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Originally Posted by Rupert 'Stiles' Stilinski
I'm surprised so many people feel that stripping is such a wonderful thing in our society. You're probably the same people that feel it is an injustice that professional athletes make millions and are role models to impoverished youth. How can you possibly defend that a quick easy buck through manipulation and degradation are noble and/or ok?
C'mon.
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I have extremely mixed and powerful feelings about the whole sex work thing. Sex radicalism means a lot to me. To me, it's mostly about being able to have a feminism which encompasses sexuality in all of it's strange contradictions...just like how feminism is a lens in which i use to explore the chaos and catches of the society around me. Sex radical feminism is also about working towards a sexuality which is consentual. And if a stripper is on the pole consentually who am i to judge?
at the end of the day, I don't think that sex work does anything to raise the status of women as a whole. in that sense, stripping is not a feminist action and i'm sick of people trying to tell me that it is. sex work is a job and sex workers are people too. society as a whole exploits everybody's basic needs/desires to make some $$$. as a sex worker you are providing a service for a fee....i don't think that this is particularly the best mentality and trust me, it nausates me as much as the next person who, at some point in their life, has done more than toy with anarchist or marxist mentalities. but at least as a stripper you aren't depriving a person of their needs. (you can always argue that it deprives women of thier rights in relationships because stippers hold them up to oppressive standards...but still, objectifying standards of female sexuality exist everywhere and a women deciding to starve herself and her family rather than spend a night in her underwear doesn't do anything either)
Also, sex work can be relatively empowering in queer communities where watching queer porn or something can be a person's first exposure to similiar sexualities. I personally identify as queer, as do most of my friends. For many of them, having access to lesbain erotica and such was what made them realize that they are not alone. It also gave them a way to fantasize and explore. That was empowering!
some sex workers have more control over their lives than others. it's certainly naive to assume that all sex workers are empowered or the opposite, that all sex workers are exploited and disempowered. it is an extremely complicated subject where they're are no absolute consensuses.