Good luck with that.

Dancing is like any job in that it has ups and downs. You are sex-negative and so you can’t imagine a job in the sex industry being empowering in any way. You cannot imagine the ups and are focused on the downs.

I could go on and on, but I don’t even feel like trying to reason with you ignorant people. There are addicted sad people in any job. There are CEOS of million dollar compaies that commit suicide. There are unhappy doctors, lawyers, etc- but in our society we need to think that women who work naked are somehow so so sad. Give me a break.

DP- You have one friend in the sex industry and now you are suddenly an expert on this blog? Lol. So typical.

Did any of you EVER think that most of the sadness associated with working in sex comes from the STIGMATIZATION people like you are perpetuating with your ignorance?

This stigmatization manifests in deadly ways, including the rape and murder or sex-workers.

Shame on all of you for just believing what you want to and judging women based on their jobs.

XUP- you’re a dumbass. Dancers make a ton of money. Very often they make more than the club owners. Was it your husband who got a lapdance? Is this why you need so badly to believe that all dancers are helpless, sad little whores? Does our sexual power over your husband threaten the shit out of you and you are so jealous you can’t see straight?

Sex workers are just like everyone else, except a little more brave and hot and interesting. Good luck with your ignorance, ya’all. Anonymous, thanks for shouting me out. Keep holding it down for us.

-davka

it’s definitely an ugly world, the sex industry. lots of addictions on many levels. mostly, what i gathered from my friend’s experience is that you cannot take any of it seriously, or buy into the lifestyle.

(as well there are different “levels” of dancing.)

did i mention that i went to a birthday party that had a private male dancer, and that dancer ended up coming to work in the office i worked in. he was an accountant. HUGE EGO. i think that’s a downside, taking the job as a means to feed our insecurities.

no doubt, it’s a different lifestyle and i wholeheartedly agree that most of the women that participate come from severely ruined childhoods.

i think the key is, how much or how little they have met their demons and sent them on their way. if it was something i “had” to do, i would go into with the knowledge that it is an emotional tightrope. not to kid myself into thinking i could use it to feed my ego or to take it seriously. i’d keep the focus on the needed result, which would be money. i would not be interested in doing any private sessions.

i think we have legal frontal nudity, not full nudity and there are back rooms for personalized lap dances.

as for the strip clubs, i’ve been to both and i was more impressed with the women strippers then the male strippers.

i wasn’t too impressed with either, it was kind of like going to las vegas, where all the “sins” are legal. mainly i feel sad, and skeeved requiring a long shower afterwards. my husband isn’t interested in them either, he says b/c it’s a tease.

i do know that if times ever got really tough and i couldn’t find any other work, i’d most likely try my hand at the dancing. i’ve had a few friends that were dancers, so i know what i’d be getting into should it ever have to happen.

RealGrouchy – I’m not even sure that making money by stripping is easy. Especially when you consider that such a large percentage of the women are there through some “agent” who is taking his cut, and the DJ and bar owner who get their fees and the women don’t want to be there in the first place. Stripping is always presented as a harmless entertainment that’s populated by university students paying off their tuition, and that’s what most people seem to believe, but that’s just not the case. Our legal system can keep locking up sex workers because they, too, see them as people who have chosen to take the easy way out in order to earn a living. Instead of getting a job and paying taxes, they’ve “chosen” a life of crime. So by they fine them throw them in jail by way of trying to “deter” them from making these bad choices.

I very much appreciate your coming to this issue from a different angle though we seem to be arriving at very much the same conclusion in the end

Your responses address that. Indirectly, but they address it and I acknowledge that.

I still disagree with your follow-up post about choice, but it would be foolish for me to continue arguing about something I know very little about.

I guess I just feel that seeing sex workers as victims removes their agency. Maybe it’s because the criminal justice system leaves victims out of the equation while purporting to ‘help’ them, and I’m internalizing that connotation of the word “victim” when I read it in your comments.

Nevertheless, a difference in perspective doesn’t change our contributions (as people not in the sex trade) toward reducing poverty, improving health care and education, etc.

- RG>