Social Rituals, an introduction to the customer dancer dynamic.

So I have been quiet for the last couple of weeks one because the industry has been fairly quiet but two because I have several things ongoing including studies on the World Science University website. I have also been looking at the comparative nature of crime around SEVs and nightclubs, from what I have seen it would make a fantastic study for someone working in the sociology departments of a university interested in this field. You have clubs located in high crime area alongside nightclubs but when a SEV is located away from nightclubs crime and especially violent and sexual crime drops. When you look at night clubs in the same town or city though their crime rates are much higher than SEVs. Given the vocal calls by Object and the like to close SEVs with the disproven claims of causal links to sexual violence you would think there would be calls to close night clubs. Strange that Object has never seen the wood for the trees with this.

So why are SEVs less likely to have sexual violence around them? These are only personal thoughts and I would be interested to see what others think of my crazy thoughts! Those of us who at some point in our lives been fairly regular to lap dancing bars or strip pubs understand there are social rituals in which we become educated. Hardy, Kingston and Saunders published in 2012 about the social rituals and fun for dancers. This logically extends into social rituals that define behaviour between dancers and customers. Obviously there will be a minority who do not engage in the social rituals that create a non threatening behaviour pattern but the number is small. Amongst those who are not or have not attended clubs often enough to understand the social rituals behaviour patterns will be different. Depending on the length of exposure to clubs and who they have attended with guys will recognise social rituals at a different rate. The social interaction in their peer groups, reactions of dancers, bar staff and bouncers will all define the development as individuals in clubs.

So given a climate where acceptance is based on understanding and obeying rules that seem to deliberately provoke customers you start to realise that clubs may be acting as a pressure valve that teaches men to accept their desires and know that they cannot take them beyond a certain point. The self control of sitting watching a performance of a dancer within feet of you without being able to do anything is actually a really good lesson in self control not just in terms of sexual behaviour but in life in general. The fact that clubs are so rarely closed or even challenged (legitimately) over sexual violence in and around the club you begin to see a picture where the social rituals including zero contact are a positive rather than the negative that those people who do not understand club dynamics would claim.

The scientist in me, trying to get out, sees several areas that could be researched that would be interesting but unfortunately it is not down to me to decide what is and isn't researched. Perhaps any sociology researchers that read this blog (and I know a few of you do) could consider looking at why customers from clubs that are no contact do not commit the sexual crimes as claimed in the past. Given that in fact we have seen reductions in Newquay and Camden surely the implication is that SEVs are actually good for the community. Men that may have issues in speaking to women or self image issues are accepted the same as any other man and are never discounted out of hand. The social ritual of acceptance helped me after major illness and a long period in hospital. Dancers don't care about what you look like, they do not judge men based on looks but are positive in their dealing. Yes we understand it is a fantasy but sometimes a little bit of acceptance goes a long way in rebuilding or building an individual's confidence to deal with life.

So from this guess I am saying that the so called rape claims and no go areas in fact are not valid. I am sure on occasion there will be an idiot making stupid comments outside a club but you get a lot more of that outside pubs and night clubs but we never see any calls for the banning of pubs and clubs. And sociologists if you are looking for research then the social rituals between dancers and customers and the positive message it sends would be one I would look forward to reading (and yes I am sure they will be one or two that ruin the perfect result). If anyone wants to follow up off the comments field my e-mail as always is at the end.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)

May the 4th Be With You

TonyN here on a sunny Sunday morning and getting my geek on. So the past few months we have seen a constant attack on clubs and some attempts to close them. Also we have seen in the past couple of days some of the crazy that goes with the moralistic minority that want to decide for people how they live their lives. That is not directly related to dancing but I will cover it at the end.

An article recently appeared in a Manchester Matters on line paper, nothing new there apart from it was a piece about striptease and had the views of a dancer and also that "Human Rights" organisation Object. You can read the piece here. To be honest we get the fact that Object has to claim to be Human Rights, the moment they come out and admit that they are a lobby group it turns into an epic fail for them. As you can see from the comments Brute, Edie and myself have all commented. The only thing I would say is that in some ways the call for legislation is correct in as much as there needs to be a standardised approach and if a club is to be closed either a breach in the conditions or a proper consultation. A tiny proportion of the population is not a representative figure for a council to act on, when you read 27 letters sent in for places with populations of over a million it just suggests a we can't be bothered attitude by the council.

So a little while back we were reporting that the Platinum Lounge in Chester had lost it's license. Well it seems that we have another reprieve, as reported here. So the council did not follow it's own constitution in it's attempt to close the venue. Now this is only a temporary breathing space but it does show that the councils just make things up as they go along, which anyone who has worked in local government will tell you is pretty much standard policy unless their is a long term plan to get what one councillor wants. Can see the clubs that are under threat rushing back to the minutes of council meetings and checking them against the procedures that are suppose to be followed. I wonder how many mistakes have been made.

So thinking of comment sections and pages where members of Object post I am getting rather tired of finding one to engage with and then finding that they actually don't want to discuss, debate or look at both sides of the situation. Hearing a lot about the mynameisnot which is dealing as a hashtag on twitter about some of the street harassment that some women face. Not detracting from the hashtag but just to point out to some of the people I have tried to debate with mynameisnot "pornboy", "dirty old man", "ba*****d", "kiddie fiddler" and a bit like my real life mynameisnot "Oh my god what happened to you" nor is it "I hope you don't mind me asking but". I try to treat everyone with respect and hope I never behave boorishly, guess after a lot of the name calling that goes with having this sort of view I am a bit jaded when people get onto the name is issue.

Finally I want to pick up on a horrible hashtag #PGPDVice who are the Prince George Police Department in Maryland who are intending to live tweet an undercover sting of prostitution. Now this blog central focus is/was and always will be striptease in the UK but occasionally you read something and it is wrong on so many levels you feel you have to comment. Now originally the police were saying that they were targetting prostitution and had a picture of a woman being led away in handcuffs. Now the imagery and original discussion sounded like women were going to be the targets and there was a massive backlash on twitter where a lot of people had an opinion (including myself). Then the mission statement crept to say that they were only targeting customers and intend to help the trafficked women out. In fact they claim they have previously helped loads of trafficked women in the past but strangely there seems to be nothing to back up this claim. And this is where I got a bit hot under the collar about it. The fact that women choose to do what they want with their bodies and I would never make a moral judgement on this but it seems that the only reason anyone does "that sort of work" is because they are trafficked or coerced. The problem is if you allow that sort of sloppy belief system to influence decisions it will be applied to other adult work industries and hence we get on to a slippery slope. This is just a personal belief but long term shoddy thinking is our worst enemy. One final thought on this is a sting is supposed to be a surprise not sure how that is going to work now as it is all over social media.