Help with human rights project

Some of you have kindly said that you will comment on my discussion paper around lap dancing and human rights for the purpose of my project. Thank you so much for your help - it is hugely appreciated! I have posted the discussion paper below and invite you to leave your comments as 'comment posts' here. If for any reason you do not want your views to be public, please email me your comments instead. Please also tell anyone else that may be interested in the subject to join the blog and share comments too. I need to begin writing up an analysis of views on Sunday so it would be great to have as much input as possible before then. Thanks again!

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

Lapdancing clubs finally require new licenses

The Policing and Crime Act finally came into law this month effectively forcing existing lap dancing clubs to reapply for new licenses as ‘sex encounter venues’ - the same licenses that apply to sex shops, ‘peep shows’ and sex cinemas. Currently, they are licensed in exactly the same way as pubs.

For many, this has been a long time coming and is partly due to the incredible advocacy work of The Fawcett Society and OBJECT and their supporters who have been tirelessly putting pressure on local and National government for some time. This new law also means that communities will have much more control over whether new lap dancing venues are allowed to open in their local area, near schools and places of worship.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to sound pious - I have been to lap dancing clubs myself in the past but let’s not pretend that a lap dancing or pole dancing venue is in any way the same as a bog standard pub or cafe. As a lap dancer recently told the Guardian in response to OBJECT’s proposals: ‘’If you're masturbating someone through his trousers with your arse, then that's definitely a sexual service.... No matter what the owners tell you, these places are 100% sex industry’’.

And to those who say its all just ‘a bit of fun’ I would point you to the statistics in Camden - a borough that currently has 7 lap dancing and strip clubs - that shows incidents of rape rose by 33% after the opening of the last 4 establishments. Having a no touching rule in the clubs is all well and good but when sexually aroused and frustrated men full of alcohol leave the premises, women become fair game. As someone who spent over a decade living on a road famous for prostitution, I was kerb crawled and propositioned constantly and was once mugged by a pimp so I can attest to that.

However, just as we celebrate the passing of the new law, strip club managers are up in arms. ‘It’s not fair!’ they claim, probably branding supporters of the campaign a bunch of prudes and lesbians. So incensed are they in fact that they are now claiming the law is in an infringement of their human rights and are threatening to take the matter to the EU courts. ‘’Why should we pay an extra £30,000 for a new license?’ they whinge? With one chain of lap dancing clubs turning over profits of over a million a year I would argue ‘because you can afford it!’.

Let’s not forget that it is not the dancers themselves who see the money, in fact many girls report ending up further in debt after having to pay for the privilege of dancing at such an establishment. Dancers also consistently state that the no touching rules are never adhered to and that they are generally expected to do whatever the punters want.

Claiming that new licensing laws are infringement of human rights is so ridiculous it’s laughable. I can only hope any claims get laughed straight out of court. As Anna van Heeswijk of OBEJECT stated ‘’human rights legislation exists to safeguard against discrimination, not to protect the rights of club owners to make a profit’’.

Good point well made

At the recent national sexual health conference, the topic of rape came up. After many long winded questions to the panel from academics and professionals, a teenage girl stood up and made the most memorable point of the day.

Why she asked, are we as women always made to feel responsible for rape and sexual assault? ‘’Look at all these ads - its like ‘girls, watch your drink at all times to avoid getting spiked’ and ‘girls, don’t get in any taxi cab unless you know for sure it is licensed’. ‘Girls, don’t walk home in unlit areas late at night and don’t listen to your ipod when walking alone’’. ‘‘When’’ she demanded, voice rising ‘’are they going to bring out an ad campaign that says ‘men - stop raping women!’’

Good point well made I think.

On the same topic, I was so confused and frustrated reading the reporting of Jack Tweed’s rape case yesterday. Tweed is being tried for ‘rape’ while his friend Anthony Davis is being tried for ‘oral rape’ (and we dont know yet whether they are guilty or not). The story is that Tweed raped her and Anthony forced her to perform oral sex. I am confused. Is this somehow not as bad as penetrative rape? Does so called ‘oral rape’ carry a lesser sentence? Is someone actually saying that it’s not quite as bad if they get raped in the mouth?

To the same degree, the media’s insistence on using the term ‘date rape’ shows no sign of abating. There is somehow this belief that being raped by a known man is not as traumatic as being raped by a stranger. In fact rape by your husband was only criminalised as recently as 1991! Considering over 80% of rape victims know their assailant, I think we can safely say that ‘date rape’ is simply ‘rape’.

I think it’s high time we started calling a spade a spade.

Wheeling out the WAGS but no mention of women’s issues….

With over 20 million women eligible to vote in May, I was appalled that none of the political leaders mentioned women’s issues in the first TV debate last week. This despite the fact the party leaders are clearly aware of the need to court women voters – why else are Sarah and SamCam being wheeled out at every opportunity? And I love the fact that Clegg has so far mostly resisted, even though his wife is clearly both the most intelligent and the fittest of the lot ;)

Having spent a day trawling through the manifestos last week, women barely get a look in there either. Labour’s ‘A Fair Future For All’ mentions the word ‘women’ only 8 times in 60 pages, mostly in general terms in a wider context making only one paltry concession to the female of the species with the paragraph:

‘’Domestic violence has fallen
by over 50 per cent since
1997, reporting of rape has
doubled, and rape convictions
have increased by more
than 50 per cent. But we are
committed to zero tolerance
of violence against women, so
we will continue to drive up
prosecution rates, tackle causes,
and raise awareness – as well
as maintaining women-only
services including a Sexual
Assault Referral Centre in every
area.’’

This sounds lovely but as far as I am aware, most rape crisis centres receive no government funding. Despite many pledges over the years, we have seen a decline, not a rise in support services for victims of rape and sexual assault. Labour have at least begun to tackle the issue of Domestic Violence this year but there is still a hell of a long way to go.

The Tory manifesto – a deeply unreadable 138 page document that manages to say not very much about anything at all despite it’s glossy photos and random graphs and tabular data – mentions women only five times (four of which are in sentences that say ‘men and women’) and have absolutely nothing anywhere in the document about women’s rights in any way shape or form.

The Liberal Democrats sadly only mention women four times, all in general terms.

How is this possible? Frankly it’s insulting.

I am leaning more and more towards the Lib Dems, based on things such as their opposition to the war, their pledge to scrap ID cards and refusal to replace Trident (saving billions that could be better spent on health and education) and more specifically for their ideas around the criminal justice system – scrapping short term sentences and channelling more money into education, prevention and rehabilitation rather than spending millions on expanding prisons for example.

But they by no means have my vote yet and frankly a nod to women’s health, women’s rights or women’s support services from Clegg or Brown in the coming days could have massive implications on which way I vote on 6th May. I am sure I am not alone

A random idea....

I never thought I would become a 'blogger' to be honest. I am not very technologically advanced for a start. I recently deleted my Myspace page after realising I hadn't checked it for over a year, and I have never been on Twitter, not even to look at someone else's feed. (Do you call it a 'feed'?) I am even growing bored of Facebook and only seem to update my status by blackberry when stuck on a night bus these days.



Recently however, partly through my job, partly through my studies but mostly through growing up and suddenly finding myself a fully-grown-up-adult-woman, I have discovered two things:



1. I love writing. I always did love it and long before I took pleasure in songwriting, I even wrote 'a book' on a two week summer holiday. I was 11. Yes I really was that precocious. Being at university has made me realise that while I am certainly not a great academic writer, I do love the writing process. A tutor was also kind enough recently to tell me after giving me a so-so 65% for an essay that while I should have 'delved deeper into theory', my writing style 'was fantastically readable'. I was quite surprised by how much this comment pleased me.



2. I get angry. Again, I always did have a bit of a temper but these days I have mellowed dramatically and don't seem to get angry in my personal life the way I did when I was younger. I get angry about other things now. Mainly things to do with the treatment of young people and of women; to do with the ridiculous pressures put upon women; to do with the tedious marketing ploys of companies advertising to young girls; to do with the overtly sexualised society we live in; the constant bombardment of messages to girls that they must be thin and tanned and hairless; the sale of NUTS and other such poor excuses for magazines sold next to Beano in newsagents; the fact that we are still fighting for legal abortion in Ireland as well as many countries further from home; the fact that two women a week die as a result of domestic violence; the disturbing views and derogatory terms about women that I hear daily from the young people I work with and mainly the fact that girls and women often hold these views just as much as the boys and men. And what really makes me angry and so terribly sad is the complete lack of sisterhood. Why are we letting this happen? Why aren't we showing the young girls of our society that it doesn't have to be this way? Why do we as adults buy into this sick culture when young people learn from us? How can we tell young girls not to buy into the beauty myth when we ourselves are such slaves to it?



Yesterday I decided that during my travels to and from work I would count all the posters, ads and billboards that used naked or near naked women to sell their products. Arriving at work having already noted seven (including ads for such sexy things as computers, coffee, beer, vitamins and errrr.... cancer) I went online and was faced with the SWAGS calendar and was so incensed I decided to start a blog. (And if you haven't seen the SWAGS diary - I have posted one of the many tasteful pictures here.)



So here I am. I am giving blogging a try.



I certainly don't claim to have any answers and I am actually embarrassed that it has taken me this long to realise that I am in fact a feminist. I have called this blog The Ramblings of an Amateur Feminist because I feel I have so much to learn. I was brought up to believe that women were equal and I have been lucky enough to have never been in an abusive relationship and to have done well at work. Perhaps that is the problem - I didn't think I had experienced overt sexism firsthand so it has taken me a while to get here. I say 'amateur' because though I do read a fair amount of feminist literature and closely follow policy relating to women, and though I work with young women and have always been passionate about women's rights, I don't fully understand the differences between 'new feminism' and 'reconstructed feminism' and I can't quote Mary Wollstonecraft or Germaine Greer but what I can do, is talk about what I see all around me, what I hear from all the young women I work with and what I learn day to day.



So this blog may be more of a rant and a stream of consciousness than anything else. And I will also post links to opinions of those far wiser than me. Please forgive me my self indulgence. I am really writing this for myself but I invite you to visit, read, comment, share, discuss, rant and ramble with me if you so wish.



Charli x