While suffering through your sub-textually convoluted tale about nights at the Satin Doll, I was reminded of early African American movie actors who would make fools of their own race on camera.No matter how many jazz chord progressions and clever vocal inflections you employ, the conclusion is that you have tasked yourself to resound the message to a full house that it's acceptable to objectify other females for entertainment purposes.
Holding out a dollar bill to extort bizarre behavior from a fellow human being is beyond repugnant. Maybe you have a special - "Gee, I'm bored tonight" - clause in your moral code, that allows you to randomly minimalize others.
I came to the conclusion some time ago that not all misogynists are necessarily men.
So, to address the issue that "Holding out a dollar bill to extort bizarre behavior from a fellow human being is beyond repugnant" I'll just say that it's worse to go to a strip club without any singles! It reminds me of the time I went to a Fairy Butch show in SF (kind of a burlesque show, with some comedy, some match making, some strippers...) and a whole row of us lezzies where just horrified that a sweaty stripper was going to come over and rub all over us. Now, our behavior was repugnant. Fairy Butch must have seen our grimaces because in the next segment, dressed in counter-drag (dressed as a Lady) she laid all over all four of us....
OR, maybe it reminds me of the time I went to a fund-raising party for the Lusty Lady in SF. I felt bad for not getting a lap dance or participating in some mud-wrestling--because lady's gotta pay the rent--but I don't like to get sticky or dirty. But I bought a shirt!
Anyway, yes, I'm sure that some sex workers (I'm not going to differentiate right now), have had some kind of trauma in their life (and shit, who hasn't!) and the sex industry is a continuation of this in some way...but there are lawyers out there coercing their secretaries into having sex with them, does that mean that we're going to outlaw lawyers! OK, some might think that this is stretching and that some kind of unequal power dynamic is more apt to occur, or is even inherent in the sex industry and that it why it is singled out as being "mysoginistic", "repugnant", "degrading". I disagree.
I think that there are a couple of more important issues that are too big and burly that people would rather not talk about.
A slight tangent: I saw the movie, The Wrestler, recently. Marissa Tomei played an aging stripper, Cassidy, who is having trouble rustling up interest and Mickey Rourke plays an aging wrestler, Randy, who enters the ring to cheering, albeit small, crowds. I thought a lot about the juxtoposition of these characters. They both are exploiting their bodies, bodies which are not what they once were. And here Randy is, going out (literally) to cheers, and Cassidy dances to indifference--groups chatting amongst each other, individuals looking for a younger piece of ass. It was really interesting. Sad. Life. Check it out. AND TIP your stripper well!
4 comments:
Did someone say strippers? My only strip club experience was pretty bizarre and left me feeling gross, it was with my dad.
I didn't like The Wrestler all that much.
I think the old-school feminists (Dworkin etc) got this wrong: the idea of sex work as exploitation of women. You can look at it that way; you can also look at it as exploitation of men - they are being fleeced of their money for something that is in their biology. Or you can look at it as a business transaction, supply and demand. Or (my favorite), you can look at it as a creative act between an artist and an audience.
You can't understand the human condition (male or female) without understanding human sexuality. The puritan mindset is comically inadequate for understanding human sexuality. Luckily, we have a new generation of feminists who get this.
Few misogynists go to strip clubs to celebrate the female body; the more effective ones hide it under a burka.
i love tasty and thoughtful writing
thank you
strip clubs... hmmm. my only experience was in tijuana with a bunch of frolicking high school buddies from school. i remember one of the guys i was with desperately, foolishly, trying to pull one of the dancers off the stage (alcohol and dancing are so perfect together, right?! hahaha). i remember being so embarrassed about it all -- the dancers so experienced, so many of the audience members gaping and naive and titillated.
you know, the history of porno is fascinating. i think the 8 minute factor plays such a huge role in how things work. i can imagine strip clubs that were really different... oh wait, now i'm in vegas..
damn.
personally i think women are bigger/better misogynists than men. men are kind of stupid in this way where women are much more clever and hateful. men are primitive and barbaric in this sense. it's easier to trick a man with biological issues and such.
can't remember where i heard this story, but a jewish lesbian was saying how she'd rather hang with the men during holiday and festival meet ups where men and women are segregated. she said that all the women did was side up and choose teams and then hate each other. the men drank, sang, laughed and danced.
hmmm
i lived with a sex worker last year by accident. because, well, ALL sex workers are liars, it turns out. they don't really know how much they lie, but they do and you find stuff like this out when you inhabit their space.
it was the oddest experience and so different than what the mind imagines. because sex workers ARE people. just like actors and plumbers. and they are DEEPLY ashamed of what they do. and it's easy money with seriously damaging repercussions. a laziness can set in AND the irony is that age also sets in and then you're literally screwed out of a job and have no talents
so the REAL issue, imo, is how do we protect our dancers and service providers into old age? how do we give them security for providing so much relief?
see, these are REAL questions, because we all know that sex workers ARE archetypes. THEY belong in every society and fulfill a function that cannot be historically uprooted. HONOR the laws of nature!!! true builders of great languages and societies allow for the biology of our species to honor sex passages and rites.
sex politicks should naturally become the core of social interaction after food/water/shelter have been conquered.
ooops. last comment by torbakhopper!!!
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