Male Strippers A Parody and a Few Real Points

Well after watching the Channel 4 programme about the Dreamboys I have realised that so much is wrong with this and we need to rise up and demand that women change their attitudes

Lets firstly talk about the objectification of men even the manager of the Dreamboys views members of his own sex as meat and this can only occur because of a reflection of the views of the matriarchy. Young boys are growing up believing that they have to look like this strippers and anything less is to be mocked and laughed at. And when men say they do it because they enjoy it or want to make money out of it obviously they are gender traitors who have no idea what they are doing to men everywhere.

Now lets think about how these women come out of venues all excited and stimulated and just grabbing the nearest man to them I mean obviously women cannot control themselves after seeing naked male flesh. Pity the poor man going pass a venue after it closes, they with be objectified and feel unsafe with all the sexual taunts these sex crazy women come out with.

And I wonder just how many men are trafficked into these strip venues and forced to work for money.

Men I suggest we march around these venues late at night and take photos of women going into the clubs. Also we should write a book and get on the speaking circuit particularly about the impossible image these men are setting for the rest of us.


Actually really after watching the show I want to talk about the difference between male and female stripping and the two faced approach of some feminists claiming that stripping by women is somehow worse than stripping by men. There is the no contact rule in strip clubs yet if dreamboys or the like strip then women consider it okay to grab, scratch or squeeze . The clubs have audiences and all I can say about the male strippers it seemed to be a baying mob. It is just complete double standards, but the one thing that is a constant is the people working have made choices good or bad. Not everyone is going to be able to handle the pressure stripping but to close industries down because of a minority being against it and a tiny proportion of dancers having bad experiences is in my mind just a tiny bit stupid.

Realistically if striptease is shut down then that would mean no kissograms, no male strippers as well as closing the strip clubs. Unfortunately a tiny rad fem organisations have got column inches because of idiotic campaigns that haven't been thought out and have no popular backing. If you tell all the women that go out on Friday and Saturday nights that willy waggling is off the menu there would be an uproar. The fact that the behaviour at these performances is worse than any strip venue I have seen in the last 10 years just shows how two faced attitudes are.

So perhaps those campaigners against striptease should realise that adults make choices to perform and to watch the performances and it applies to both male and female. As always the female stripping for males is the target for everything in law and yet it misses men stripping for men, men stripping for women and women stripping for women. I would love to know why only performances for men are so heavily regulated and yet performances for women are at the level of the old stag do's.

There is so much I could write about this but the one thing that I will always harp on about is choice. Even to the fact the male dancers use a penis pump before going on stage it is about a visual performance and entertainment.

A Few Tidbits, a Brainwave and OMG literally

Well the weekend is here and the time is right for my fingers to get busy.

Firstly want to pick up on the Urban Tiger Lap Dancing Club, Wellingborough Road, Northampton NN1 4AA. The SEV is up for renewal and Object have been tweeting a link to a page on facebook urging people to e-mail to licensing@northampton.gov.uk with objections so can I ask those who are against closing clubs to forget who runs the place and e-mail in with support. So far 9 likes for the object facebook snippet and it has been up over 24 hours so lets get busy and tell the council there to leave the Tiger alone.

Secondly want to pick up on a discussion on Moronwatch about the fabulous Tuppy Owens. This may out myself to a few people but as a disabled wheelchair user this woman has done so much to earn the respect of those of us who have been let down by our bodies or minds. This piece is well worth a read here and yes I have contributed to the discussions.

Thirdly just want to remind people that the blog is here to discuss legal striptease in venues that have licenses. Whatever people's individual's view this blog does not endorse unlicensed parties. The priority is to keep the industry operating and protecting the dancers, customers and owners. From religious hatred to unsubstantiated opinions pretending to be empirical data this blog is here to mock the foolish, educate the unenlightened and give an opinion that as honest as I can make it.

Fourthly good to see Legs 11 in Birmingham is having a ladies night, this is for Ladies, by Ladies. Now one question why have object not said anything about this being wrong? Surely all the arguments would hold true, the objectification of women by women (which we have seen in other types of objectification). The exploitation of the dancers?  Yet we hear nothing from Object even though the event is this weekend. Ohhh forgot double standards are fine.

I was thinking about the numbers game and reading various articles about the size of the anti striptease movement. Sort of hits home though that the average person really just wants to enjoy life as much as possible. Here we have an industry that employs over 10,000 women and by my rough calculations sees people visit clubs over 2,500,000 times a year. Sort of emphasises the fact that those against striptease are such a small minority but they are just so vocal. If I am honest when I see how the average person just wants to get on with life and a relatively small number of people are causing such an upset. If we look at the whole no more page 3 campaign I find it amazing that people assume that when a petition has signatures that amount to less that 2% of the readership we still find them filling pages and the social media like they are 50 times more important than everyone else. Should 100,000 signatures really be more important than 7m readers? If they are then democracy is dead. If the issue was something that people really worried about the paper would not have the popularity it does. Not here to defend page 3 as much as show the mentality of those who want to chose how people live their lives and what should and shouldn't be allowed in them.

Finally, and this may expand into a whole piece of its own, God TV is planning to move into a derelict cinema in Plymouth next to the club Angels. The problem as I see it is that they will try to close Angels down. Having read they revival alert, mission statement I am seriously worried about what these people plan. Lets just take one line describing why they are coming "Following the celebration the Lord spoke clearly to Rory & Wendy Alec and impressed upon them to develop a revival centre in the Plymouth area." this was after winter celebrations and personally I wonder just what they were drinking/smoking. Also there is a rumour that a Mosque is planning to set up in the area as well, remembering that some people are against clubs near religious centres the council will need to remember who was there first. Certain there will be more to come on this.

Okay that is a lot of not a lot for now. Don't forget anything you want to discuss away from the boards tonyprince@acdcfan.com alos any articles or contributions would be welcome especially from dancers.

TonyN

A Big Thank You to Object

You know this has to be the first time but here I have to raise a big, BIG thank you to Object as I had missed a piece in the Evening Standard here that emphasises some key issues and points towards what a ban could mean to the striptease industry. This was reported back in April but I hadn't got a google alert and I only check Object every 3 or 4 weeks.

The article is about crime in the City of London around pubs and clubs, it talks about violence and drugs and the issues that occured at Charlie's Bar. Obviously the violence and drugs are separate issues to the lap dancing but nothing like a bit of sex and drugs and rock n roll as a story.

So why did I thank Object? Well the City of London Corporation has no suitable locations for striptease so to meet demand an underground event was taking place. Because it was underground you run the risk of who would be running it. So take away controls and protection by driving striptease underground and you run all sorts of risks. This is the risk of blanket bans, there will be a demand and rather than helping or protecting dancers these could put dancers at risk.

So blanket ban produces events without control, yet Object see this story as a positive rather than realising they have highlighted that rather than closing venues well run clubs would minimise the risk of events being driven underground with all the associated risks. Charlie's Bar used to be licensed and there wasn't any issues as such. Yet no clubs and straight away there is an underground demand even though Hackney and Tower Hamlets are a cab ride away. However people are lazy and if something is on their doorstep of course they would attend.

Well here I am after writing about how I support regulations with the perfect example of why and why clubs should not be banned. And there I was think of watching catch up tv on a Sunday morning, instead I get inspired by Object to put finger to keyboard. There will always be demand, lets be sure that the dancers and customers are protected and remember banning doesn't stop striptease it just drives it underground.

TonyN

Is this Blog against Regualations?

So being reading around and a lot of people are saying we do not support regulation. So wanted to make things clear we have no issues with regulations providing they are they to protect the dancers and the customers. What are against is the banning of venues based on moralistic judgements by small minorities. If we go back to Prof Hubbard recent work only 3% of people said there was no place for Lap Dancing and remember that the survey invited people in certain towns to join in which would suggest at least some bias from those taking part or at least a percentage. And comments on and from certain websites about us shows how little they know, they judge without knowledge, moralise without understanding and make statements without establishing facts.

So regulations, not worried about these if they provide protection to the dancers. I come from the era when dancers were paid to dance and with the change so that dancers need to pay to work I would love to see standardised house fees, a single consistent set of fines and an external arbitration process for disputes. Just my personal opinion and having been friends with club owners/managers I understand that in this climate fines are sometimes the only way to ensure that dancers do not abuse the system. But their need to be fair and not just random based on someone's mood. I know of one dancer that in all the time I knew her she never made a single shift on time unless it was her first one of the day and she would work two venues regularly to boost earnings as she was supporting her sister as well as herself. But even with the fine and the house fee she was making enough to make it worth to work even with the two financial disincentives in place.

So do we need all the regulations currently in place? As I said I am old school so I would prefer things as what I see is the old gold days. However to be honest any regulations should be set in conjunction with dancers, they are the ones affected so rather than just some random politician making judgements they should engage and work with dancers to find the best options for the people who have to work within the regulations. Now that Equity and GMB are involved perhaps eventually we will get a standard set of T&Cs around clubs and pubs and how they work.

Someone buried a new comment on an old piece on the blog making accusations without even linking to any proof, the random thought that dancers dance for the money as though it was some revelation that no one had ever thought this before and customers assumed that the dancers danced for them because of their wonderful personalities. Striptease is a performance, 3 or 4 minutes of escapism the same as film, theatre and music. People may argue about the fact dancers are nude but we see nudity in all forms of performance including naked ballets. Okay I will say so far I haven't found an opera that is performed without clothes but if there is an Opera writer out there perhaps you want to change this. If you look at when Daniel Radcliffe was in Equus there wasn't any major outrage just lots of ladies talking about seeing his magic wand. Nudity but no issues, the film magic mike no one worried about that.

So yes we see people judging the men who see striptease as harmless, branding them as people who disrespect, dislike and objectify women throughout the day, every day, day after day. Yet many men are married, with daughters and are as far away from the woman hating, wife beating, rapists that feminist label us as can be. I have no issues being judged and would happily debate with those who want to bring down the striptease industry. Yes label us, accuse us, belittle us as none of these things hurt us unless we let them. You cannot make claims about me without knowing me, but it seems that many people will judge without facts and without at least discussing points of view.

Just one quick point I don't hate feminism, I do strongly dislike radical feminists with their labelling etc especially those that have made comments about dancers without knowing anything about those dancers except the fact that they dance.

TonyN

A Quick Tour of the UK?

Well a few things have come to my attention, as usual rather than create three small entries thought it would be easier to bring up all on the one post.

So first lets take a run up to Inverness where a club has been granted a license. Nice to see that although a few moral objections have been brought up common sense prevailed. Of course the usual comment about how it would increase violence against women, however no reference was made about Lilith. The police had no issues and the venue applying already has met the requirements that would be expected. The bid has been backed by the owners of clubs in Aberdeen and Dundee that have had no trouble in 15 years of business. There was the usual claims also of crime but considering the clubs supporting the bids this seems unlikely. However crime figures for Scotland are not available through the Police.UK site so I haven't tested the theory for Scotland.

So secondly I wanted to pick up on some digging I have done on the use of the freedom of information by people trying to find out about SEV consultations. First no surprise that Tower Hamlets was asked over a year ago about their consultation and even under the FoI no response was given. The was also a request for details about Camden from a Madeleine about consultees. The documents included a statement from the police who summed up with "There is no statistical evidence for a specific crime problem around lap-dancing clubs in Camden." I am sure many people have seen this before but I thought it was a good time to remind readers that as in Scotland where 2 well run clubs have had no problems in 15 years of trading the same seems to be true in London that no excessive crime takes place around striptease venues.

Finally word is out that the Olde Northwood is planning on not renewing its license due to the cost of said process. Although having seen the fees that doesn't ring true. So some more digging maybe required.

Feminism or How to make money selling books.

I wasn't intending to write anything for a day or 3 about anything heavy as I wanted to let the whole issue with the christian extremists to sink in. However I managed to find something that I thought worthy of at least a passing comment.

There is a meeting Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism with Julia Long being held at Bookmarks the socialist bookshop. Why am I writing about it on this blog? Well straight from the information on the facebook page for the event "Anti-porn feminism is back. Countering the ongoing ‘pornification’ of Western culture and society, with lads’ mags on the middle shelf and lap-dancing clubs in residential areas, anti-porn movements are re-emerging among a new generation of feminist activists." I have been looking for sales figures of the book but can't find anything. If anyone knows how to track booksales down please let me know.

So they are putting everything together to scare people or is this just a drive by Dr Long to sell her book? Which strangely goes by the same name as the event. So okay it is actually an attempt to push sales of her book by scaremongering. I wonder if the attendees realise that they are probably expected to buy the book?

Described by the Guardian Dr Julia Long is a radical lesbian feminist activist, the blurb selling the event explains Julia Long holds a PhD on feminist anti-pornography activism from London South Bank University. She has a professional background in gender-equality policy, education, and HIV prevention and support. OMG can you really get a PhD in feminist anti-pornography activism???? Well guess you can get a PhD in just about anything but it did give me a chuckle.

As a former member of Object and the London Feminist Network you know that she was never going to write objectively so anything she throws out there I would take with a pinch of salt (actually more like a salt cellar worth). One thing I do love is how organisations manage to make themselves look rather stupid. LFN were marching against the cuts and posted a picture which I guess was suppose to make them look like a big organisation. Remembering they are women only group they should have really not included a number of men in the Picture.

Now to the book itself, I haven't read it but have read the blurb around it and the thing for me is the original ethnographic research that the book is based on. See the problem is that it seems Julia has only used data drawn from the groups that support her view. Therefore rather than an objective view that I might want to read, it is in fact a subjective piece written to re-inforce the anti pornography feminist stance. So the original research is not something that would impress me. And next bit in the blurb "it provides an in-depth analysis of the ideological stance, tactical repertoires, impact and significance of campaign groups challenging the pornography industry". Which actually to me seems to be I am going to write about how we behaved in LFN/Object and claim it is something brilliant, intelligent and worthwhile rather than do any original work.

So March 16 at 6:30pm book sale drive disguised as a rally and discussion. You do wonder how people get to do this but hey Object did it with the book on striptease they co-authoured so shouldn't be a surprise that the drive is to earn money out of the gullible followers who want to be scared into believing the lies and half truths. I haven't read the book as I wouldn't want to put a penny into the bank account of people like Julia Long.

TonyN

Good Christians or Christian Extremists?

Firstly I would like to point out to any readers in and around the Exeter area there is a consultation started, available through the council website.
Second the piece I have written has taken comments and details from a mixture of sources including other blogs.
Third I believe everyone has the right to practice their religion so long as they do not try to force their religious beliefs on others.

So we have been reading a lot recently about the Christian Legal Centre who have been getting involved in campaigns to stop clubs renewing licenses and trying to block the granting of new license. So who are the CLC? Well they are sister branch of the Christian Concern for our Nation or just Christian Concern now as the nation bit seemed a bit BNP/National Front and they are not racist. At lot of other things but not that, the UK can be proud of the good Christians.

So who are they? Well every case you have ever heard of in the news about being denied the right to wear a crucifix, not willing to perform a civil partnership for LGBT couples or a couple who were refused the right to be foster carers because of their religious views on homosexuality that have gone to court CLC are there fighting the good fight. The list goes on there have been around 50 cases so far. But the track record isn't that good no wins, 1 agreement and the rest losses. The cases are not winnable but it is all PR for their lobbying.

Still it hasn't stopped them and we can expect to hear more of them in the future. Of course the big issue is how the organisation operates and where the money comes from to fund it.

They claim that they get by on small donations from individuals and that the legal work is all done pro bono.  Seems though there is a link to funding from America and some rather sinister organisations like the Alliance Defence Fund which is funded by the Blackwater Private Defence organisation famous for their work in Iraq) and ultra rich Texan Christian Dr James R Leinger. However when looking at the annual report for a couple of years ago over 50% of funds came from furniture. I mean what the heck??? So rich powerful and slightly spooky american christian organisations with loads of money and we have a ultra conservative christian organisation that seems to have no money but has well equipped offices. if you think about some of the crazier things some of the American Christian Right have spouted you can see where this organisation is going.

CC/CLC run the Wilberforce Academy which is a training ground for "Right Thinking Christian" Lawyers, Politicians and a variety of other business areas. Not sure if they get brain washed there or come in pre-washed. Certainly we are seeing people taking on work such as judge in a family court who wont deal with same sex couples. Or the registrar who wont perform civil partnerships. And the list goes on and on and on and on.  However I don't think they care if they win in court when people are sacked, they want to gather media attention which empowers their lobbying. It seems that so long as they can scare Christians into believing their religion is under attack they will get more people on their books. If you look at the issue with the Green members connected with Christian beliefs and putting those before the party line the pictures gets a little scarier.

Now we get to the CEO Andrea Minichiello Williams who I am not sure is all there (personal opinion). This woman is a creationist so the world is only 4,000 years old so I guess we had people riding round on T-Rex's? Described by the Guardian as paranoid so that says something about her. Reading an interview with her she states that Christians will always be under attack. Watching a video of the CC praying that the MPs voting on same sex marriage would suddenly all go nuts and vote against was mildly amusing. On more than one blog she has been called a loon so thinking we are getting a picture here. The fact that she has stopped admitting she is a creationist shows that she can learn to keep quite when it makes her look insane if she opens her mouth on some issues.

I have nothing against anyone's personal religious beliefs, I find myself more connected with Taoism but I would not expect to push religion at others nor try and use religion to change laws. However CC are against same sex marriages, abortion, the human fertilisation bill is the work of the devil and obviously the CC organisation are busy trying to impose their morals on areas by getting SEV licenses stopped. So anywhere and everywhere these people pop up trying to affect strip clubs we need to know and to fight. A small success in Lambeth may well lead to them getting involved elsewhere and these misguided people really do need to be challenged. Anytime CLC and CC are involved there will be issues, as they don't admit it is their moral issues but try and use worries of the public and play on their minds.

When you think about how they want to control people, no other religious beliefs are acceptable, women have no right to decide for their bodies about abortion, LGBT people seem not to be even entitled to civil partnerships never mind marriages. And of course women cannot choose to strip although if we look back the flappers of the twenties were seen in the same way.

There is so much you can say about these people but there is information all over the web so just google the bits that interest you. Otherwise this blog would end up to being devoted to challenging them. I will now be watching their website to see what they are getting involved with.
TonyN

An Interesting Video

I am just posting out a link to a video and interview with 3 dancers from a venue in London. Rather than embedding it I am just linking and given people a warning that there are breasts in it.

But the important thing is hearing the how and why dancers started.

Click here for the video

TonyN