This Feminist's Guilty Pleasure

I thought to shake off my rust in blogging I'd return to the root of why I started blogging; feminism. This led me to thinking about my guilty pleasure as a feminist. I think it is time that I confess to the masses, I LOVE Pro-wrestling, specifically WWE's brand. This has always shocked everyone who has ever known me. And while there are some serious black spots on WWE's history, as far as their treatment and use of female talent goes, I cannot help but love the overall product just the same. And I was overjoyed when they announced at Wrestlemaina that they are returning back to the Women's Championship and have retired the Diva's championship. The women they have wrestling today, for the most part, are seriously badass wrestlers NOT the atrocious "we never learned how to wrestle or never watched it growing up" divas we had been subjected to for almost a decade (With a few exceptions like Natalya who struggled through having matches with opponents who didn't know what they were doing).

 Thankfully women like her soldiered through and saved the division. Even the Bella Twins learned how to wrestle properly. And that is why that ridiculous Brat's accessory of a belt had to be replaced by one that looks respectable. Pictured above is Natalya with the old Women's Championship and the Diva's belt- I'm not kidding. That's the Diva belt. But let me backtrack a little.

Growing up I wanted to be one of four women, Xena Warrior Princess, Cher, Buffy and Chyna. Now two of those women are fictional and have aspects of superhuman abilities. And well, I also cannot sing. So by process of elimination I realized I could aim to be like Chyna who during the Attitude Era of wrestling was seriously paving the way for women in wrestling. She held the Intercontential Championship and was in the Royal Rumble. She fought the guys and looked like she could do some serious damage. I was in awe of this real life Xena. I bought her fitness VHS with the hopes of having some serious guns like her (Side note: Chyna Fitness is probably still the best workout I have ever had in my life with kickboxing being a close second). Chyna’s time was cut short in the WWE by personal issues, bad things happen when your live in boyfriend starts dating and then marries the boss daughter. And from there Chyna wound up on celebrity rehab, porn and being abused by fellow wrestler X-poc(whom I always disliked and this gave me proof positive that he is indeed an a-hole). All of that effectively broke my fangirl heart. I met Chyna a few months ago at an autograph signing. I am a 28 year old woman and I nearly burst into tears when I met her because meeting ones idols is INTENSE. I managed not to cry but could barely spoke for fear of embarrassing myself. How do you tell someone “OMG I WANTED TO BE YOU!?!?” without sounding like an insane person as an adult? You can’t. I will say that she was incredibly nice, and she signed my book on the outside and the inside and took a picture with me. And when I say she was nice, I mean she signed my book that was from her time with the WWE and she has very negative feeling towards the company for their treatment of her when she was let go and after. She was also so much smaller than I thought she would be. I have come to find that wrestlers usually are. I definitely just see them as larger than life and so meeting them is so weird size wise.

With Chyna gone there were still a variety of badass such as Jacqueline, Ivory, Trish, Lita, Molly Holly and Victoria who kept the womens division interesting and provided fantastic matches on the level of their male counterparts. Then something happened. These women started retiring or were let go from the company and the women that replaced them were not trained wrestlers. They were simply there to be sexy and when they got into the ring it was painful to watch. Women's wrestling hit a serious decline and during this period I really stopped watching because even the woman who was left, Lita, what they turned her career into was sickening to me(ring side TA-no wrestling). I’d still catch matches and watch the big PPVs, the men in the WWE were still highly entertaining (most of the time) with talents like John Cena, Randy Ortin, Daniel Bryan, Y2J, Edge, Booker T, Kane, Taker, HHH, CM Punk, Dolph Ziggler and Wade Barret just to name a few. I am actually wearing a John Cena shirt as I write this and to all the Cena haters out there, I got two words for ya: SUCK IT. Those 5 moves of doom are entertaining as hell. Moving on.
We have since seen a revamping of the women's division due to NXT and perhaps HHH and Stephanie, although I am not 100% sure on that. Stephanie was a former Women’s Champion herself and I always enjoyed it when she would wrestle and still do. She’s literally a billionaire and did not need to learn how to wrestle but she did and in my opinion she does it well. Her brother Shane O’Mac even with 10 years of ring rust is still one of my favorites to watch in the ring. I don’t know if it’s that little dance/skip he does down to the ring or the crazy ass shit he is willing to do (see match with Kurt Angle where he is thrown through glass and almost legitimately breaks his neck-it was supposed to be made of sugar glass but someone messed up and put the real deal there and Shane nearly died as a result especially since he insisted on being suplexed through until the real Plexiglas broke #badass). I also believe the bring about of the PG era helped women's wrestling. It’s not PG to have a sex celebration, bra and panties matches or whatever other disgusting ideas were thought up. Another side note: when I watched wrestling as a kid, I would do so with my Dad. Ever watch a bra and panties match with your Dad when you’re 13? No? Well I have. It wasn’t exactly a bonding moment. More like neither of us knew what to do and it was awkward as hell. Thanks again Vince, I’ll be sending you my therapy bill. Also is it any wonder that my Dad did not want me to be a pro-wrestler after that?
I saw my first live event when I was 17. I went with a car full of my guy friends and I will never forget it for a few reasons. 1. The backseat did not have any seat belts so it was decided that I would sit in the middle with the two fattest guys(who were very overweight) so that if we crashed hopefully I would be so squished I wouldn’t fly out the front window and I’d have padding on either side of me. I don’t think that would have worked for the record, but I didn’t care. I was about to see the WWE live! A little life threatening danger was deemed totally worth it.  I was about to have a dream come true. 2. We got to the arena in about 20 minutes because we were running late- due to one of the guys for the record- the arena was 45 mins away if you went the speed limit. I know I am lucky to be writing this story right now. The arena was in Binghamton NY, Brooms County Arena. I have been to several shows since then and at different arenas and I will say nothing compares to the energy that I saw that night. I remember when Kane’s pyro hit and I felt the heat of it all the way up in the nosebleeds. Pure magic.
In college I actually found one woman who was a fan as well and who shared my Hardy boyz love. #besttagteamever! I have since met them and they are as nice, if not nicer than I thought they would be. One of the sad things for me was during the Attitude Era it was definitely the golden age of tag teams, which means it declined with the women's division. We saw things that had never been done before and the talent was off the charts. TLC matches baby! I haven’t seen a decent TLC match in I can’t remember how long. But honestly how can you compete with that stuff? Unless you are Y2J and Chris Benoit…and then there’s that. Benoit.
I was a HUGE Benoit fan. His in ring ability was mind blowing. The Wrestlemaina when both he and Eddy won titles made me cry and was such a wonderful moment. That’s the Benoit I knew as a fan. Then the news broke that he had killed his wife, son and himself. My heart stopped. Too many concussions and the very serious effect they have on the human brain took his sanity along with all of their lives. The WWE banned the use of his name and all of his matches were hidden away. I understood not referencing him but taking away his matches I did not agree with because the wrestlers he worked with didn’t deserve that. Y2J specifically had some of the best matches of his career with Benoit and I wanted to be able to see them damn it. I had them on VHS thankfully and now the WWE has made them available again on the Network. By the way if you have the Network, watch Swerved. You won’t regret it. I don’t think he should ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame. I agree to with Chris Jericho’s stance on this. Fantastic wrestler but what he did at the end of his life does disqualify him and would taint the Hall. It’s also unfortunate that his wife Nancy, who was in the wrestling business, isn’t talked about either even though it’s not her fault her husband murdered her.
Wrestling is often very problematic on issues of race, gender, sexuality and religion. I know this. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched on some of it -barely- here. Has some headway been made? Yes. Do they still have a long way to go? Give me a Hell Yeah! But nothing is perfect and the problems I see in wrestling I see in other entertainment like tv shows, movies and books. Remember WWE is basically a soap opera with body slams. There are story lines and yes the results and matches are “rigged” no one, except small children believes it is real in that manner. But what they inflict on their bodies is very real and unlike other sports (yes I am calling it a sport-bite me) you can see a much wider population represented. There is almost someone for everyone to relate to. And what some of these people can do with their bodies is literally beautiful-the high flying moves that some superstars do are beyond graceful. Beautiful is the only way I can even think to describe it.

I plan on writing several more blogs on wrestling and feminism but I wanted to give a general background and I apologize because I know this is all over the place so if you’ve made it this far thank you. I think that writing about wrestling as a fan who is also a feminist is important because it isn’t something I have seen before. And if you are a feminist who is curious check out matches that have Natalya, Charlotte, Sasha, Becky Lynch, Naomi and Tamina in them for current. Or for old school Chyna, Jackie, Ivory and Molly Holly.  Serious BAMF. Wrestling is my guilty pleasure, always has been.  Fan girl out!

Nudes, Rape and Video Games: A Feminist Explosion

So this week so much has happened that I didn't know which subject to even discuss. So I am going to try and discuss them all. Here we go....

1) Nude photos of celebrities leaked. This is the same problem that we have continued to have only instead of sex tapes being stolen from vaults they are being taken off of iclouds. Personally, I am paranoid and don't believe in doing nudes however, I am not about to sit back and say things like "what did they expect?" or "they got what they deserved". Victim blaming, how not surprising. Hell even when photos are taken of women and they are not aware they are the ones blamed. None of what has happened is in the least surprising although I do feel really angry for those women and I believe in the one case girl. The Olympian who had her photos taken was underage(child porn rears its ugly head). And let me be clear, everyone who went and looked at those photos you are part of the problem. You're why people leak nudes of women/girls because there are consumers for it. That and it's a great way to try and ruin a woman's life because that's still how we judge women the virgin/whore dichotomy. We are always supposed to be desirable but not touchable, an impossible line to walk.

2) The student who is dragging her mattress around campus. At first I wasn't quite sure what this young woman was trying to accomplish. The act didn't stand out to me as *BAM* this is what's up!  But after doing some reading and finding out that she was raped on her mattress and that dragging the mattress around symbolizes the weight of being raped everything made a lot more sense. The young woman is a performance artist which makes a lot more sense to how she got the idea. I do hope that she is successful and having her rapist expelled. Campus' need to take sexual assaults more seriously. Even from a business standpoint taking sexual assault more seriously makes sense. Female students pay just as much in tuition as male students and currently more women are enrolling in higher education.

3) Feminist Frequency and the threats. I am dating a gamer. He hates feminist frequency because they rip apart his hobby which is understandable. He's allowed to disagree. Just as they are allowed to have their video blog and give their opinions about whatever. Nothing wrong with any of it. However, once you start threatening someone to the point where they have to leave their home. That's an issue. That's a big fucking issue. And also it is counter active to what those who are threatening points. "No video games don't promote violence or hatred towards women. But bitch if you keep talking about it I'm going to break into your home and rape you until you're dead." Yeah...umm..nice going there...totally made your point. That is if your point is that you're stupid; like too stupid to function. As to whether or not video games promote hatred of women, certain ones certainly can promote misogynistic ideas about women which a lot of things do because we live in a patriarchal society so there's no big shock there. Games where the object is to stalk and rape women (there's a Japanese computer game where the object is to stalk and rape a mother and daughter) I do believe are disgusting and should not be in existence and are clearly promoting violence against women and making a game of it. Are all video games bad? No. Are gamers all bad? No. Are the people who threaten and harass vlogers with violence barely an excuse for humans? Yes.

Why #Weallneedfeminism

The #WhyINeedFeminism hashtag was a good idea. And fits with third wave feminism focus on the individual. I, however, am strongly in the second wave camp. We are all individuals but seeing ourselves as purely individuals is a great way to make sure nothing gets accomplished. We need to view ourselves as a group and understand that as a group feminism takes on different forms for us all. For example as a  American Feminist the problems I face are different from a Iranian Feminist. We both have the same overall goal, equality, but different factors that we cannot control change the priority of issues changes based on our individual needs. Religion, race, age, sexuality, gender, class, occupation and location all factor into what we place as high priority issues.

So I have complied a list of five reasons why we all need feminism as the human race. Obviously this list can go on but I decided to limit it to just five for now. Perhaps someday I will do a part two. 

1. #Weallneedfeminism because of human trafficking. Children as young as four are taken or sold into human slavery, usually sexual slavery. There are currently more modern day slaves than there were when slavery was legal in the United States and in most of the world.

                            
2. #Weallneedfeminism because of genital mutilation of both boys and girls. Women and girls around the world are subjected to genital mutilation that ranges from cutting of the clitoris to the complete removal of of the clitoris and vaginal lips. The idea being to control female sexuality and to keep women from cheating on their husbands by taking the pleasure out of sex. Then their is male genital mutilation otherwise known as male circumcision and is mostly practiced in the United States. This is probably going to make a bunch of parents mad but that doesn't change the fact that male circumcision is still genital mutilation. There is no medical or hygienic reason to circumcise boys. It is purely for looks and it does decrease the sexual pleasure of males. And also let me say for the record, uncircumcised penis' do not look weird or unattractive. They look like dicks, get over it.

3.  #Weallneedfeminism because we need to put an end to violence against women whether it be intimate partner abuse, sexual abuse, rape, bride burning, burning with acid whatever the violence. And we need to stop making those stupid violence against women jokes/rape jokes. a) You run a real risk or traumatizing someone because statistically you are saying those jokes/comments around someone who is a victim/survivor and no you probably don't know it because with the stupid shit that is spewing out of your mouth they surely won't be telling you. b) You are reaffirming that what the abuser/rapist/molester does/has done is not only okay and socially acceptable but that it is funny. Nice job asshat. And no you probably are not aware that your coworker John goes home and beats the shit out of his wife and kids because it is still illegal to do so. Or that your friend George on occasions rapes his dates when they don't want to put out after he has paid for a date. It's not funny. You are not funny. You sound like an ignorant scum bag.

4. #Weallneedfeminism because a woman's body is her own and so is the choice as to whether or not we have children, when we have them and how many we have. Unplanned pregnancies can have a wide array of repercussions including poverty, single parent households, higher rates of abortion, more kids in the foster system and so on. Abstinence only education simply does not work. Instead what research has found that students who were taught through the abstinence only method were still having sex they were just doing so without the use of condoms or birth control leading to higher rates of pregnancy and STDs. And unplanned pregnancies tend to trap women into bad marriages and into lower incomes, often times because they then have to stay home and take care of the children, world wide.

5. #Weallneedfeminism because women are not taken seriously. If we express any strong emotions we are either bitches or irrational. We can never just be rightfully angry or upset, we're either hysterical, over-reacting or PMSing. This also ties into how women aren't taken seriously when they are abused. We're exaggerating or just saying it happened to ruin the abuser's/rapist's life. This needs to stop. Someone is more likely to fake their own death than to lie about being raped.

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.

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.

On the Power of Saying "NO" and Why Rape Culture is Against Girls Using It: a Crash Course

From the time we are little girls we are taught not to say "no" whether we are explicitly told or it is implied. We are taught to be pleasant, always pleasing and "lady like". Somewhere along the way saying "no" became part of the things that are not feminine. Why? Because saying "no" is assertive and being assertive is not befitting of a "lady".

As a child I was taught that I was never allowed to say no to my mother. Since I wasn't allowed the use of the word "no" I developed other ways to convey my lack of wanting to do things or I simply did whatever task I didn't want to do. I have been told before, specifically by men I have dated in the past, that I don't say "no", I just give a list of reasons why I can't/won't do something. Since I am now aware of this I have been trying to be mindful and just say "no" without giving any explanations to people. Now was my Mom aware that she was playing into a patriarchal  and misogynistic plot? No. She was just enforcing a rule that her Mother and Nana had placed upon her. She did this in hopes of raising a "lady", however, my Mother and Father also tried to teach me to think for myself and she instead raised a feminist which obviously worked out for me in the end.  

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that women tend to speak more and have a more robust vocabulary than their male counterparts. We are so busy trying not to say "no" that we have to speak more in order to find other ways to say "no" because God forbid we not be pleasing at all times. 

With little girls never being encouraged to say "no" and thusly being taught to conform to what someone else's, specifically men's, demands are it any wonder that women and teenage girls have a difficult time being assertive and saying "no" to the sexual advances of men? Stripping little girls of the word "no" sets them up to be compliant both in and out of the bedroom. Parents, listen up. Empower your daughters. Don't strip away their ability to be assertive. If you wouldn't dissuade your sons from saying "no" don't let your daughters lose the power of the word either.

How Far We Haven't Come Part 1

I have labeled this Part 1 because I am positive various other topics will arise that will illuminate the illusion of equality and how far we have come. This past week I was on the Bookface and I saw that VH1 had made a post about Scarlett Johansson being pregnant. What was the focus of this birth announcement? How big her boobs are. To be exact the article was called Scarlett Johansson is Pregnant! Celebrate Her New Baby Boobs with Her 29 Bustiest Moments.Click to read the article Really? VH1 wants to celebrate pregnancy with tit pictures? What a progressive society we live in! Even when women are pregnant they still are objectified. Yeah, we've come a long way baby.

I was chatting about my outrage to a friend of mine and she informed me that when she interviewed for a position at a store in the local mall called Motherhood, that she decided she wasn't interested in the job when they told her she would be selling skinny jeans to pregnant women. Now I myself have never been pregnant. However, I do have friends and family members who have been and from what they tell me, being pregnant can be pretty damn uncomfortable. You have a baby pushing on your organs already, why would you then shove yourself into skinny jeans? And there is no way that wearing constricting clothes can be good for you especially when you're already swelling.

By no means do I think that pregnant women should have to wear ugly clothes or that they should feel unattractive. I actually like that pregnant women have more options for their clothing choices (as do babies. Baby clothes as waaaay cuter than when I was an infant) but their clothes should also be comfortable. Pregnant women should not be subjected to objectification,

 not that any women should but this just seems worse. Talking about a glow or how beautiful a pregnant woman is, is much different than saying "Check out those titties!" I am even more outraged that it is 2014 and I have to explain this. There is such a constant pressure on women to have the perfect appearance all of the time. Shouldn't at least pregnant women get a pass to just be people since they are making a person? I don't have what one would call high standards for VH1 but they managed to sink to a new level of low.

A Feminists Adventures in Bro-dom

I have a confession to make. I am a feminist. I am a feminist with a lot of guy friends. I have a healthy mix of male and female friends but being friends with lots of women does not surprise people. Being friends with a bunch of dudes however, tends to be a shocker. People tend to be uneasy when men and women are friends to begin with. They assume that I am sleeping with or am in love with {fill in guy friends name], that either I am or that the guy is gay or something to that effect. Let me clear the air here: firstly, I am not gay(not that there'd be anything wrong if I were) and the guys don't pass me around like some living sex doll. My guy friends don't victimize me, and I think that this is pretty across the board for women with dude friends with few exceptions.  Secondly, the term "feminist" has a bad rap. So let's just get this out of the way, I do NOT think that women are better than men. I believe that we are all equal regardless of sex/gender/race/religion and so on and so forth. People tend to be surprised by the amount of guy friends that I have. And "people" does sometimes include other feminists. As though being a feminist I am not allowed to have a large population of men in my life. Or perhaps they simply feel that men would not want my company due to my beliefs. Regardless, this has led to some fun and interesting situations. Some of my guy friends are what most 20 somethings will refer to as "bros" and indeed, they themselves wear this title with pride. These friends tend to divorce the fact that their female friends/relatives are in fact, women. This is not to say that they are horrible people, they often are the sweetest and truest friends anyone could ever have, they do however, hold onto some antiquated ideas. This has at times made me shake my head and prompted some discussion but nonetheless, our friendships have blossomed. I believe one of my favorite instances of a well meaning bro-moments was when one of Ryan's(bro friend) friends from the navy came to town and after quite a few beers it had come out that not only am I a feminist, but I hold a Masters degree in Women's Studies *cue foreboding music*. To try and 'defend' my awesomeness, my buddy told him "She's cool man. She's just as good as a dude." That sentence reverberated around my brain. Just as good as a dude. The friend accepted this and moved on. I however, was not so easily swayed. I realized that Ryan meant no harm by what he said and that he was trying to compliment me, which meant that I did not flip out and made a mental note that we would be having an open conversation about that sentence and the ideas behind it.  Being confrontational, especially when people have been drinking is no way to convince anyone of anything, and will certainly only enforce the idea that feminists (and women) are crazy. But this still troubled me and made me sad. But this did get me thinking. Is this what my guy friends (or at least the bro ones) think? That I am in some way an exception to the rule that women are for boning not for friendship. A few years ago, I would have loved being told that I was "just as good as a dude". Because being male is the standard in our patriarchal society which means that all things female are lesser. Do I think my friend meant to say that I am not as good as he is? No. Did he mean that women are not as good as men on a larger scale. Maybe. After reflecting on this some, I still do not have all of the answers on how to combat all of these ideas. I tackle them as they come up and try to be a good will ambassador, if you will, for both women and feminists alike on this. I have also deemed these instances, and believe me there are a TON more, as one of the many reasons why it is good that I have these friendships with my bro-friends. Not only do both parties(me & them respectively) get a great friend out of the deal but I also get to expose them to ideas that they would never have considered otherwise. Because they do, in fact, value my opinion(s) and they know I'm not what their perceptions of feminism have been/is, and are therefore, more open to discussions. And I am able to experience who my bro-friends really are. Not what society has stigmatized them as. If not for the men in my life like Ryan, who is such a wonderful human being, let me just say, then I would steer clear of anyone proudly touting the bro-culture and never realize they are more than just a label as well. We have something to learn from each other, even if for me it is how to get them to understand that they hold some problematic views from where I am standing and why. I don't expect to create an army of feminists out of friends but I do hope to encourage respect and dispel previously held beliefs at least. As a feminist in bro-land I don't know my way around yet, but I do enjoy the adventure.