The Gift That Keeps on Giving

There are a couple of elephants in the room we need to deal with before I take a look at how “accurate” the Not Buying It pdf is on the “sleaze”. Firstly is the statement made that Julie Bindel is an expert on striptease. The would be like saying I am an expert on Veganism while I stuff my face with a bacon butty. The report commissioned back in 2003 for Glasgow council saw Ms Bindel publish a book about striptease. The laughable thing about this is that when councils commission reports they nearly always tell the consultant the nd goal required and work backwards. How would I know this? I commissioned 6 IT project with consultants and every time I told them the end I wanted and they worked from there. Given Ms Bindel's stance on any for of sex work the result could have been written well before any research was actually done. So this claim of an expert may her been stretched a little and Ms Bindel's honesty about her study has been questioned about this before here and here. Ms Bindel's research has been criticized heavily on other work in the big brothel for the Poppy Project 27 academics and other researchers involved in research into prostitution, who complained that the study had been conducted without ethical approval or acknowledgement of existing sources, and had been co-written by a researcher with anti-prostitution views This was taken from wiki and immediately highlights the issue with her work.

Second elephant is the history of Not Buying It and their previous incarnation as Object Now Ltd. They had no issues either not telling the whole truth or giving the length of time they rammed Lilith down everyone's throat they they were quite happy uses resources that were not fact checked. We get the same in the previous blog entry where they identified two US venues as being in London. The sort of laziness brings everything they do into question. And we today look at the first screen shot which shows NBI busy talking about videoing by customers and state clearly they view it as revenge porn. Strange that they are busy denying that when challenge about their behaviour, at best it is two faced laziness and like many I view it as revenge porn unfortunately there is not enough money in NBIs bank to make it worthwhile pressing a claim.

From the mouth of babes

Not sure how this has anything to do with clubs as the guy has obviously been to places where you can't touch which is what NBI want

One thing I noticed was NBI try to paint the fantasy that a man holds as an issue with a strip venue. A man elects to hire a Working Girl and nothing is said about where and when but it is interesting to note that he clears states he wants to enact the situation at the club but to do what he would not be allowed to at the club by touching and more. Can anyone tell whart any club or dancer has done wrong at this point? It seems like a linkage by fantasy rather than any fact.

Women assualted for doing what NBI want

The fact that dancers refused customers any form of sexual contact and were assaulted for it is terrible, firstly that any customer has that level of entitlement and second NBI are busy blaming others for customers attitudes when the portrayal of venues by NBI increases the factors of entitlement and NBI are busy telling everyone clubs offer these services. It is obvious that at least 3 clubs don't and if NGOs stop portraying SEVs as bump and grind joints man would not feel the same level of entitlement.

Really This is what club's fault?

Now we see a guy asking for a recommendation of clubs that offer extras. The fact there was nothing else associated with the PunterNet request display indicates that no one recommended a venue with extras. You would think with the number of venues in London there would be plenty if the claims NBI make were anywhere near factual.

I suspect this was from the defunct Flying Scotsman which operated in the old red light district of Kings Cross

Now we look at the study from Ms Bindel where dancers were interviewed by who knows who without informing the dancer. So we get expectations that seem to marry up with the beliefs of NBI yet you can see by the answers that nothing extra is being offered and the expectation is set up by something else, quite possibly NGOs trying to shut strip venues. Perhaps if feminist stop the stigmatizing language the behaviour would minimise and stop affecting dancers.

Objectification Much?

Here we have something that is just pure assumption, it deny's the dancer any agency and more portrays the dancer as nothing more than a machine that cannot reason for themselves. One minute dancers are nothing more than tools of the patriarchy, then brain washed victims and also infantile humans who cannot recognise what is being done to them. All three would be labelled as objectification if done by a man yet not so it seems if other women do it.

Minimal sample size and how many were just bigging it up after many beers?

Now it is straight away clear that although knowing that the Flying Scotsman was a strip pub in the old red light area of Kings Cross it was often portrayed as a club with the same license conditions. The key thing that the linking to Bindel's report is a lot of the interviews were done by sight rather than questioning the interviewee so it becomes guess work by the people who did the interview rather than solid face. The concept that an interviewer could over loud music could guess what a man was asking a dancer seems ludicrous. We have no idea what interviewers asked male customers and did they deliberately select the most drunk men? The figures were never broken down so we cannot challenge the validity of them. Perhaps Ms Bindel could share the exact breakdown of the conduct of the research.

The US scene is totally different to the UK but hey thats just a fact

The fact that NBI are busy trying to make people view venues as the same as American explains why they are busy trying to use American figures and incidents as though they affect the UK in the same way they affect the USA. For me this is part of the NBI throw enough poop at things and something is bound to stick.

Now this is just one PDF and not even a full break down but I wanted to be as accurate as I can be. There are more documents and a lot more poorly thought out screen shots to entertain us. I call Ms Bindel's work for Glasgow a piece of fiction and if she wants to take me to court over my statements please do I have enough facts to feel that the claims made by Ms Bindel are not the truth and the report for Glasgow had an end result set out before the research even started.

 TonyN

tonyprince@acdcfan.com

Scotland Home of the Brave?

People may remember there has been a consultation in Scotland about how to regulate SEVs. Well the results are in and make interesting reading (pdf here). In fact in part is shows the bias that the Scottish Government has towards pushing their own agenda no matter what the public thinks.

"In total 1,017 responses were received. Of these 941 were largely identical in substance and reflected a campaign organised by the Scottish Association of Licensed Adult Entertainment Venues. It is presumed that the majority of these responses were from those who work in the industry together with customers."

This is taken direct from the summary of response where 92% of respondents wish clubs to remain open. The way the statement is written has got my hackles up as if it was Object organising a campaign or a similar group I can see that being perfectly okay but the clubs, dancers and patrons decide to write and the council just want to point out what everyone else had said even though it relates to less than 8% of responses. Not sure in the long term how it will pan out but so far not happy.

There are whole areas of questions I could make comments but I want to pick a couple of choice ones that gave me the giggles "the regime would need to be supported by inspection and monitoring arrangements by staff trained in violence against women and gender equality". Now given that Eaves commissioned the Lilith report you do feel that people with this "training" will see violence everywhere. I also loved the comment about the high quality employment Scotland needs. Struggling a bit to not laugh my head off.

I note that the wording across the report seemed to suggest that 92% of opinions were not as important as fleshing out opinions of the minority. Given the fact that the only "report" previously in Scotland is the Bindel one for Glasgow that is totally useless and just a voice for the opinion of Ms Bindel, shoddy methodology but it seems to echo the opinions of a handful who unfortunately seem to be MPs and Councillors. Obviously this was just a summary and we can but hope that when the report in fully is put out the majority view is recognised.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)

No Time For A Wee Dram?

And soon could be no chance for the clubs in Glasgow. Alex Salmond's Government Plans for next year include a change in the licensing bill. Which will see councils moving more towards the licensing under the England and Wales 2003 act. And this would give the councils the right to set nil limits and would probably see the same fiascos as we have had south of the border with councils with no clubs setting nil policies because it makes them look good.

Trouble is Glasgow has called for the power and based on the way they view the clubs (remember they commissioned Julie Bindel's swiss cheese like report) we could expect a zero limit and the existing clubs facing legal battles. Sandra White has been campaigning for stricter controls and has a belief that clubs are linked to violence. I tweeted her the question which report is she basing that claim on but so far no reply.

So I am now asking that anyone who has contact with the clubs named in the Bindel Report please get them to contact me. I know that you see each other as competition but unless the clubs in Glasgow start kicking off now with the council there is a chance they will be railroaded at a later date. I have tweeted at one club and e-mailed another but there has been a lack of response from the clubs. I am not after money or working for some club, I am a fanboy that wants dancers to have the right to choose how they earn a living. Which means I will fight tooth and nail to support the clubs that are properly managed. I would quite happily help run out of town clubs that aren't.

Anyway point being is the Bindel report is under a section marked prostitution (here) which implies the council believe you are running prostitutes out of your clubs. Not sure if this how you want to market your clubs but unless you start to redress the balance the chances are you are going to find that will haunt you next year. The report also references the Tottenham Court Road Branch of Spearmint Rhino and the Flying Scotsman. With the Scottie expected to drop striptease next year I contacted SPR but have not heard back yet. I also e-mailed Jim Coleman about the report but had no reply as he wrote the Foreward.

So will the clubs roll over and play dead or will we see the battle lines drawn? Not sure but with Lilith dead it seems that all the Glasgow arguments are based on a report which I have questioned and poked. If that is taken out of the frame then the arguments are not based on any claimed empirical evidence but is just made up beliefs.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)

A Bit More Bindel

Most people who read this blog know I get much more enthused in writing when defending venues and the right for each case to be judge on merit rather than blanket bans which are the current flavour of the month for councils who don't have venues. Or when defending the right to choose for individuals within the law. However as my last couple of pieces have been addressing the tools used by those who cry wolf and decide that every issue should be laid at the door of the strip industry. So I want to go further with the report by Bindel for Glasgow. I have to edit this due to the strange nature of twitter which hides tweets from conversations after 7 days. So JB still stands by her report which is brave considering the things we are pointing out.

So back to that document from Bindel and firstly I want to draw on her methodology. The covert interviews with both customers and dancers has some ethical questions as to why dancers could not be interviewed face to face? Certainly Saunder and Hardy did that in their work and reflected exactly what the dancers said. Was there a worry about the dancers saying things that would not reflect the direction the report wanted to point? So we have now look at how the dancers and customers were selected? Was there a demographic reflected in the work? A totally random sample of 20 customers and dancers should have thrown up a wider range of answers. It appears that the selection may have been on a criteria that was given to the interviewers and we have no idea why any were selected. The worry I have is that no customer was interviewed in Spearmint Rhino in London, the reason given was the customers were unapproachable. I would love to know what that means and how it was decided a customer was approachable. The structure of the methodology for the covert interviews raises questions on how and why people were targeted. This also applies to people interviewed outside the clubs as the use of the word random raises questions. If you are going to interview 20 people then 10 of each sex would seem appropriate but we are not even sure of that.

There was a diagram (figure 1) which is suppose to show the drivers that "cause" the possibility of prostitution. As no study was done in the research about the average earnings of dancers the diagram is a generalization that has no facts to back it up. In fact when you look at the research in 2009 by Leeds University and the earning power of the average dancer of £232 per shift after paying fees the indication is that dancers are quite capable of earning over £4k a month. This makes the claims in figure 1 seem rather invalid, one can only assume that dancers gave the interviewers the I am going to earn nothing story to try and get the interviewer to spend money, as no validation seems to have been done by the interviewers and we cannot assume no dancers were earning from working. So the drivers given by JB are assumptions and we all know what ASSumption are.

Now to look at table 2 again, there is an awful lot of not knowns, in fact I would estimate 50% of that table is not known. And even better is the no special conditions for Legs and Co where the table makes it appear that under 18s could get into the venue even though standard licensing laws would preclude that. And to be honest that truly is a misrepresentation of the club as the report acts as though no licensing laws apply to venues when as they sell alcohol they obviously are governed by licensing laws.

Interestingly the report make claims that the clubs are run by criminals. However licensing laws would preclude people with unpsent criminal convictions from obtaining a license. There could of course be people who are suspected of being criminals which are being referred to, but nice to see innocent till proven guilty being applied (not) if this is the case. Police have the ability to stop alcohol licenses and if a criminal applied they could easily stop the issue of licenses. Ignoring the police's abilities and yet making claims about crime you wonder just how the police is seen by the author? Certainly with freedom of information the public can easily find out about crime around the clubs if it exists.

Bindel does offer some support for dancers when she states “There is little doubt that improving working conditions and contractual arrangements for the dancers would, nevertheless, be of benefit, at least in the short term.”. Why the short term you ask? Well I would take a wild stab in the dark that someone expected venues to close in the longer term. It is a shame there wasn't more support of those women who choose to dance from the radical feminists along these lines rather than the close the clubs and don't worry about the impact it would have on female employment. Interestingly not every feminist has that view including a lot of dancers who see themselves as feminists but are being told that they can't be feminists because they don't fit in with the radical feminists belief in how the world should be.

The use of drugs is something that has me scratching my head, the report says some dancers use drugs and yet I can point out that some doctors use drugs, some investment bankers use drugs, some academic staff use drugs. I know a couple of dancers that will smoke pot but club owners are very aware of the damage drugs being found on the premise would have for their license so they are very against drugs. Certainly I haven't seen any epidemic among dancers in the 20 plus years I have been on the circuit. No doubt there will be the cry they use drugs to dull their sense or they couldn't dance, given that an estimated one in three adults have used drugs at some point in their lives then sorry if you tried to close every industry that used drugs they would be no industries. And how many feminists use drugs? Should we ban feminism because some feminists use drugs? Lets be honest woman found with joint doesn't look like getting a headline but if it was lap dancer found with joint suddenly the whole thing changes. It does show the very two faced nature of these sort of claims.

Still more gems are buried in Bindel's report and all I can say is that in my opinion it has no value now. It may have had a little value in 2004 and that would be generous but in 2013 the report bears no reflection on the current state of the industry in the UK and some of the bibliography quoted in 2004 has even less value. Certainly with Lilith being withdrawn there is now a spate of documents that were previously supporting the radical feminists have lost their importance. Anyone using the Bindel report in 2013 as a resource for the trying to close clubs needs to have a serious rethink!!!!!! I look forward to the chance to debate the validity of the report with anyone who believes it is worth defending.

TonyN (tonyprince@acdcfan.com)

Bindel's 2004 Report to Glasgow Council

This is a review of Julie Bindel's (JB from here on in) 2004 report for Glasgow and it's relative value in 2013. Couple of things first before I get into this, firstly this is just my personal take on it shaped by 20 years plus exposure to the industry, 4 years in local government and 4 years in pre sales/marketing. Secondly this was a 64 page report and I have 62 observations and comments running into over 6 pages in abbreviated form, if I wrote this up as a report it would run into 12 to 15 pages without a bibliography. I would also point out that JB did answer me via twitter that she stands by this report  as valid for the UK in 2013.

Okay this is just a general observation in the use of language, grammar and punctuation. Throughout the report JB uses the term evidence with the meaning signs or indication, however the use of the word evidence in Local Government is for indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. Obviously this could shape the belief that rather that being a sign it is a fact. This is interpretational but experience in Local Government would lead the reader to believe fact rather than supposition. Also within the report there is usage of speech marks to indicate a possible second meaning. This is to create another supposition based on belief rather than knowledge, for example I believe that JB intention was to "encourage" a belief in line with her personal views. See what I did there? This happens throughout the document especially with reference to dancers in the "interviews".

Now this will be amusing to any London club fans as Spearmint Rhino and Flying Scotsman are compared as a like for like through most of the report and it is only in a small quick paragraph that the Scottie is acknowledge as a strip pub and even then the "observer" in the venue failed to notice that the dancers collected before going on stage but stated that they collected after -1 for observation. There is table 2 which seems to indicate that private dancing takes place in the Scottie and only later does it concede that no private dancing takes place. For some reason the report forgets to inform readers that the dancing takes place on a stage. I was amused that the "Observer" was pointed to a pimp in the club as someone once pointed me out to staff as a drug dealer simply because I was monopolising the attention of his favourite dancer. I have even left the Scottie at the same time as a dancer I knew as a friend as she lived on my way home so I would drop her off. This does not mean prostitution just that I had a good friendship with that dancer. I would point out that also in 2004 that several pubs in the area (for those that don't know the Scottie is in Kings cross) would be visited by prostitutes close to closing time looking for customers. This wasn't anything about the Scottie apart from the fact there were men there which applied to several other pubs. Useful though using the locality to help paint the picture.

Now lets move to the covert interviews most especially with dancers as obviously there was little structure which is acknowledged in a table that part of the interview was done covertly. Now the issue is the dancers believe that the interviewer is a customer and approaches her as such using different marketing ploys to encourage her to spend money. From I love my job to woe is me I am going to make no money tonight, these are tools of the trade. I also wonder what guidelines were given to the interviewers as people can shape discussions and lead them in certain directions. I have had training in Pre Sales to do this and know how simple it is to get people to not only discuss what you want them to but also to use language to shape answers. Not saying this was the case but pointing out as woe is me answer could be dancer marketing, interviewer shaping the discussion or just woe is me. TBH though I know how well dancers do so guessing it is marketing. There is a classic line in the report that had me wondering just how naïve the author is? “There are indications that the dancers would attempt to maximise their earnings by extracting as much as possible from each customer they had contact with.” I am sorry but dancers earn their living from the payment by customers for their performance why wouldn't anyone want to maximise their earnings?

The report references a story from the Scottish Daily Record in 1997 where it is claimed 3 women were deported that were part of a trafficking ring. Unfortunately having looked under various versions of the description in Google there seems to be no reference to the case although even if there was one case both Pentameter and Pentameter II had no raids on any clubs throughout the UK. Certainly with the more stringent checks in England and Wales of dancers by councils it would be almost impossible for a dancer to be a victim of trafficking. If the one case is valid then that in over 20 years of my exposure to the industry is the only case that I have ever heard of.

Now jump to chapter A Front for Prostitution? This is a big chapter and to be honest it is hard to know where to start. The question of physical contact and dancers touching themselves during performances were raised however in 2004 there were no standard practises or guidelines for clubs so Lap Dancing obviously in clubs involved physical contact. With the changes in council regulations dancers are not allowed to touch customers nor customers touch dancers. In fact even a kiss on the cheek or walking the customer hand in hand to the private dance area has been stopped by some venues to ensure that council rules cannot be misinterpreted. The section on prostitution contains a lot of suggestions of selling sex yet no actual proof is offered on any of the 6 venues. With the much more stringent regulations councils are putting in place and the concern venues have for keeping their licenses I would suggest that the chances of prostitution are slim. Not saying that it would never happen but from my knowledge of the London scene of 20 years I can only think of one dancer who would arrange to meet customers at hotels etc and she was fired from 4 venues that I know of. However dancers do make friends with customers and sometimes you meet for coffee or a birthday drink that does not mean that sex is being sold just that normal social interaction is taking place.

Now lets jump to clubs in context: The claim of widespread opposition to clubs is strange as the research recently by Professor Phil Hubbard indicated whilst there were issues agreeing locations only 3% of the 941 people surveyed said there was no place for these clubs and then it just turned into NIMBY from some of those surveyed. As the numbers surveyed far exceed the numbers in the 2004 paper that were interviewed the results are more likely to reflect true public opinion. I note that an interviewee in London claimed issues with Spearmint Rhino and noise levels. Has this person never heard of environmental health? If the noise level was truly unbearable then the person could easily have had the venue even closed for repeat offences. Having worked in Local Government the club could have been shut if the noise was that bad. There is also the quote of one person who is local who is embarrassed by the club being near. That reflect a persons moral objection, I could easily say I would be over the moon to be near a club. My opinion would be described as irrelevant by those who oppose clubs and yet the statement that one individual is embarrassed is given weight as it reflects the author's opinion.

I could go on and on and on. I will point out that since the report was written we have had multiple academic researches done using much larger and more diverse samples. Leeds interviewed 200 dancers, Kent had over 900 individuals involved! Also JB has Lilith in the report which has been removed from the Eaves website and the freedom of information requests from Newquay, Camden and Wandsworth which suggests that the idea that clubs encourage sexual violence is in fact a fallacy. I have seen how wording can shape belief and how belief can shape wording especially in Local Government. The choice by Glasgow council of who to write the report suggests they had an intended end game and employed the person most likely to reflect their beliefs. This is nothing new in Local Government, I have done it myself on a couple of occasions and deliberately employed the consultant whose report would reflect the result I wanted. Certainly people would know of JB's beliefs before employing her and this would then bring into question how objective the report was ever going to be.

I am starting to realise that this is going to be longer than intended and I do apologise, there was so much to pick and choose from and trying to get those bits I wanted from my subjective opinion. Still anyone who refers to this report as valid for 2013 would also need to acknowledge that the Leeds and Kent researches are larger and more recent and have researchers who are much more objective. I would say that I have enough issues from the report to Glasgow that I would question in usefulness in the strongest terms.

TonyN tonyprince@acdcfan.com