EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- As Death Toll Rises Beyond 500, Garment Factory Disaster 'Worst in World History'
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- Pregnant Anti-War Soldier Sent to Prison
- Move Over, Koch Brothers: A Bigger, Darker Rightwing Funder Is Out to Destroy Public Education
- Move Over, Koch Brothers: A Bigger, Darker Rightwing Funder Is Out to Destroy Public Education
- Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Climate Change's 'Evil Twin': Ocean Acidification
- The Downwinders: Fracking Ourselves to Death in America
Popular content
Today's Top News
03.25.10 - 11:18 PM
Not For Sale
Johanna Siguroardottir is Iceland's first female and the world's first openly lesbian head of state.
Iceland just passed a law banning all strip clubs, making it the first country to ban stripping for feminist rather than religious reasons. The tiny country has a strong women's movement and the world's first openly gay head of state, and almost half its politicians are women.
"It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold." - Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban.
Comments are closed
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
138 Comments so far
Show AllWhat a wonderful thing; doing something to elevate the human condition without all the religious overtones.
Ah, and yet it stems precisely from those same tired religious ideas of the division between physical and mental. Secondly, like most other religious ideas, it fails to take into account the actual reality of the situation, prefering to imagine the situation in an idealized and thoroughly unreal capacity.
To wit:
1) strippers make a whole lot of money and are generally not coerced to do what they do,
2) many of them actually take pleasure from what they do,
3) not enjoying your employment anyway is not really considered to be a valid reason not to work in any other industry,
4) nudity is not evil, nor is dancing naked fundamentally different than other performances such as singing or playing sports, unless we take it as a priori that nudity is somehow wrong
I'm sure you could make the same arguments for prostitution. Look, I don't give a fuck about the "sins" of the act. I just make the argument that it is about exploition. If the possibility arose, don't you think that many of the "many" who "take pleasure" in what they do would do something else?
"If the possibility arose, don't you think that many of the "many" who "take pleasure" in what they do would do something else?"
Fine, then why aren't they? Are they barred from "legitmate" employment, and, if so, why, and what do you suggest they do instead? Or how do we insure no woman has to shake her tits for more money than most men make digging rocks out of a tunnel into a mountain 8 hrs a day?
And isn't it,actually, nice that women have the oppurtunity to use their looks to make such a lucrative living. What would men do in such limited employment situations as you seem to think exists - steal or starve, most likely?
Funny, the former is considered absolutely wrong, even just to eat, while the latter sure solves their problem for you, and seems to carry no moral terpitude.
It's an advantage to women, if you think about it, that men can be exploited into shelling out hundreds of $s /wk just to see naked breasts.
It's nice to get up on some moral high horse. You think you can see better, and you don't have to smell the dung.
QUOTE: And isn't it,actually, nice that women have the oppurtunity to use their looks to make such a lucrative living UNQUOTE
Think about that . . .
This is a male-run/controlled industry --
Where is the equivalent industry for males?
This industry exists to debase and demean females --
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
I'm sure if the possibility arose, many of the high paid strippers would love to start a new career as a minimum wage bank teller. At the bank, they are never exploited. I'll bet the government never put their idea up for a vote by the strippers.
Caleb wins this thread. :D
Outlawing stripping because it is ostensibly exploitation opens the door to taking into account all exploitation of labour.
It's a slippery slope argument. ;)
I didn't know we were competing?
Can i go back and add a few "exploiteds"?
Capitalism is based on EXPLOITATION ....
of nature, natural resources, animal-life --
and even other human beings according to various myths of inferiority.
We do have a class structure in America -- there is exploitation by capitalism
of EVERYTHING.
Pornography is propaganda -- intended to debase and demean females -- and to bar
them from equality.
Let's change the system and move on from Capitalism --
Meanwhile, one's body should not be for sale --
No one's body !!
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
I know now, after a life at hard labor, that I truly 'sold my body for money'. And the money wasn't worth it. I even realize now that I've been sodomized, however metaphorically. I'd have been better off stripping, although I doubt my um.... assets.. were quite up to the task. But I'm sure I'd still have enough of my body left to walk to my mailbox. I defy anyone to name an industry that doesn't exploit people in some way or other. How about we simply pass a law against exploitation of people's labor, sex, fear, or dignity for profit? That should about cover it, no?
Things may be different elsewhere but where I live in the not-so-great white north [IMHO]; some strippers make a lot of money. Most do not - as strippers, that is. ‘Management fees’, coerced prostitution and drug abuse is beyond rampant. Some take pleasure in what they do. Many of those who make better money, operate as free agents and have a greater sense of control over their choices do. Often the claim that women strip for pleasure or because they are working their way through post-secondary education are merely rationalisations by men who would prefer to think this were the case and absolves them from examining their complicity in a nasty and sad way of making a living.
Nudity is not evil. However, on this continent sexuality has been twisted by hypocritical moralisers and dancing naked is different when 1, the general view of sexuality condemns those that act outside prescribed norms,[i.e. prostitutes, strippers, GLBT], and 2,there is a fundamental power differential between the dancer and her audience. The same can’t be said for other performers.
And yes, we have declared, a priori, that nudity is bad [i.e. all forms of popular media wherein nudity and overt acts of sexuality are banned or marginalised and overt acts of violence are not]. The performers I knew were sad and imperiled by the lifestyle [and didn't manage to save a dime, by the way].
"Often the claim that women strip for pleasure or because they are working their way through post-secondary education are merely rationalisations by men who would prefer to think this were the case and absolves them from examining their complicity in a nasty and sad way of making a living."
And conversations with strippers as to their motives and plans don't count.
Mainly because it doesn't fit in the box you've constructed around yourself.
From what I know personally of atrippers - coerced prostituion, tit-for-tat sex and drug abuse is not only NOT the norm, at least in the Great White Northeast, but actively frowned upon.
Hell, I've known strippers who've kicked other strippers' asses merely for flashing their puss.
And sexual harassment and drug abuse cetainly doesn't occur in "legitimate" business, and no one in "legitimate" business ever took a job they abhorred or felt morally reprehensed by because they needed a paycheck.
In a sense, pornography does stem from organized patriarchal religion's
abuse and distortion of normal human sexuality --
and their male-supremacist war on women.
Much as male-supremacist religion seeks to degrade and demean females so does
pornography seek to do the same.
Reducing females to "whores" which is the meaning of the word pornography is
what patriarchy is about. Males, in general, play their role in all of this,
accepting these notions of male-supremacy as their right.
The industry surrounding porn and strip clubs is male-dominated.
Who says no one is forced?
Who says they "take pleasure from what they do"?
When males start playing sports "naked" come back and let us know!
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
The original Olympics featured some very rough competition between nude males.
But they quickly abandoned the practice after they figured out what caused sunburn.
There are several considerations going on with this:
1) Iceland's political leadership is trying distract attention from their internet bank meltdown.
2) Iceland's population is so small (approximately 300,000), it is doubtful that a strip club could actually survive on its' own merits.
3) If there is no demand for strip clubs in Iceland, with this action, their legislature just created an illicit demand for it.
Ther are plenty of US cities and towns with far smaller populations than 300,000 that support, strip clubs.
I'm sure Wyoming and Montana (pop. each about 600,000) have at least a hundred strip clubs between them.
This may be promoted as a feminist measure, and most Icelanders may describe themselves as agnostic, but I suspect that traditional conservative Scandinavian Protestantism is the real motivation. The moral codes of a religion can far outlive the institutional religion itself.
And just for full disclosure, I find "exotic dancer" bars to quite sleazy and haven't been in one in 30 years. And, while they certainly should be regulated locally in accordance with a communities wishes, an outright national ban seems a bit much.
"It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold."
So next they will be banning actors, musicians and performers/talents of all other stripes that prostitute their gifts for cash?
Are these strippers "owned" by someone who sells them into these lines of work? Or do they participate of their own volition?
So it is okay to sell ones mind or muscle to the highest bidder, but not one's tits?
I feel so cheap.
Well wage slaves are different than physical slaves but they have my sympathy too. Its not the same Rambo.
Rambo?
I don't get it?
But why is selling one talent any different than another?
Is there something uplifting getting paid $20/hr to write computer programs over getting paid $200/hr to show a guy your tits?
"Physical slaves"? So these women are chained, kept naked, not allowed freedom of movement, etc.
Are you equating stripping with the actual sex slave trade - of being chattel?
I wonder what actual strippers would think of that.
Quite a few I knew loved their job. Quite a few come out of college debt free with money in the bank. I guess it's so much more uplifting to be $50,000 in debt at 22 years old.
Getting paid for your time and talent, so another may profit - which is really, as Marx realized, uncompensated labor, no matter what you do isn't really any more uplifting one way or another, except to yourself, if you happen to feel that way.
I felt exploited in some "respectable" jobs.
But I guess, in your world, it depends on what YOU think of the activity too?
With your mention of Marx's surplus value of labor theory in mind, If I cound find a dancer-owned cooperative titty-bar, with balanced job complexes and remuneration only in accordance with effort and sacrifice, I'd probably go there. Radical leftist women make me hot.
They better also have East End Big Hop IPA on tap too.
Their mind and values might be attarctive, but I have noticed the more physically attractive women seem to be very right of center, Mr Anne Coulter notwithstanding.
The blonde on "The View" is certainly attractive, despite her intellectual
retardation.
Although I wouldn't mind being trapped on an island with Naomi Klein, a bottle of wine, a stick of Thai and a first edition of "Das Kapital".
Yeah, Naomi K. is an attractive, Streisand-esque Jew, but she is happily married.
At the antiwar march in DC last weekend, there were plenty of attractive young leftist women.
I'm sorry I missed it. And I wasn't implying ALL leftist women are less attractive than ALL rightest women.
Perhaps the real problem is since leaving college I've met very few genuinely leftist women. Even the faux-hippies I know now seem to be very materialistic, complacent and politically apathetic.
I have met a great number of leftist women over the years, some of them quite attractive. The problem is that only a handful were straight.
I'm out of touch these days, but 40 years ago *many* women who were at least slightly bi chose to express their sexuality exclusively toward other women because it was such a @#$%! PITA to deal with obliviously-sexist men.
I honestly don't think I'll ever forget Lorna, a very pretty, petite, blond member of our women's group. She bitterly regretted that she was a definite Kinsey zero --she *hated* men's sexism and loved women, but she couldn't manage to feel any sexual attraction to women at all. I've lost touch with her meanwhile, but have always hoped that somehow she managed to connect with one of the few non-sexist het men of our age.
Yes, but conservatives are far more prone to elevate women through the ranks on the basis of their looks rather than their talent than lefties. I am absolutely certain that there are plenty of Republican women who are better qualified to be president than Sarah Palin.
True. But there's also a corralary.
Rightie women are more likely to play on their looks as well. Lefties want to succeed in the world on their own merits and do more than just collect a paycheck. Righties seem to want only to maximize personal profit by any means available.
Pornography is anti-female propaganda . . .
intended to keep women from being seen as equals by males -
and intended to debase and demean females.
Pornography isn't good for mental health of males or females --
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
You don't understand the difference between corporate slaves
and those selling their bodies for sexual gratification of others?
The pornography industry uses males to demean females -- in the
continuing patriarchal war on women ---
"The bird with one wing-"
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
Women increasingly make porn too. Women increasingly are becoming the target market for porn makers too.
Since we have a worldwide sexual and labor slave trade, I think this is a step forward in understanding human rights. It's the dynamics of women exposed to being bought by men for sexual services, the power dynamic of male dominance that is reenacted in strip clubs (a reason men like to go in groups) that makes it a denigration of a class of human beings.
It's a step forward in human rights to deny women a choice of what they do with their bodies.
I guess feminism has come full circle.
How so?
Have you asked these strippers what they want? Maybe instead of treating them as helpless animals to be rescued, you should be helping them achieve power, for example through unionisation. What happens when these sex workers no longer have their source of income? Are you providing them with the training and education to do other things? Or do you expect them to work as janitors, or stacking shelves in some supermarket for 12-14 hours a day? What happens when this is driven underground? Have you considered that people working legally have many more protections from abuse and exploitation than people working illegally?
I think Icelandic Strippers only took off their mittens anyways....ohhhh...knuckles!!
Ah, gentleman, you are missing the point. Very often, a lap dancer will make more money than a college graduate in psychology. My cousin got that degree, and $10.00 an hour is not much to start for a career where she will need to be paying off all of those loans.
When a woman is valued more for T&A, than for her thinking, we do have a problem.
Mind you, in our long history, there have been many scarlet women, but never can I seem to remember hearing about a scarlet man!
As the headline reads: "Not For Sale," and so, Iceland, thank you.
I guess one shouldn't try to argue that if one can get $200/hr for a view of her tits, that's not exploitation, that's power.
If someone would pay to see my man boobs, I'm selling.
Yes, we have a problem.
The problem is that you are not treating the problem. You are treating the symptoms of the problem.
The problem isn't strip clubs, or sex work, per se. The problem is the larger issue of why people need to do such work. The problem is the larger issue of the economic factors that require people do such work.
well said...
personally, I believe sex and nudity and being turned on are very natural and elemental pieces of being human...absolutely critical, really...
no one should exist under duress...that doesn't seem to be what this article is implying, anyway...
if one enjoys being naked in front of others, I'm not sure I see why that should be a problem, especially if isolated from children...and if others pay to watch them do it, more power to the stripper...
the far bigger problem is the need to work for one's right to exist in the first place, as rfloh implies...this leads to all kinds of sick things, much more bizarre than an attractive woman being so...being a drone 'pilot' comes to mind...
private property, no pun intended, is at the heart of this matter...
I would hope we would move in the other direction going forward, and encourage and embrace, pun intended, sexual expression in a much healthier and general way...
You could make that argument for a good number of relatively altruistic professions. The guy changing oil at the local Jiffy Lube makes more money than people taking care of children. He makes more money than I do and I take care of adults. Mothers aren't compensated at all. There are plenty of professions for which the pay doesn't reflect their value to society. We don't therefore ban the professions that are compensated at a higher rate. By the way, your cousin could probably make more money working in retail than with her degree in psychology. It's no accident that a lot of young women working retail are pretty attractive. They are also being objectified. One doesn't ban that profession.
Anybody who is attractive, especially a female, is going to have more opportunities than their less attractive counterparts, even if the latter are more talented.
Would you rather these women work on the black market for a pimp? As other posters have argued, outlawing sex work has the same effect as criminalizing drug use and possession.
If sex work is legal, women have opportunities to organize and agitate for better benefits and working conditions, to prepare for life after aging forces them out of the profession. (It also helps women pay for college, btw.) This legislation hurts women's empowerment more than it helps. As the cliche goes, prostitution is the oldest profession. It's not going anywhere.
If that legislation reflects the will of Icelanders, that's fine. I still think it's a shortsighted and counterproductive policy, like entirely too many US policies.
"Mothers aren't compensated at all."
I'll ignore all your other points, seemingly offered only to provide yourself a rationalization that you are doing legitimate, altruistic work and a such deserves high compensation for such a status. The guy at the "Jiffy Lube" is just a "grease monkey" and you can ignore the health risks of working with dirty oil, brake liningsm hands stuck in toxic solvents all day, because it isn't "atruistic".
But I wonder about mothers not being compensated.
When they cahs their husbands paycheck and buy food they and their kids will eat, that isn't compensation. When his pay check buys her ea car, that isn't compensation. She receieves absolutely nothing, in short, other than "birthin them babies". Is that what you are saying.
Cooking, cleaning, etc isn't something she would have to do on her own, were she single? (Of course I'm speaking of stay-at-home moms, only. Let's ignore the all too complex dynamics of couples with children who both work outside the home, merely for simplicity).
This cooking and cleaning, etc that she does, that is only for the benefit of the male? Although most men don't require the level of tidyness, organization or even decor that females want. So when she foists her sensibilities on him, and he wriutes the check for the household expenses she requires, she received no compensation?
And no where is the male's support in this way obtained due to emotional attachment to the female, he only wants a free maid. Two really do live as cheaply as one, don't you know.
By the way, 1959 called, said you were late.
Wow. That's a cheesy straw man. I never said that the guy at Jiffy Lube doesn't deserve to be compensated at his current rate or that he didn't have to deal with hazardous working conditions. (Health care workers also deal with plenty of health hazards, by the way.) I'm saying that certain jobs that are essential to the health of a society have been devalued in the same way that women's talents have been devalued vis-a-vis their bodies, yet that is not valid reason to ban professions that pay more. Incidentally, the professions I listed as examples are traditionally "women's work".
I don't think that I and my coworkers should get paid more. The Jiffy Lube guys make about $15 or 16 an hour. I make $11 and my employer offers the best pay in the area for this line of work. Some agencies pay minimum wage. Shit, we'd be content to make $13 and have a health plan with in-network doctors closer than 60 miles away.
I called these professions "altruistic" because they pay like shit but a lot of people are emotionally blackmailed into remaining in them. The implicit assumption is that the sense of well-being one gets for helping someone is an adequate substitute for a living wage. My co-workers and I have seen exactly 1 raise in the past 9 years. One dollar. They stay in this profession, in part, because they know that the people they take care of will lose one of the few consistent companions they've had in their lives. So they put up with stagnating wages, benefit cuts, etc. My wife is a special education teacher. Each year, her class size increases. She's dealt with pay cuts and had her instructional assistants cut. Every year it's harder, more stressful. No public employee gets more shit from the public for being allegedly overpaid and incompetent than teachers. She puts up with it because she knows her kids need her. She certainly has the intelligence to find a job in another field that pays more. What's the average salary of someone with an MBA in business?
Got one more: a friend of mine is a lawyer. Tax attorneys make a 6 figure salary. She applied for a job as a child advocate in the Bronx. Starting pay: $30k. We're talking about New York City. Which of the two is more important?
As far as compensation for mothers: some of them actually are compensated. People call them "welfare queens". Your argument that mothers are compensated because their husbands buy them things with their salaries is tantamount to contending that kids are compensated because their parents provide for them. Hubby is the one who gets the paycheck in this instance and choses to share it. Further, a stay-at-home mom loses years of work experience and is therefore at a an economic disadvantage if the marriage ends in divorce.
That was a witty quip about 1959. On this thread, your general tone has been similar to people who claim that minorities have an advantage over whites because affirmative action exists. There's white privilege and there's male privilege; you're defending the latter. I guess that mining accident took out your sense of irony, huh Phineas?
I see I struck a nerve. I must be having a good day.
It's 3 am and this topic is almost 24 hrs old now, so I haven't read your whole response. Maybe I'll revist it tomorrow. But if it is anything like your opening, I may not have to bother.
Attend to the hay in your own eye before pointing out the straw in someone else's.
No, you didn't state explicitly that Jiffy Lube grease monkeys don't deserve compensation for hazardous work, but you sure implied it by stating those watching children, or adults, don't get paid as much as a Jiffy Lube mechanic.
Working with humans may be important, it may mean life or death for rhem, but they won't give you cancer or major physical risk and are not very likely to kill you if they fall on you. So, if you think you deserve similar or better pay than a trained auto mechanic, since you brought up the comparison, you're directly stating the mechanic deserves no more additional compensation for those risks, in relation to a caregiver of humans who doesn't share those risks.
Therein lies the rub with these pay comparisons many people pull out.
They don't measure direct comparisons - say 25 yr old certified female Jiffy Lube mechanics to similar male Jiffy Lube mechanics. They attempt to compare babysitters to mechanics and argue banysitting is a more important function - measuring subjective criteria amongst disparate objects.
It's not a valid statistical analysis and actually destroys any credibility.
Further, you speak of my tone, as if you know me, or my politics and my occupation because I defend a woman's right to engage in sex work, don't automatically accept that women providing men pleasure for compensation is exploitive of the women by definition and don't automaticallyaccept a stay at home mom isn't compensated for raising her own kids and maintaining her own home when she has access to a man's paycheck.
That's not sexist or throwback, or blue-collar. It's humanistic, non-dogmatic - indicating an open-mind and a fair question.
I doubt you answered it, you just showed you don't know what a straw man argument relly is, don't know what an ad hominem attack really is, don't know how to formulate valid statistical samples and don't know how to leave you emotions at the door.
Thus my lack of interest in reading your response further.
Rubbing some aloe on that raw nerve might ease the pain a bit.
Have a nice day.
If she were alone, she would have to cook for herself. No one else. The only one who benefits from her labour is herself. No one else.
If she cooks for someone else, then someone else is benefiting from her labour. For free. Writing checks for household expenses is not compensating the labour. Buying the food isn't full compensation. Part compensation isn't full compensation.
No matter how much you want to pretend otherwise.
And if she is not working, stayng at home cooking and raising chidlren, where does she get the cash to buy the food she eats.
Is she compensating her husband with cash for the labor he provides the arrangement?
She's not paying her husband to work, someone else is, but she's getting part of the buying power of that compensation.
He works and exchanges labor for cash, she works and exchanges labor for living conditions. She's been compensated.
Are you really that obtuse?
Cooking and raising children is work.
"He works and exchanges labor for cash, she works and exchanges labor for living conditions. She's been compensated."
Did I say otherwise?
Are you really that obtuse? Do you need lessons in reading comprehension?
Great! Can they outlaw work next? Sign me up. Selling one's labor is selling one's labor, the only rational decision is whether to do it for $7.15, $25, or $200/hr. Did they even ask these women if they felt exploited? I call it outsourcing jobs under the guise of "morality".
Changing the policy and social constructs around stripping and related issues: fine. Banning stripping... not such a good thing in my opinion. And I don't even go to strip bars.
Gotta remember though, despite all their so-called "progressiveness" Iceland is still one of only 4 countries in the world that practices commercial whaling.
So Iceland doesn't impress me very much to begin with. Not until those "women politicians" ban whaling anyway.
Sex is natural. Desire after attractive physical forms is nothing to be ashamed of or to shun people for pursuing. If girls are being manipulated and exploited then that should certainly be addressed and stopped. I will be the first to jump on that bandwagon and lead the charge. But if women WANT to make a living shaking their thing for horny men who can't get their knocks elsewhere - I don't see the harm. Seems healthy.
"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow"