Girls, Girls, Girls
Long legs and burgundy lips
Girls, Girls, Girls
Dancin’ down on Sunset Strip
Girls, Girls, Girls
Red lips, fingertips. – Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars & Tommy Lee
I don’t really write about stripping very often, because I have a lot less to say about it than I do about whoring. Part of that is because in the United States it’s closer to being completely legal than prostitution is, and part of it is because, though it paid the bills for two years and served as my “gateway” into full-fledged harlotry, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I liked escorting. But despite what some women of each profession might like to believe, strippers and strumpets are sisters under the skin; we’re both sex workers, both persecuted by neofeminists and other religious fanatics, both subject to absurd laws which affect no other jobs and both subject to maltreatment at the hands of the police. And in recent years, we’ve both been repeatedly targeted by “human trafficking” lies from busybodies who would like to see all sex work abolished; Estes & Weiner considered young strippers as part of their “youth at risk of sexual exploitation”, and Icelandic neofeminists succeeded in closing down strip clubs last year as part of their ever-more-extreme interpretation of the Swedish Model. Today I’d like to look at three recent American news articles involving strippers; I think you’ll agree that the attitude displayed therein isn’t all that different from that displayed toward whores.
Let’s start with this November 16th article from Riverfront Times:
The Missouri Supreme Court yesterday handed strip club owners yet another loss in their legal fight to overturn a sweeping law regulating “adult-oriented businesses.” The law passed in 2010 prohibits exotic dancers from displaying their genitals and most of their breasts, bans the sale of alcohol inside strip clubs and requires the businesses to close at midnight. Adult bookstore and strip club operators have argued that the law violates freedom of expression under the First Amendment…[and] also claim that Missouri legislators didn’t fully consider the fiscal impact that the bill would have on the economy — with several adult-oriented businesses going out of business since the law went into effect.
In yesterday’s 41-page ruling, the state’s high court sided with a circuit court ruling last year that upheld the law. In its decision yesterday, the state’s high court [claimed that]…“the restrictions are not content-based limitations on speech but rather are aimed at limiting the negative secondary effects of sexually oriented businesses on the health, welfare and safety of Missouri residents…” The strip club owners say they may appeal yesterday’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court…
This really isn’t surprising, considering that modern American courts increasingly seem to consider themselves the handmaidens of legislatures rather than equal branches of government as they were intended to be. The “secondary effects” mythology has become a very popular one because it allows moralists to ignore the total lack of any provable negative effects from sex businesses; you’ll find the same nebulous claims made about porn and prostitution. But when it comes to statements about sex work, who needs proof? Wild assertions without a shred of evidence are more than good enough, as this November 30th Huffington Post article proves:
…Attorneys doing business at [Miami’s] Federal Detention Center — a maximum security prison — say the joint is overrun with dancers posing as paralegals. Lawyers hired by imprisoned drug kingpins pass the women off as legal assistants and authorities let them in, according to a report by Miami New Times. This being Miami, it was apparently no big deal until other attorneys realized they might start losing clients to those whose billable hours come with a little bada bing. “They take off their tops and let the guys touch them,” veteran defense attorney Hugo Rodriguez told New Times. “The majority of these young, very attractive women are noncitizens brought in exclusively for the purposes of visiting the FDC. Any lawyer can sign a form and designate a legal assistant. There is no way of verifying it. The process is being abused.” The report alleges one ‘paralegal’ was caught having sex with an inmate in a room used for legal meetings, while another was busted stripping in a Special Housing Unit — also known as solitary confinement — and banned from the prison altogether…
This isn’t the first instance of one or more lovely Miami ladies with cartel clients in super max prisons. In 2009, the Denver Post profiled a woman named Lulu who left the Magic City to be closer to clients who paid her $125 an hour to deliver legal docs and keep a little company. And just north of Miami in Broward County, there’s less security but a lot more ‘access’ — female corrections employees are the ones getting friendly, with one caught having sex with an inmate in a broom closet.
Well, if lawyers say this is happening, it certainly must be true! Even if it is, I find it difficult to get all that worked up over, because the U.S. government is ignoring the best way to really punish these so-called “drug kingpins”: simply decriminalize all drugs, and their empires will crumble overnight.
I’m sure you caught the “human trafficking” trope Mr. Rodriguez threw into his spiel; it’s also the central motif of our last story, from the November 30th New York Daily News:
The Mafia teamed up with the Russian mob to smuggle Eastern European beauties into New York to work as strippers — and even arranged sham marriages to keep them here, the feds say. Twenty suspects…were arraigned in Manhattan Federal Court…on charges ranging from racketeering to visa fraud. The schemers allegedly recruited women in Russia and neighboring countries through Facebook and newspaper ads…Visa rules barred them from adult entertainment, so the suspects arranged bogus offers for summer waitressing jobs and had the women apply for seasonal visas, prosecutors said…In the most audacious part of the scheme, the mobsters sent female emissaries to upstate New York to find young, single men willing to marry ex-patriate [sic] ecdysiasts in exchange [for] $5,000. The nuptials secured green cards so the dancers could continue to work in the clubs. Asked why the clubs needed to bring strippers from overseas, Hayes said, “Based on what we’ve learned, they were particularly marketable.’ Some of the women didn’t realize they would be giving lap dances when they signed up for visas. They had to fork over $150 a day for housing, transportation and the right to work, Hayes said…
If this country were run by sane people, you might ask why visa rules bar women from even legal branches of sex work. But it’s not, so I think you know the answer. Raise hands, how many believe the girls didn’t know they were going to be strippers? Now, another show of hands: how many of them do you think really wanted to travel halfway around the world to make a maximum of $400 a week (before taxes) as waitresses in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S.?
One Year Ago Today
“Ho, Ho, Ho” reports on the first person ever cured of HIV, one celebrity trying to make himself look good, another trying to make her ex-husband look bad and Japan’s answer to Hooters. Lubbu-lubbu!
“the restrictions are not content-based limitations on speech but rather are aimed at limiting the negative secondary effects of sexually oriented businesses on the health, welfare and safety of Missouri residents…”
I wonder what the negative secondary effects of sexual repression are?
Rhetorical question I know but people still think that strip clubs are going to drag neighbourhoods down into some sort of skid row Ridley Scottesque nightmare. The best retort to this sort of nonsense I saw was: “if you’re a vegan/veggie do you demand that your local butchers cover up their windows?”
Doesn’t work on unreasonable people though. 🙁
I don’t think they change the neighborhood a bit. Lemon Grove … outside San Diego is, or was, a fairly nice middle class neighborhood – it had one strip club that really didn’t change the place at all. I live in a suburb of New Orleans – it’s a fairly religious town and we have one strip club called “Scuttlebutt” … it’s been there for years (though I’ve never been in it) and it hasn’t done anything to change this place.
I have seen Scuttlebutt from I-10 innumerable times. Once when I was at Rick’s a girl asked me if I had ever danced there, and I answered that even if it weren’t so far out of my stomping ground I just couldn’t bring myself to dance at a place with such a dumb name. I was so prissy I only danced at clubs whose names I found dignified! 😀
Hmmm … you danced at Ricks? Never been there but I’ve heard it’s pretty high class. Uhm yeah – I think Scutllebutt would have been like 12 steps below the league you were playing in! 😉
Yep. I started at a little club in Metairie named “Centerfolds”, then in May of 1998 moved to Maiden Voyage (which later became “Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club”, a sign I would never have danced under), then switched to Rick’s during carnival of ’99.
I don’t think there is any profession that highlights the plethora of crazy laws we have in America quite like stripping does. You will see some of the strangest stuff. Different laws for different places … different laws in the same place according to zoning and alcohol laws. Laws change at the drop of a hat – I don’t know how the dancers keep up with them. You do one thing one day it’s legal – the next it ain’t.
I don’t even know what the laws in New Orleans are – I just don’t even fool with it here. I really don’t like the NOLA police and have no desire to bump into them.
I’ll tell you the best place I ever went was either Perth or Melbourne, Australia (can’t remember which one). I was just in the place to keep an eye on my guys from the ship but this little blonde spinner came up to me and said … “I’m the oldest stripper here and you’re the oldest Sailor – so we have to dance!” She was a hoot!
My only comment on the substance of the post is to agree that we are way past the time to legalize drugs. Every argument made against doing so was used to support Prohibition. Decades after we ended that idiot experiment we in Houston don’t see the guys from Specs and Richards gunning for each other to secure sales territory. The tax dollars wasted on this useless effort at irradiation makes the money spent going after so called vice look like loose change found in the courthouse seat cushions.
Now for the important stuff, the pictures. Monty Python, really is there no subject for which they cannot provide an appropriate quote or picture? As for the young lady, I’m approaching my 25th year of law practice and I’ve never seen a legal assistant looking anything like her. Clearly the recruiters working for the firms and companies I’ve worked for have been grievously falling down on the job.
Damn, I meant eradication, not irradiation. Stupid users of stupid spell check. At least the latter is a better zombie apocalypse set up.
Of course, the only reason the women had to give lap dances when they didn’t want to and pay $150/day for protection (assuming any of this is true) is because they needed the mobsters’ help to stay in in the country. If they had been able to immigrate freely, they could have just walked away and done their own thing the moment they got here.
Yup. Y’know, I never can understand why it’s you lot in the USA that celebrate the fourth of July rather than us lot in the UK.
Well, it WAS actually fun here for awhile. 🙁
So what is objectionable about their use of the word ‘ex-patriate’? Is it simply the hyphen?
[sic] (literally, “thus”) merely means “this is how it appeared in the source”. It’s doesn’t denote an objection, merely an error (in this case, the hyphen). The proper spelling is “expatriate”.
I know it indicates an error. I just wasn’t sure what error you saw there. But I’m very lenient when it comes to hyphens. 🙂
I’m very lenient when it comes to amateur writers (I’ll usually correct emails of readers before publishing them), but ruthless with professional writers (who should know better) or amateurs who assume a pompous tone (and thereby represent themselves as people who should know better).
First, stripping is masturbation without the payoff. At least in prostitution, the john gets the payoff so it makes more sense to me as a man. Second, you are right that strippers are still sex workers and the same people would like to persecute, strippers, whores, and strippers’ and whores’ customers. Some of these nuts would create a neofeminist or moronic Christian regime that would look a lot like what Afghanistan’s Taliban regime looked like. I’m a Christian and Catholic, but I understand the concept of harm reduction and just because something is immoral does not necessarily mean it should be illegal or just because something is unpopular does not mean it should be illegal. Laws are meant to protect life, liberty, and property. If it doesn’t infringe on someone’s rights, then it must be allowed.
It seems female prison guards are upset that they are not getting all the good attention from the prisoners they wanted despite the illegality of prisoner and guard fraternization for good reasons. Besides lack of sufficient evidence of prostitution going on between female visitors and prisoners, it is a way to distract how bad prisons really are. They don’t usually rehabilitate anyone for release into the law abiding society and instead make them harder and meaner. For many prisoners, it would have been kinder to kill them. Noone will do anything about homosexual rape in male prisons for example. So many people are such sadists that they don’t see the blowback coming. I’m for tougher punishments, but only the state should punish the prisoners not the other prisoners. Sadly sex with whores may cause prisoners to commit less crime such as homosexual rape in our jike of a prison system.
I’m not surprised that Eastern European women are highly prized for stripping or other sex work. These women at least while they are under 30 try to keep physically fit and dispaly feminine charm to men unlike so many of our Western Women and especially American Women. Young Eastern European Women are physically prettier on average than Western Women especially American Women. Young Nordic Women are often as pretty or prettier, but lack the Feminine charm of Young Eastern European Women on average. This is not to say that all Western women and American women are bad in these ways, but on average the Eastern European Women are better at least until they marry you. Gentlemen watch out for harridans, gold diggers, and faithlessness coupled with adultry after you get married because they can with our Western style of divorce which screws the man, they Americanize and just because they can. At the very least Eastern European women have a better reputation for dating if not marrying on average than Western Women. Anecdotally, I’ve found all I’ve stated in this paragraph to be true in Strip Clubs as well as serving with Eastern European female military personnell. As a U.S. Army Veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve worked on the same installations as Polish, Czech and Romanian female military personnell. I’ve also seen strippers of any former Warsaw Pact nationality in strip clubs. My hometown of Chicagoland is one of the most popular if not the most popular destinations for Eastern European immigrants. I do think most of these women know what they are doing when they come to the USA for a better economic life and to engage in legal or illegal sex work.
First, stripping is masturbation without the payoff. At least in prostitution, the john gets the payoff so it makes more sense to me as a man.
I didn’t really “get” stripping either, but I think the men are in effect, buying a delusion and a mental high.
It’s not true that “no one will do anything” about people being raped in prisons. There’s people working on prison reform and have been for a long time. Some of them are: the family members and/or friends of the prisoners who care and intervene with the prison officials to get their family members treated right. This also applies to prisoners in state mental hospitals. Yes, some people do disown their family members when they commit a crime, but many don’t. There’s also people who aren’t related to the prisoners and don’t start out as their friends who help. This is found with the anti-death penalty people (those who are against the death penalty in every case and those who are against it in some cases) and people in various ministries. There’s also individuals who don’t belong to any group that help on their own. There’s also women who are called “prison groupies”. Some of these women don’t like that label (I understand that as I’m sick of certain labels also) as they only provide friendship/support to the prisoners and don’t have sex with them. Some of the women do have sex with their prisoner friends (and not all of them like that label either which I can understand). Whores aren’t the only 1’s who help out prisoners sexually. There’s also women who are interested in the prisoners for ghoulish reasons (like the 1’s who are “fans” of serial killers). Many of the women help the prisoners out sexually for free (YES! Thank God for them!) and also give them $, whatever gifts the prison allows, etc. Some are “pen pals” only and don’t visit the prisons. However they do these things I say thank God for them! “For many prisoners, it would have been kinder to kill them”-really? Are you thinking at all of the family and/or friends of these people? Do these people deserve to go through the HELL of having their family and/or friends be killed out of some so-called “mercy”? Even the family and/or friends suffer when the prisoners they care about are killed by the death penalty and that’s WITH a trial, etc. It isn’t some “breeze” for them AT ALL. They suffer like the families of the victims do also. Yes, the degree of suffering differs with the victims’ families and/or friends and the prisoners’ families and/or friends, but BOTH groups do suffer. Also not true that some prisoners don’t change for the better while in prison. Some examples are Karla Tucker, Caril Fugate, Stanley “Tookie” Williams and Leslie Van Houten. These and others deserve credit because they could have EASILY not cared to change for the better. All the above needs to be talked about more because in US society ALL we hear are the NEGATIVES too much of the time. Yes, a lot of work needs to be done still with prison reform, etc., but credit is due to those who are currently working on it and the others who have in the past. The easiest way out is to just talk about the negatives and have a defeatist, cynical attitute towards all of it. Thanks for listening.
The best stripper* I’ve encountered wasn’t Eastern European, she was black. Spent more on her than I have any other dancing girl, and would have spent more if I could have afforded it. Would have been happy to hire her for full-on sex, had she been selling and if I could’ve afforded to buy.
A few years before this, another stripper told Laura and me about vice cops. I commented that it’s nice to know that there’s no REAL crime going on, that the police can spare the manpower for such things.
* By “best” I mean that she was beautiful, friendly, made me feel like I was the hottest stud in the place and allowed more touching. She was also decent enough to remind me how much money I was spending, which probably saved me $20 that night.
Here’s a story from my short stripping career-
I’d been working at a strip bar for about 4 months, my first venture into actual sex work (“car dates” out of desperation when I was a teen not counted) when one night in came a couple of cops.
I thought to my self, “Oh shit, we’re all off to jail.”
But no. As one cop stood at the bar and watched, the other went back into the office with the manager. After a bit, he came back out counting his money. That’s right, counting his money right there. Not even bothering to try to hide it.
That club was never raided while I worked there.
Now there’s a reason cops want to see strip clubs kept semi-legal. It’s profitable to them.
I was told by more than one older girl that before strip clubs were wholly legitimized in New Orleans (in the late ’80s), some cops would literally walk behind the counter and take either bottles of liquor or money from the till, and the management didn’t dare say anything.
I seem to recall the Supreme Court declared that erotic dancing (in specific reference to stripping) was an art and therefore could not be illegal.
And will somebody please tell me what an obscene breast is? I’ve never seen one and can’t imagine one.. Erotic, sure, but that’s a state of mind out of many possible states of mind.
I had a fantastic experience once with the stripper Christy Canyon. Months prior to this I made a nude painting of her. I gave it to her staff at the club and when she came out to dance she asked me to undo her bra. Wow! Now that was a high point in my life.
How much for a painting of Maggie with her kit off?
Send me a photo!
You could work from the ones I’ve already revealed (one year ago today, my first anniversary column and “Weird Sisters“), plus the one which will appear on the 29th.
So, would you say these were barely paralegal teens?
*rimshot* 😉