On Sun, 4 Apr 2004 kelley at pulpculture.org wrote:
> As Deb said, strippers may enjoy inviting the gaze of men who they do not
> know and don't care to know. That's certainly the case for my friend,
> M. As Deb pointed out, she's not necessarily a victim who views the
> desiring gaze as unwelcome.
>
> M, for instance, enjoys being desired with no expectation that she return
> the desirous gaze. She controls the situation--with the help of the club
> with its bouncers and rules and laws regulating what goes on between
> strippers and patrons. She enjoys dancing even more because she doesn't
> _have to_ desire them and, if she does anything that indicates that she
> might, she views herself as giving a gift to those particular men who she
> thinks have earned it. Earned it, interestingly enough, outside of the cash
> nexus.
I've been following this thread with interest, but I haven't jumped in because Kel said everything I would have said. The bit above, however, makes me wonder: do we really have this much individual control over a social process like objectification? Whether or not I enjoy something or perceive that I am in control does not ensure that I am really in control or that I have power. --The psychological wish does not make it a social fact.
An analogy that comes to mind (a bit tortured perhaps): we have good documentary evidence of slaves in the antebellum South who were loyal and happy. In the context of slavery, certain slaves (e.g., some house slaves) had a surprising degree of autonomy and responsibility in the households; they enjoyed their position; they had control and power (e.g., over children). If they enjoy their position, and derive a sense of control from it, this does nothing to change the social fact that they are owned by someone else.
Now, I do not mean to argue that strippers are slaves; I am just pointing out that people saying "I'm like this and I'm in control" doesn't tell us much about social structure (in fact, psychology obscures as much as it helps when it comes to social analysis).
One anecdote to illustrate how a person in fact cannot control the objectification associated with stripping: I had a student who worked in strip clubs. She always said "I dance". At first, I thought she was in the dance program at school, and I asked if she studied ballet, modern, jazz. She looked at me sheepishly and explained what she meant, emphasizing how much money she made. She couldn't just say "I'm a stripper", because she correctly identified that the label is a stigma in our society (even now, I'd say the mainstream view in the U.S. is that strippers are sluts/druggies).
So I guess I take a more macro-level view here: strip clubs, regardless of the psychological imputations of the participants, clearly reinforce social stratification in a number of ways.
1. To put it bluntly, sex is made a commodity. This commodification--like the commodification of any human needs--is a crucial component of capitalism, and thus reinforces economic inequalities.
2. Stripping celebrates youth; there is a pretty rigid appearance "script" a stripper needs to follow to make decent money. --A perpetuation of age stratification.
3. The fact that women can make way more money doing stripping than doing most other kinds of work (e.g., teaching) reinforces gender stereotypes: women are prized sexual objects, and their worth is tied to their sexual attractiveness rather than other human (stereotypically male) qualities like intellect. --A perpetuation of gender stratification.
Like most social activities in our society, strip clubs reinforce existing social structure and existing forms of social stratification, regardless of the intent of the participants.
Miles