccer. Remember my all American boy best friend? His family has been here for  generations and he loves soccer. My roommate from college, family can be traced back to the Salem witch trails and she loves soccer. My coworker who sits next to me, loves soccer and his family has been here for generations as well. I can keep going. Yet another point demolished. I will also point out because Ms. Coulter would be horrified to find out that everyone I have mentioned is white. There is a growing love of soccer in this country and NPR did a pretty good analysis of why. It's speedy. We now live in a world where everything is constantly moving and we like our sports that way. There were a slew of other reasons why in the NPR write up but that point stuck out the most to me.  And also who are we kidding, some very good looking men and women play soccer and with America's obsession with beauty why wouldn't we tune in and enjoy the beauty of all races?

 And being that I am what she would probably classify as a "liberal" because I am a feminist I can safely say we do not all like soccer although her explanation that women are treated fairly in the game did make me want to watch it. So Ann Coulter, thank you for making my boyfriend happy because I did watch soccer with him. I hope that she has managed to bolster soccer's viewing ratings with racist, sexists, nonsensical, brain-dead remarks. You managed to take your dislike of soccer which had nothing to do with me and personally offend me. That takes some kind of special talent. Also I did not post the link to her column because I do not want to bolster her readership. If you want to find the article Google it.