Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors. ~Evelyn Cunningham
Are Lap Dancing Clubs an Infringement of Basic Human Rights?
Due to recent licensing laws, lap dancing clubs – who until now have only required the same license as a pub – must now secure a license as a ‘sexual encounter establishment’. Many are overjoyed by this piece of legislation with residents and local authorities claiming that it will benefit them, giving them greater say – and in the case of Local Authorities – greater power to intervene and stop new clubs opening in residential area, near schools etc. Dancers too welcome the change, claiming it will improve their working conditions and rights which have largely been ignored.
Managers of these clubs however are claiming that the new laws infringe upon their human rights and want to fight in the European courts. Chris Knight, President of the Lap Dancing Association (LDA) stated recently ‘’Local authorities are effectively taking away our right to property and to do business, as outlined in the Human Rights Act article 8, and we will consider taking it as far as we have to in the courts’’. Many other club operators have echoed his feelings.
(It is worth pointing out that contrary to what you may suppose, the LDA only represents club owners and operators, not dancers.)
Richard Kemp of the Local Government Association argues that ‘’this argument is rubbish because there are lots of other articles in the act which don’t support the clubs’’. Which poses a very pertinent question:
Are the very existence of these clubs an infringement of human rights?
To unpick this question, it is vital that we hear what those working in these clubs have to say. While I am not conducting field research for this assignment myself, I am referring to studies and interviews carried out with dancers over the last 10 years. Below is information gained by, among others, Julie Bindel’s study into lap dancing clubs for the Abuse of Women and Children Unit for London Metropolitan University:
The first lap dancing club opened in the UK in 1995 and there are now near to 300
Police forces in the UK have conducted a number of investigations into misconduct and criminal activity with clubs.
In some boroughs, reported cases of sexual assault rose by up to 33% after the opening of lap dancing clubs.
In Bindel’s study, none of the clubs visited in London and Glasgow adhered to the terms of their licenses.
All four clubs visited in Glasgow allowed the ‘no touching’ rule to be broken.
Dancers are self employed and as such, have no employment rights. They also have to pay ‘rent’ to club owners to dance. At Spearmint Rhino for example this can be up to £100 a night. On a quiet night there is no guarantee a dancer can even make enough to cover this cost so dancers can end up leaving worse off after a night at work.
None of the dancers interviewed were happy with working conditions. No club had a dedicated dressing room – dancers were expected to change in stairwells etc – and none offered dancers water or refreshments outside the public areas. Many dancers complained of bullying and harassment by owners, housemothers and bouncers. Some quotes from dancers include: ‘’I started to go to the gym recently to get fit. This is such an unhealthy lifestyle in many ways. We’re drinking every night, breathing in smoke, and eating takeaways. I was told by the housemother that I wasn’t allowed to continue the gym, because I was starting to develop muscles, and the men don’t like that apparently’’ (GD1)
“ The housemother told me my boobs were too small, and that I should get them seen to. I never did anything about it, but it still hangs in the air. Sometimes the bouncers make rude comments about ‘fried eggs’” (GD1)
“If anyone has a tiny bit of cellulite, or is slightly overweight, she is pulled by management and told to do something about it. That can make you feel like shit. It’s as if they own our bodies. We’re even told when to shave our public hair” (GD11).
Problems raised by dancers include threats of violence, harassment, demands for sex and basic health and safety issues.
Despite assurances from club owners that prostitution does not take place, private lap dance rooms and cubicles were found to contain bowls of condoms and many had no CCTV.
Interviews with club owners revealed some interesting views held about the women that dance in their clubs, mostly they were described as property or objects. One such example: ‘’What you’ve got to understand is that running girls [the dancers] is not as easy as people think. They’re like cats – more intelligent than you think, but sly with it. (Interview, May 2004).
If dancers are found to be engaging in sexual services, they are culpable to police and not club owners, even though a large number of women interviewed claimed being encouraged, pressured or coerced into offering such services.
Customers interviewed at lapdancing clubs were asked ‘why do you think girls work here?’ and answers ranged from ‘’because they earn loads of money’’ and ‘’they are probably prostitutes’’ to ‘’I don’t know and I don’t care’’.
For the purpose of this discussion paper, I would be grateful if you could leave comments with your opinions on the lap dancing industry and your feelings about the conditions women work under. The human rights act articles which I would suggest could be used as a basis for this discussions are paraphrased below:
Article 1 – All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights
Article 4 – No one shall be held in servitude
Article 5 – No one shall be subjected to degrading treatment
Article 16 – Men and women are entitled to equal rights
Article 23 – Everyone has the right to a free choice of employment, just and favourable conditions of work, without discrimination, the right to equal pay
I believe that the sexual exploitation of women is in direct contravention of human rights but I am interested to see if this view is shared by others. There is a definite quarter of people, including women who refer to themselves as feminists who believe that lap dancing is empowering to women but I would argue that given a real choice, very few women would choose lap dancing as a profession and find little empowering about what they do.
In responding to this discussion paper, please could you mention if you have visited a lap dancing club yourself? And please also share your views as to the issue of the new licensing. The main question to come back to at the end of your comments is: Could it be argued that lap dancing is an infringement of human rights?
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment.
"…there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women." -- Kofi Annan
Living in an area with lots of lapdancing clubs I woudl say that the new licensing laws are a good thing. As a community, women where I live suffer a lot of harassment from people coming out the clubs and also the area around teh clubs is dirty and noisy. I certainly dont feel safe sometimes. As for the girls who workl there I agree that its probably not what most woudl choose to do for a job if they had more choices and that probably thety do it as its the only way they feel they can earn money. When you look at human rights and it says things about equality and dignity then it does make me think that it probably an abuse of human rights if women who work in these clubs are not being looked after properly or paid enough and have bad working conditions. I was shocked that none of the clubs have dressing rooms or anything! That clearly should be a law??
ReplyDeleteAs a man maybe I have a different perspective. I personally dont go to lap dancing clubs often but I have visited them in the past. The ones I have been to didnt seem sleazy and in fact there were lots of women there on the occasions I went - they didnt seem to think there was anything bad about the places! Reading the report though I too was shocked about the working conditions. I guess what you see in the club is the performance and it seems rather glamorous but it sounds like behind the scenes the conditions are poor. If the new licensing laws will make working conditions better then I think thats a very good thing. I didnt know they were licensed as pubs. I think the managers claiming that their human rights are being abused by having to have the licesnse is pathetic but I dont think the clubs themselves abuse human rights, as long as the working conditions are ok.
ReplyDeleteHello all. Thank you to Gemma who pointed out that the individual acts I mentioned were not numbered correctly! Doing a bit of research I have noticed that different websites and studies have - rather confusingly - different numbers and even wording. For the full set of human rights please follow Gemma's links below:
ReplyDeleteGemma: I'm not sure the articles' numbers are entirely correct for example not being subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment is article 3 not 5.
Here are links to:
Human Rights Act: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/ukpga_19980042_en_1#pb3-l1g6
ECHR: http://www.echr.coe.int/nr/rdonlyres/d5cc24a7-dc13-4318-b457-5c9014916d7a/0/englishanglais.pdf
Here is my two pence worth- the argument that lap dancing is empowering is ridiculous, like you say, very few women in lap dancing clubs have made the choice to do this as a career with loads of other glittering options out there. I haven’t been to a lap dancing club, but I am aware that it is not that unusual amongst poeple i know, especially at stag dos. I think its really a backwards step that this has become something supposedly acceptable and normal and I definitely feel that the relaxed laws on this in the past few years have made this more commonplace. These are not men who would necessailry seek this out, but if it seems the done thing and is right on the doorstep then they may think of doing it. Not that I am excusing that, but that’s just the way it is.
ReplyDeleteThe argument by women that it is empowering is related to the minority of women who may come from affluent backgrounds and do lap dancing as a way of making money at uni or something (I did know one person who did this). Those women would be less likely to be exploited as they may know their rights, have more social support and be in a better position to refuse to be pressured into prostitution, drugs etc (though they still would be vulnerable I am sure). The reality I imagine is that most of the women who do end up in these jobs are not like that, and are in fact without options and alternatives and come from a much less powerful position. I know there is also a group of women who are pro-prostitution and use the same argument. Again, high class call girls who are wined and dined in Chelsea are the minority, the majority i would imagine are women who have been abused, in care, on drugs and have no choices.
i know that lap dancing and the sex industry in general is not the same as rape, but there are direct effects of lap dancing and it is linked in to criminal activities like trafficking, prostitution, rape etc..aside from the increased rates of assualt in areas where lap dancing clubs are opened, I suppose it makes me think about the kind of ideas about women and sex that having lap dancing clubs around and seeing them as ‘normal’ and acceptable perpetuates- women being sexy meaning they are available for sex, the polarising of good vs. bad women, the focus on women’s physical appearance, harassment of women in the street being acceptable
Back to the human rights act, I am not sure how my argument fits in there, just to say that it doesn’t sound like the conditions of work in these clubs are just and favourable, particularly having to pay to work there and sometimes ending up out of pocket at the end of the night, many women in lap dancing clubs may have been trafficked and thus are working in servitude, others might be on drugs and indebted to the men running these places and the treatment they are subjected to is often degrading and humiliating.
with rights come responsibilities and if the men who run these businesses say they have the right to run business and own property then they also have the responsibillity to ensure that those they employ are not having their rights infringed.
Look forward to hearing what others think…
Marta x
I’d like to run against the grain here and suggest that through ignorance the owners may have stumbled upon a relevant issue.
ReplyDeleteWithin our society we have seen legislative moves toward sexual freedom. Laws have opened up around pornography, homosexuality has been decriminalised; and the legal framework, though still inadequate, has been expanded to clarify and assist the prosecution of rapists. These moves and others all represent shifts toward self-definition, ownership and control of each individuals own sexuality. I would put forward the argument that movement toward revoking right to do as we please is a move toward revoking newly found freedoms women have gained.
The problem seen above lies not within the actual practice of erotic dancing, but the sexist society that it operates in and the lack of transparency in the practices of these businesses which allow managers to further tip the balance of power in their favour. Despite the moves toward sexual freedom, sexual representations are directed and controlled by men that are invested in the current power relation and so use their new freedoms to explore new depths of explicitness rather than new hierarchies of power, or even their total dissolution. As such, things essentially stay the same.
If the end of this is to come it has to happen through laws that necessitate egalitarianism alongside freedom; in fact I would argue that they should be deeply intertwined with the laws that permit people liberty to operate such a trade, not forcing the industry back to the shadows where there is no means of guaranteeing rights.
While it may seem that the abuse shows why it is wrong, I would argue that the few that say they’re empowered by it show how it could be gotten right. Sex work is as old as time itself and it is extremely unlikely to ever go away. By working at getting the legal framework right, it might actually have a constructive place within society and not a skeleton in our national closet.
I have changed my mind five or six times about this. I have to say ultimately I think it depends on the club, the owners and the women. You would think that good working conditions would mean happy women (dancers) and in turn happy clientele but I’m sure most of the owners are just thinking of making easy money rather than their dancers being comfortable.
ReplyDeleteI have been to lap dancing clubs in the past, with the lads after an office party, also for "research" purposes for TV shows. I have spoken with dancers and their opinions vary and I think it has a lot to do with the owners and the profile of the club. For instance, girls that i've spoken to from the more up market clubs said they made good money and it was a sort of addiction because they wouldn't be able to go to a normal job and make the same kind of cash. Some were putting themselves through college. One girl had just got back from 6 months travelling and was saving for a deposit to buy a flat. They’re the lucky ones. Basically you work nights and sleep in the day, it’s not healthy or natural. Some of the girls turn to drugs or drink to get them through or just get themselves in the mood and this like in all situations where stimulants are involved can become a slippery slope. There is a very fine line from becoming a lap dancer to getting sucked into all sorts of other things. They all preferred to work on the weekends as that's when you earn the most but in order to work weekends you have to work during the week when it's quieter. They do have to pay 'rent' which can be a double edged sword as like you say it can end up costing them money. It’s a tricky situation because if they had to rely on club owners to pay them a wage rather than being self employed they might also we worse off with even more chance of being exploited. I’ve heard about a house mother who made the dancers buy their stripping outfits in house and charge £80 + for what is essentially a piece of fabric with some velcro or ribbon.
The clubs see the girls as a commodity but surely this means they should look after them? Hopefully with this reclassification as ‘Sexual Encounter Establishments’ the clubs will be monitored and will have to adhere to certain standards. Like anything else, how far can they be monitored? Saying that, I do think they have a place in society and I don’t know if that’s just because they’ve always been there but also if people couldn’t go to lap dancing clubs where else would they go... It’s not just for stag parties and drunkern idiots, some people men just go in for a chat to have a bit of company. There was a heavily disabled guy in a wheelchair at one place I went to and the girls said where else was he supposed to go and get attention from women. OK he was paying them but it’s true, where would he go? The next step from a lap dancing club would be… a brothel? And that would be illegal.
I don’t think that lap dancing clubs empower women, maybe they feel empowered that they have the confidence to lap dance when they first start out and it builds their confidence but I think those places wear you down eventually, a lot of women see men in a different light and it can effect their relationships obviously not in all cases but in some. I think potentially other women see lap dancing as empowering women because they seem so confident around men and comfortable with their bodies that they appear powerful.
I believe in all five of the human rights act paraphrases you have chosen however, I think that if this is what we’re basing this on then it’s quite a sweeping judgment of all lap dancing clubs. I really don’t want to sit on the fence so I’ll have to say I don’t think that the very existence of these clubs is an infringement of human rights.
I think that the very existence of these clubs without being regulated, given strict and enforced guidelines is potentially an infringement of individual women’s human rights. I don’t think it can be as black and white as it is or it isn’t I think it has to be a case by case thing.