Good Girls, Bad Girls, Strippers, and Whores
What I’ve Been Wondering
There’s a question that keeps coming up for me about the pole dance community.
It first popped into my head when I posted on how obnoxious I think it is for pole dancers to look down on strippers.
Then it raised its head some more when I vented a little steam on how damaging a good girl/bad girl world view is for pole.
And it comes up every week when someone new emails me or posts a comment saying, “I may be a stripper, but I’m no prostitute.”
So here it is – this is the question, this is where I get stuck:
If it’s wrong for pole dancers to look down on strippers, why is it okay for strippers to look down on prostitutes?
Me and the Whole Sex Work Thing
Maybe it’s because I used to volunteer for a non-profit that works with sex workers. Maybe it’s because I’ve worked as a researcher on sex trafficking – and seen the honest result of my whole team’s efforts tabled because it wasn’t politically correct enough. Maybe it’s because I used to do phone sex.
But I don’t see why strippers are good, but prostitutes are bad – any more than I get why pole dancers are good, but strippers are bad.
I used to buy into all the feminist arguments against sex work. I’m sure you’ve heard them – that sex work devalues women, that pornography is violence against women, that selling sex is oppressive to women. And, frankly, there’s a hell of a lot of truth in all that.
But it’s not a complete truth.
Feminism is a strange beast. It struggles to help all women, but is hampered by a white, middle class perspective that blinds it to the experiences of those it is most seeking to help. For me, being white and middle class, this perspective suited me for a long time and wasn’t even something I noticed.
What I Learned
But I eventually came to see that every time I put down prostitution as anti-woman, I marginalized the women doing sex work just a little further.
I learned that every time I denounced pornography as an open-and-shut case of violence and oppression, I also shut out the voices of the people working in those films.
I learned that every time I, with the best of intentions, saw sex workers only as victims, I got further and further away from really seeing them as people.
I learned that the most supportive-sounding argument in the world could be silencing when it came out as rhetoric.
And I learned that my views on sex work said a lot more about me than they did about the sex workers.
Divided We Fall
The thing is, it’s really easy to feel good at someone else’s expense. It’s really easy to let yourself off the hook for your own conflicting feelings about pole and sexuality by saying, “Oh, I just do this for fitness – I’m not a stripper.”
And it’s really easy to defend yourself if you are a stripper, by saying, “I’m a stripper, not some prostitute.”
But, what’s not so easy, is to feel good all on your own. To say, yes, I want to pole and I want to be sexy and I want to explore all the different feelings I have about sexuality – and not have to add in the comparison. Not have to add in the explanatory side note about what you’re not.
It’s not so easy to stand up for yourself, just on your own merits. To simply say, this is what I want and this is what I feel, and not throw in a disclaimer.
It’s not so easy – but it’s important.
It’s important for all of us – as pole dancers, as women, as human beings with the freedom to enjoy our own sexuality.
Pole dance cannot stand itself on the backs of others and make itself strong.
We need to stand by our choices and our art. Where we are conflicted, we need to explore our feelings and widen the conversation.
But what we do NOT need to do, is sidestep the darker issues by using stereotypes to separate us from other women – making us the “good” girls and them the “bad” girls.
Stand Up For What You Love
It’s not enough to challenge people’s ideas of pole dancing; we have to start challenging our own ideas about the origins of our art, and re-work our own stereotypes of stripping and sex work.
Every time we tell someone we pole dance, it’s an opportunity not only to broaden the other person’s perspective on pole dancing, but it’s also an opportunity to make sure they don’t just shift their judgment from pole dancers to strippers, or from strippers to prostitutes.
And it’s an opportunity to make sure we aren’t doing the same.
Each time, we have another chance to challenge the whole hierarchy of judgment that lifts some people up at the expense of putting others down.
And, each time, we get to give pole dance a chance to stand on its own merits, as the beautiful art and expression that we pole dancers know it to be.
10th August, 2009 - Posted by PoleSkivvies - 11 Comments
Filed under: Jennifer's Rants
