Abstracts: August 2002
August 2, 2002
"Indecent conduct" claim at lap dance club
BBC
According to this article:
Spearmint Rhino lap dancing club faces losing its licence to sell alcohol after a police investigation allegedly found evidence of "indecent conduct" on its premises. Police are believed to have studied CCTV tapes and sent in undercover officers. But Phil Whitehouse, one of the club's three licensees and vice-president of Spearmint Rhino, said police had not told the club what it was alleged to have done wrong. Camden Council will decide whether to revoke the club's licence at a hearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on August 19.
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2168868.stm
August 2, 2002
Why women must get out of men's laps
The Herald
ANDREA DWORKIN, the leading US feminist, applauds Glasgow City Council's campaign against lap-dancing which, she says, degrades women
"Glasgow needs to be thanked. Through consistent and effective feminist organising for the equality and dignity of women over a 30-year period, a new lexicon has reached responsive politicians who are willing to ban lap-dancing because of its affront to the integrity of women. Objectification is recognised for what it is: the dehumanising of a subordinated group for the purpose of civil and sexual dominance. Commodifying the sexuality of women is recognised for what it is: the abuse of women's bodies as if women were products for mass consumption.
Lap-dancing is seen for what it is: living pornography. The struggle for this consciousness has been long and hard. It is joined now by the Glasgow City Council, and a licensing board. The recognition that sexual exploitation is incompatible with equality is shared by a community of people in the mainstream. This community has demonstrated courage by refusing to give in to the pressure of those who organise lap-dancing and the johns who consume it.
The primary issue is the status of women, who are inevitably demeaned by being treated as less than fully human, as objects who can be used and misused. It is only when defending sexual objectification in prostitution and its sister phenomena (lap-dancing, stripping, pornography) that women get to be "consenting adults". Giving up one's body for money is the signature of a woman's consent.
In California a man named Lawrence Singleton raped a teenage girl and cut off her arms. As a final gesture he threw a $10 bill at her nearly dead body. She had consented, he said, and he clearly expected his largesse to prove consent. Had he not cut off her arms, the $10 might have bought him an acquittal.
When the Marquis de Sade assaulted and poisoned prostituted women, the exchange of money was (and still is) widely regarded as consent. When the Marquis was prosecuted for egregious violence by one of his non-prostitute victims, her willingness to accept a money settlement showed her bad character and that she deserved what she got. She did more than consent: he abused her because she wanted him to . . . So that she could get the money. The same algebra occurs every day in contemporary US courts. Money for sex cleanses the man; the woman who takes the money is consenting to, or has invited whatever happens to her.
Glasgow City Council and the licensing board refused to accept this patriarchal axiom. Instead, the concern was the well-being of all women, including those who did lap-dancing: commercial sexual exploitation was seen as a gateway to violence against women. Men did not get to use money to justify exploiting the downtrodden. And though the people I consider to be exploitative will claim that middle-class women are racing to sex emporiums, the fact is that lap-dancing is for the poor, the abused, the hopeless. The work so-called is more deadening and boring than any assembly line in any factory, and then there is the question of vulnerability: the naked are vulnerable, the clothed waving pounds are not. And men are so big and strong.
The one argument for lap-dancing is the economic one. Even though women do not consent to poverty, women are poor, none the less. Lap-dancers are described as self-employed. They pay the boss £80 a night and 15% of the tips they make for the privilege of being sexual commodities. They are said to make a whopping £25,000 a year.
Every woman, said the women's movement, is one man away from welfare. Lap-dancers require considerably more than one man. Women working in the same jobs as men still get paid less than their male counterparts. But no-one would expect to see an epidemic of male lap-dancing. Some forms of degradation are female-only. As with most so-called sex work, the lap-dancers are closer to indentured servitude than to capitalist pigdom. It is hard to imagine a time when men will run out of ways to exploit women's bodies for sexual entertainment. Lap-dancing is the craze du jour, a hair-breadth away from prostitution, or conjoined with it. It might be better to bring back bear-baiting as a public spectacle than to make each man's lap a kingdom on which the glamorous serfs will perform as dancing girls to bring him the pleasure of the pornographic nude in action . . . and for him, all for him. He is king of the world. The sexual proletarian has to convince him that she is on his lap, of all the laps in the universe, because she wants to be. His lap is special, don't you see, as each and every time she goes through the ordeal of making him twice his natural size. Virginia Woolf did not imagine that the man would have mirrors of this sort . . . Live, naked, dancing lap-women . . . With which to enhance and enlarge himself.
He's a greedy piece of work, this consumer of other live human beings. He thinks the females exist for him and the new game in town is that they come this close, so very close, to his erect penis without touching it and then he gives them money. In the game, as the rules are written, he flirts with the continuum between impotence and masturbation. Of course the implicit logic is that the females do touch it if he wants and then the women get more money (at that moment) and cross a line; no longer dancers, they become prostituted women, the genuinely marginal women to whom anything can and will be done. Lap-dancing is a rung above the bottom. Prostitution is the bottom. The fall is inevitable because lap-dancing is foreplay in lieu of the main event. The men are excited by the novelty of having female strangers so close, purely sexual, expecting nothing but a few bills. The men are excited by the rush of having naked, living pornography so close. The men are excited by their own agency, the domination of "the girls" by money that they have and "the girls" don't. Each individual man is king of the world as he flashes cash.
In order to advocate or consume lap-dancing a man must think he is a fascinating sexual figure; thus it is plausible for him to argue that he is fulfilling the woman's need to be naked and undulating for him. The arrogance of the assumption is staggering. The sheer boredom of man after man after man should be self-evident, but apparently, along with celebrating his own sexual charisma, the man thinks that women have no brains, no hearts, no lives worth living. He's enough. He is reason enough to condemn her to a degraded life. To accept a woman as a sexual commodity means the man has no brain, no heart, no life worth living.
Think about it: the average idiot (included in this category are the prominent men who use lap-dancers) has a right, which he and his cohort presume, to use up the life of a woman, to have her touch or not touch at his behest, to have her naked and gyrating, to appropriate her sexuality for money . . . But not only her sexuality, also her vitality, her energy, years of her life. It's as if the bear has been let out of the cage because finally a bunch of bears has been taught to lick, not bite.
The women are throwaway women, and most do end up in outright prostitution, visited by these same men, now playing a harder, more forceful, more depraved game. In lap-dancing, as in prostitution, the male has the illusion of having bought the female body . . . It's his for three minutes, or five, or 10. He has the illusion of having a right to buy that body. He has no responsibility for what happens to that body after he is done with it. She is an "it", her body standing in for her humanity. One has to ask: are men really this stupid? Then one grasps the sinister principle that has allowed all the banal boys to turn into nasty but gratified men: commodifying a human body is the base principle for all forms of systematised cruelty: trafficking in women, selling slaves in the Sudan, using violence against another group, identified by race or gender or national identity or class. The big, brave men who want lap-dancing could use some lap-slicing in its place."
Andrea Dworkin is the author of Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation, which won an American Book Award, Intercourse, Pornography: Men Possessing Women, and the novels Mercy and Ice and Fire. Her newest book is Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, not yet published in the UK.
August 3, 2002
Celebrity lap-dancing club 'is used as a brothel'
Independent
Jason Bennetto
Britain's biggest lap-dancing chain is under threat because Scotland Yard alleges its flagship club is being used as a brothel.
According to this article:
The Metropolitan Police's clubs and vice unit claims to have found evidence that "indecent conduct has taken place" at the Spearmint Rhino club on Tottenham Court Road in central London. Officers are understood to have viewed CCTV tapes from the club and to have sent in undercover officers. If the police, backed by Camden council, are successful in having the liquor licence revoked, similar action could be taken at other premises where claims of paid sex are made. The chain, which markets itself as a "Gentlemen's Club" that operates a "look-but-don't-touch" policy, offers visitors topless dancing and all-nude performances in private booths. On top of the £15 entrance fee, it costs £10 to watch a public dance and £20 for a private one.
The big money is made from the businessmen and City traders willing to shell out thousands of pounds on champagne and private performances. The club was in the headlines last month when a senior manager at the City firm Cantor Fitzgerald claimed in the High Court that "80 per cent of the market" [financial traders] could be seen on a "good night" at Spearmint Rhino.
Spearmint's owner, John Gray, a 48-year-old Californian, boasts that the turnover of the West End branch, which opened in November 2000, is £300,000 a week. There are six clubs in England, including Birmingham and Bournemouth, with five more planned for other locations – the latest opposite the MI6 headquarters in south London.
At the clubs, dancers strip around a pole on a stage while other women persuade customers to buy private dances. Signs say: "Gentlemen must remain seated during a dance, with their hands at their sides. There must be no touching of the dancers except when paying a fee into the dancer's hand or garter." The dancers pay £80 for working the 8pm-2am evening shift, and make their money through tips and cash stuffed into their garter belts.
But after claims that some dancers were being paid for sex, a police inquiry was set up. In July last year, at a licensing hearing, police voiced concern that conduct in the club might amount to prostitution. Scotland Yard said yesterday: "Camden officers who became concerned about activities taking place at the Spearmint Rhino, Camden, contacted the clubs and vice unit who began an investigation ... "In partnership with Camden council, officers will make a case for the revocation of the Clubs Liquor Licence on the grounds that indecent conduct has taken place on the premises and that the licensees are not fit and proper to hold a licence."
Spearmint Rhino has strongly denied the allegations. A spokeswoman said the clubs operated a strict code of conduct and included random drug testing of the women. Two girls quoted in a newspaper article suggesting that they were willing to have sex for money had been fired, she said. "We are a table-dancing club where people can come to have a meal and a drink."
The police and the local authority will present their evidence at a licensing hearing at Highbury Corner magistrates' court on 19 August. In a separate hearing, Camden has turned down an application to renew the public entertainment licence of the Tottenham Court Road branch. The club is appealing against the decision.
August 3, 2002
Lap-dance club may lose licence
Telegraph
According to this article:
A lap-dancing club faces losing its liquor licence amid police allegations of "indecent conduct" on its West End premises.
The Spearmint Rhino gentlemen's club, which is popular with City traders, is at the centre of an investigation by Scotland Yard's clubs and vice unit. Its findings will be presented at a authority licensing hearing on Aug 19 at which police will argue that the club's licence to serve alcohol should be revoked.
They are understood to have examined CCTV tapes from the club and to have sent in undercover officers. A police source said: "The investigation is complete and findings will be presented as evidence at a Camden council revocation hearing."
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/
news/2002/08/03/nbul03.xml#6
August 4, 2002
Abuse of lap-dancers is rife
Irish Independent
Jimmy Guerin
According to this article:
"Ireland's' booming lap-dance industry has been hit by claims of exploitation,
abuse and prostitution.
Garda have received complaints of dancers being pressured into sex sessions,
while the Sunday Independent has found evidence of an organised protection
racket. One English dancer said: "I have worked in lap-dancing clubs in London
and Hong Kong . . . some clubs in Ireland are more sleazy, creepy and dangerous
than either of those cities."
Abstract to follow.
August 4, 2002
Dancers coerced into 'extras' in seamy lap clubs
Irish Independent
Jimmy Guerin
According to this article:
Investigations reveal abuse, exploitation and prostitution among sections of the Irish lap-dancing industry, reports Jimmy Guerin
"In the Garda Immigration Section in Harcourt Square, a typewritten letter tells the story of Ireland's shame. In its few, short paragraphs, a Bulgarian lap-dancer tells of the living nightmare she endured at a Dublin venue. She writes of exploitation, and of a constant pressure to add sex to her daily list of chores. When she said no, she was sacked."
Abstract to follow.
August 16, 2002
Action urged on sex trade trafficking
Edinburgh News
Stuart Reid
According to this article:
The Government is not doing enough to tackle the problem of human traffickers forcing women into prostitution in Britain, according to the head of the London Vice Squad. Chief Supt Simon Humphrey said he failed to understand why such exploitation of women - the majority of whom are from eastern Europe - was not being treated with the "utmost seriousness" at a political level.
Abstract to follow.
- http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/
index.cfm?id=899492002
August 16, 2002
UK 'fails to protect foreign vice girls'
BBC
Trade in girls is "crime against humanity"
According to this article:
Not enough is being done to stop human traffickers forcing young foreign women into prostitution in Britain, according to the head of London's vice squad. Chief Superintendent Simon Humphrey told the BBC the practice amounted to a "crime against humanity" and it should be taken more seriously. He accused the government of not doing enough, when compared with other countries.
Abstract to follow.
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2196786.stm
August 29, 2002
Charity calls for ban on lap-dancing
TCM
According to this article:
An Irish charity which works with prostitutes has called for lap-dancing clubs to be banned in Ireland.
The Ruhama group said research in Europe and the US has found that lap-dancing clubs often develop into illegal brothels.
Louise Eek, who worked as lap-dancer in Sweden, told a press conference today that in her experience, that is usually the case.
August 29, 2002
Lap dance clubs reject prostitution links
TCM
According to this article:
Owners of lap dancing clubs in Ireland have rejected claims made today that there is a connection between their clubs and prostitution.
Abstract to follow.
August 30, 2002
Lap-dancing is a route to prostitution
Irish Independent
Kathy Donaghy
Lifting the lid on lap dancing: Ex-lap dancer Louise Eek from Sweden who travels the world highlighting the links between lap dancing and prostitution.
According to this article:
Lap-dancing is one of the routes into prostitution and the perception that it is innocent fun needed to be questioned, an organisation working with women in prostitution has warned. Maura Connolly, director of the Ruhama Women's Project, said they saw the development of lap-dancing clubs here as part of the rapid expansion of the globalised sex industry. They wanted the clubs shut down. While Ms Connolly said there was no evidence of these clubs being involved in prostitution, the experience around the world was that this was inevitable.
Abstract to follow.
August 30, 2002
Louise tells of nightmare fall into prostitution
Irish Times
According to this article:
Louise Eek's nightmare began when she was 12 and her parents split up.
Abstract to follow.
August 31, 2002
Lap-dancing on the slippery slope to despair
Irish Times
Paul Cullen
According to this article:
The shrugs which greeted the arrival of lap-dancing in Ireland a few years ago marked some kind of watershed in Irish culture. What once would have caused torrents of denunciation and controversy generated.
Abstract to follow.
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