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Lap dancing: recognised dangers and unforeseen consequences

There is a proliferation of lap dancing clubs in Liverpool. Those visiting these clubs are overwhelmingly male and those working in them are overwhelmingly female. There is a detrimental effect on the mental health of the women working in these clubs and the impact on women in the surrounding areas, due to the increase in rape and sexual assaults that occur in the vicinity.

By Lisa White

I am a member of the Joint Forum Women’s Group. Our group is campaigning for Liverpool City Council to adopt a nil policy on sexual entertainment venues, which includes lap-dancing clubs. The Gender Equality Duty, passed in 2007, means that public authorities are required to actively promote gender equality and work towards countering gender stereotypes. Lap dancing clubs actively promote gender inequality and the exploitation and sexual objectification of women.

The links between lap dancing clubs and violence against women are well established. Lap dancing clubs have their own in-house rules for customers. These rules include “do not touch the dancers“ and “no recording devices”. Some clubs list these rules on their website and note that customers will be asked to leave the club if they break them. It is well documented, however, by researchers working in this field and in the accounts of many women who have worked as lap dancers, that the rule prohibiting physical contact is regularly broken, as there are frequent physical and sexual assaults on the women.

The rule banning the use of recording devices, is also generally thought to be in place to protect the identity of the dancers and the customers. One lap dancing club in Edinburgh, called the Liquorice Club, back in 2003, was then “stopping people using their camera phones to protect the identity of the women working there and to spare the blushes of men caught on film attending the club”.(1)

The idea that the prohibition of the use of recording devices, to protect the identity of the women, soon loses credibility, after a basic Internet search on lap dancing clubs produced a multitude of photos and videos of lap dancers, uploaded by the clubs themselves. The lap dancing clubs in Liverpool are no exception. Some of them, otherwise known as “strip clubs” or “gentlemen’s clubs”, have uploaded their own photos and videos of the women on to their websites, as their own promotional material, aiming to glamorise it. The women are all near naked and sexualised, with accompanying words such as “wild”, “stunning” or “sexy”. This raises questions about the long-term emotional and psychological effects on these women, as even though their consent may have been gained at the time, a visual record is created, which can be downloaded and shared between users at high speed making it difficult to control and easily accessible to a much wider audience. Some are put on YouTube. One promotional video on this site has so far been viewed more than 60,000 times within the last two years.

The appearance of images of lap dancers on the Internet could also have serious repercussions for those women who are lap dancing to support their education and who are aiming, upon finishing their studies, to be employed in a graduate job.(2) It is now common knowledge that the social networking site, Facebook, is already used by employers to find out more about candidates for their vacancies.(3)

The circulation of videos, which the women themselves have no control over, could be used against them, making it impossible for them to be taken seriously as qualified and capable graduates in other, well paid workplace environments. It could therefore, in the long run, contribute to women’s poverty, by preventing them from developing a well-paid career, sufficient to give them economic and social independence later.
Liverpool City Council should meet its legal requirement, to promote gender equality between men and women, by adopting a nil-limit for lap dancing clubs.

References:

1. BBC News, 4 April, 2003
2. Discussed in The Guardian article 15 February 2011
3. The Guardian, 24 March 2010

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