Supply, demand, and consequences - for the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy
This is my first participation in a blog carnival — the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy. Lots of important causes out there, but not so many I can hold forth on at any length. This one has been an interest of mine since I was very young, and I’ve done my homework and heard my share of reports from the field, so here goes:
Let’s talk for a moment about economics. And strip clubs.There are a number of states which have extremely restrictive laws regarding strip clubs. These laws are pushed, it seems, by everyone who needs a darling cause: fundamentalists, business associations, even people who style themselves feminists.
I’m talking about the infamous six-foot ordinances. I’m protesting the harm they do to women.
See, one of the most pressing reasons why men — and sometimes women — frequent strip clubs, and pay the women there for their time (those women, by the way, are in almost every case working as independent contractors, paid directly by their clientele, not drawing a salary but rather renting the space where they work) is because it’s a pressure-free way to socialize. Conversation is a commodity. The fantasy isn’t always one of pornographic dimensions. Sometimes it’s just the idea that a guy can get along with a girl without anxiety, be accepted and cared about, risk-free.
Now, it’s impossible to have a conversation with someone from a six-foot distance in a noisy club. Meaning that those women who are there selling conversation can’t sell their services without breaking the law.
Usually the law in question names their “crime” prostitution. Meaning that the potential legal penalty for performing a sex act for money is the same as that for letting someone bend your ear over a glass of wine.
Since everyone’s in trouble anyway, prostitution moves in — the bad kind, the really bad kind, unregulated and disease-spreading and below-cost. Drugs move in. A regulated business where women could work in safety becomes an uncontrolled underground market. I don’t think I really need to explain why those are bad.
Since nude dancing is suddenly conflated with prostitution, the clientele immediately slide towards becoming a prostitution clientele, trying to get more for their money — women who don’t want to enter that line of work are out of work, or have to move to another area. It’s not that there is no market for the type of service strippers are really trying to sell, conversation and entertainment and light physical contact, any more than there is no market for American labor at fair wages: the basic selfishness of the market just makes it easier to sell more for less. If child labor at slave wages were legal in the States, don’t doubt it would be going on today.
Now, in a location where those women working as dancers are legally allowed to sell their services as dancers, both the dancers and the clientele have an incentive to adhere to the law. It’s like the difference between a bar and a speakeasy.
Ask anyone in Texas, Florida or Ohio about the state of the industry. There are impossibly restrictive ordinances in those places, and every woman I’ve heard speaking about the exotic dancing industry in those places says it’s dirty and awful. Then ask anyone in Oregon, or some of the midwest states, where the ordinances are much less restrictive. Because the ordinances can be followed, the women and the customers follow them. There’s an incentive to keep higher standards when the clubs can operate above-board. The clubs are cleaner; there’s much less social stigma, less violence, and less abuse of the women who work there.
And that’s what we want. Right?
Remember these principles, if you will, the next time a law like this comes up in your locality. And think first of the women and their safety.