Misogyny and Strip Club Laws

The adult entertainment industry is a subject rife with controversy.  Modern society has a deep love/hate relationship with pornography, exotic dancing, and prostitution.  As time goes on, we have become more accepting of the less tangible facets of adult entertainment, namely pornography and exotic dancing, coming to see both as private, harmless recreation, but this is only with the consumer in mind.  The bureaucratic view of the entertainers is tinged with contempt.  For this article I will focus on stripping and the legal red tape surrounding the business. 

In many areas the laws governing strip clubs can be obscenely strict, or even plain out strange.  Many of these laws are enacted to “protect” the entertainers and reduce prostitution, but in reality these laws are thinly veiled misogyny.  They frankly insult both the dancer and the customer in that they must be protected from themselves, that they do not know how a naked girl will negatively affect them.  A common sentiment in these laws seems to be that the naked female body, considered by politicians who author these laws to be so vulgar and obscene, will somehow scar both she and the patron so horribly that it must be outlawed.  In a number of locations a dancer cannot remove her bottoms, or even her top to reveal her nipples, instead forced to wear pasties.  There is nothing so vulgar about a nipple, or even her entire body that the transactional revelation of a such should be made illegal.  It holds a woman’s body in contempt, something that must be covered up in order to be deemed acceptable. 

Another common law is a mandatory distance held between the dancer and the customer.  Originally this was enacted to reduce prostitution and drug use, but in reality this makes prostitution worse.  Coming within X feet of a customer, and prostituting one’s self (by common definition) warrants the exact same punishment, legally, so for those who are so inclined, it can be lucrative to go the extra mile.  This exacerbates the problem as clean dancers have a harder time keeping a good income without providing these “extras.” 

Some other odd laws in various points in the country are the dancer, during lap dances, must keep her shoes on, keep one foot on the floor, cannot grab her own breasts, cannot drink, cannot spread her legs, cannot reveal her buttocks, must wear a ’legal’ thong (an inch wide at it’s narrowest point), or cannot wear a garter outside the club. 

In many places the laws are not strictly enforced, but random raids and mass arrests of dancers and customers (as it is not unheard of for police to round up all dancers if they find one acting outside the law) are a constant threat.  Police are not above lying to get the extra bonus points.  Misogyny is everywhere, even in the Boys’ Playgrounds.