Robert, Brad, George and Johnny would be gutted. :D

Fixed.

i can't argue with this. weed has made me pretty much completely fucking retarded.

men are dogs. dogs are filthy, stupid creatures.

following what?

if typing a few words possibly gets me nudes, then why not?

Satan, I'm glad to hear that you didn't become a stripper.

i still don't see anything wrong with it, it's just a job, but it's hell on your body, the bruises you get on your thighs from the pole are insane, plus the constant plucking/waxing/shaving/putting on & taking off makeup/wearing 6-7" shoes and being on your feet for hours/weaves/etc

I think it's degrading, but suit yourself.

i don't think it's degrading. who's made to look stupid? the woman has the power over an audience full of stupid slobbering men in that situation. if you're comfortable enough with your body to put yourself out there i think it's great and can be very liberating. everyone likes to feel sexy and attractive. that's not why i was considering it. i knew i could make a lot of money and i love having that kind of power over other people.

what i do have something of a problem with are the ridiculous, unrealistic physical standards that have become the norm in the sex industry, plastic surgery has become almost a prerequisite. if you want to do it for yourself, great, fine, whatever, but a ton of girls go out and buy big plastic tits just to further their careers in the industry because unfortunately that's what sells.

This poem by Margaret Atwood is really good about the whole subject. I came across it on a Flickr contacts page, and in looking at most of her photos, it's pretty obvious she's a dancer.

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

that would be a big difference between Portland and NYC. real breasts actually sell pretty well here.

i just mean the sex industry in general, there are a fair amount of places here where you can go and see some real titties but i'm speaking of what appeals to the masses here. mind-numbingly generic.

oh yeah, you guys do know there are male strippers, right? a lot of them. do you ever hear anyone say that they're degrading themselves? no.
hmmmm.

Ah, yes, the Lydia Lunch position of third wave feminism.

I think it's a stupid position, honestly, but I'm typically not as sexually-transfixed as some.

I had the opportunity to watch a bachlorette party at the bar I used to dj at in Olympia. that guy was degrading himself beyond belief, and walked out with some pretty high bank for doing it.

I couldn't do what he was doing, but I'd be a female stripper in a second if I was a girl. I feel more envy than lust when I watch them. If they're good.

yeah sorry but if one my homies was a stripper i guaranteed you they would get made of fun of sooo much

i am not a feminist.

lydia lunch is a stupid cunt but that's the one thing she was ever right about. why is it degrading? if you feel you have something to offer the world shouldn't you share it if you so desire?

I guess that is something we'll have to disagree on.

Money isn't everything, and it's definitely not worth stripping for in my opinion. I don't think people who dance are disgusting low-lifes with no self respect, I'd just never do it myself and I wish other women didn't have to do either. I wish it wasn't so common.

Regarding those lyrics or whatever, most retail is almost as degrading as stripping.

Yeah, and there are guys who turn tricks too.

I have the same opinion on the subject for both men and women.

male strippers don't have the looming threat of rape or assault leaving work, they don't get called sluts and whores. they are ridiculous and retarded and should be made fun of, but the shit they take is not remotely comparable to the shit that females in the sex industry have taken for decades.

prostitution is the world's oldest profession why?

because sex sells.


class dismissed.

a lot of strippers have made the decision it's more degrading. a friend of mine who went and worked at a peep show told me how she came to the decision that she was wearing short skirts in the cafes she worked in order to get better tips and finally just said "fuck it".

There is an extremely excellent book on being a stripper: "Strip City" by Lily Burana. Its even possible I'm in it in as part of a composite character...

Pathetic or not, one of the things I miss most about Anchorage, AK is the Great Alaskan Bush Company. Simply the best strip club I've ever been to. While most of 'em just display body parts, many of them actually do dance. Onyx can do amazing things with her body--feet behind her head doing pushups, put herself in a suitcase... Most of the girls there are very nice and very intelligent--yeah you can make money by hustling lap dance after dance but I know I like it when a girl pays attention to me. In a way, they are therapists to social misfits like me.

I find fake boobs for strippers (and porn stars) to be so ironic. Yeah, they look good--when you have clothes on. Take 'em off and yuck! Visually, I much prefer small ones anyway.

I can still remember one song by Onyx--the Rolling Stones' "Miss You" remixed by JayZ(?--from some movie soundtrack?). Lights up real high. She was bounding around the stage in a frenzy. I had plenty of THC and alcohol on board. Magical.

Strip clubs around here suck moose balls.

Oh yeah, I have utmost respect for strippers. I know I couldn't do that job--even if I had the body. Indeed, a stripper friend said she felt degraded--when she was applying for some welfare like product when she was trying to get out of stripping.

See, I'd never even apply at a place that would make me wear a short skirt. I'd wear one cause I want to, but never cause someone said so.

I also refuse to dye my hair just to get a job, fuck that shit.

What about people who WANT to do it? I'm sure its a small number but I've met some who seem to really enjoy it. Including one who came back to it even though she no longer needed the money--just liked doing it.




On the other hand, Onyx, mentioned above, says she never wants to think about it once she's done. And, she is extremely good at what she does.

nobody made her. she did it to get better tips. I don't think you'll find anybody alive of either gender who won't tip a nice attractive person better than a purely nice one. men are surely worse though.

some people feel that being a stripper would be degrading... some people might feel that having a desk job is degrading.

work's work. not that it's all that easily simplified, buuuuut...

LIKE I SAID

If you wanna do it, go ahead! Dance naked for money and wear short skirts while you waitress. It's just something I wouldn't ever do because I refuse to be seen as an object even if I someone was paying me to do so.

Just stating my opinion, which I am entitled too. I'm not being some bible thumping bitch who is telling you all that you're going to hell.

And since that is my opinion, I'm glad that Satan didn't become a stripper because I dislike the idea of men thinking she is an object, even though she would be making money. It's not like if she became one I'd be all, "How sad :("

i wouldn't do it either, not in a billion years. even if i had marvelous tits.

just sayin'

I would if I was female, in a second, but I suppose that does nothing to prove that strippers aren't brainless whores desperate for attention.

If I had a better face I would seriously consider stripping.

Alas, I work fast food, which is obviously still degrading.

I'm the same

why are women ashamed of embracing the word feminism?

Me too. However, if someone wants to strip for money, I think they are entitled to. I do worry that having to deal with "customers" who objectify you on a daily basis, as well as other situations potentiallly crushing to your self-confidence, there is little one could do to keep one's self worth intact.

In my experience, strippers have above average intelligence. They have to be able to talk to a huge range of men. Attention seekers? Well, let me say this:


Now, the FUNNY part is that, to a girl, strippers find that hilarious.

how did i, the resident feminazi, miss this thread?

anywho i've over thought this topic far too many times.

sex work is degrading because you are reducing yourself to your genitalia, plasticizing your sexuality, inevidably falling into misogynist traps etc. however most work is degrading because you are selling yourself for a service. certain sex workers have a lot more agency than others. it depends on issues of class/what joints you are working it/if you have a pimp or men you have to rent time from etc.

i've mentioned this before but i went out to dinner with tristan taormino (a very famous feminist pornographer) and a couple of her friends/lovers earlier this year. (yes amerikangod, i do have a picture to prove this.) the two of us share the idea that one of the most feminist actions you can take is to advocate sexual pleasure. there is so much attention to issues of sexual pain/violence that we forget that the vagina can also be associated with mind blowing orgasms. tristan believes that she is changing the world by creating new pornographic images which a)are instructional (check out vivid-ed) and b) in which the actors/actresses have parts in creating their own scenes and are legitimately turned on c)profitable for the sex workers who are involved with the scenes. that's great! it's good to know that there are sex workers out there who actually have okay working situations. still, tristan and other like-minded third wavers get carried away though and forget that for the majority of sex workers around the world are treated like slaves.

What I hear you saying is that, even though it has been demonstrated that sex work CAN have positive implications, even those people should not do it because other people are oppressed?




I'm currently watching re-runs of the only 'reality' show I can watch: America's Next Top Model. I really don't see a big difference between 'legit' modeling and sex work. In both you are objectivified and potentially treated like meat. In both you will potentially work nude but in one you show your genitals and one you don't.

I don't see a huge difference.


And I really disagree that stripping is 'reducing yourself to genitals'. When I go to a club, I want to have a woman (girl, actually--but that is another aspect) entertain me. And yes, a part of that is lookin' at genitals but that is only a part.

But pornography is distinctly different from striptease and prostitution. Sometimes I think people who produce publishable media tend to overestimate the impact the condition of publishing has in "changing the world" and I don't consider pornography is at all a port for social change. The pornographic image, in my mind, is not an ideal image but is a carnal, imperfect messy image and, therefore, cannot convey those kinds of ideas. It's the confusion of those ideas that is erotic and its abandonment of those concerns beyond getting respective organs to erupt that is pornographic.

There's a world of difference, though, between something previously recorded being played on a screen versus being there in the flesh. In all honest, in the number of times that I have gone to strip clubs, I become timid and disquieted by just simply being within that atmosphere of flesh-money exchange. And it isn't because of any kind of puritan ethic about the sexual body, it's more about the money and how there is a price on everything. Or, rather, it seems to me that the strip club is the place where everything else that exists begins to have a price, the genesis of metaphysical capitalism. It's also how a strip club can be so absolutely intimate while simultaneously rejecting all intimacy that bugs me. Nauseating.

This seems ridiculous from the person who put pictures of herself all over the internet, specifically this site. Which is to say that when you do that, you make yourself an object for 'the male gaze'. I would draw the line between someone posting an image on a messageboard so others can see what you look like and doing almost nothing but post pictures of yourself. Objectification doesn't stop just because the 'receiver' is absent, or obscure.

I've nothing to offer on the subject of strippers except that if it is degrading, it's degrading in two directions.

That's funny. I actually like that part. I find it honest--brutally so. We live in a captialist society where everything is a commodity to be sold. Take a girl on a first date and your playing a game where the rules and outcome are undefined. In a strip club, the rules and outcome are predetermined. (For the record, I believe that I have some amount of Asberger's--could factor in here.)

I find the more accurate equation is the time-money exchange. The nudity part is what it is.



very true

also, your sig quote is spot on for this thread!

I've honestly never been inside a titty-bar.

I'm too cheap to pay for something that's free.

it depends.
a face represents identity, there are so many things pictures can represent.
usually with sex workers, their faces are not that relevant, the idea that they have an identity outside their sexuality is not the point in that context.
Personally, I love seeing people's faces. I love to know they are real people.
That really hasn't got much to do with exposing yourself to be objectified sexually.
Now if men do that regardless of your intentions, that is another story.
I don't think it's right to expect women to AVOID doing things because of how they COULD be percieved by sexist eyes.
How many times will a woman be doing something as innocent and absent-minded as sitting down, arranging her hair and be accused of trying be seductive, therefore worthy of objectification? Should I be self concious at all times in order to prevent the "male gaze" from doing that? Or should men stop excusing themselves, acting like it was called for?

What woman doesn't like admiration? But one must know the difference between admiring and degrading. The healthy and unhealthy.

I guess what I am trying to say is that there is a tendency to separate sexuality from personality and individuality, and not enough material or behaviour out there accepts that those things are always together.

There is a huge difference between wanting to be sexy and wanting to be objectified.

If some women feel empowered by stripping in a context, I don't see a problem in that as long as people don't start assuming that´s what we all should feel. The greatest problem with feminism is that it tends to ignore women are individuals and feel differently about things.

now that it is degrading in two directions i agree. i sometimes wonder if prostitution is more degrading for the prostitute or the client.

All this talk about objectification is kicking me in the shins. I'm just deleted a long rant about my contempt for the plurality of meaning in objectivity.