>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.
:) ahhh, drat, you mean all those discussions where I asked, "what's the
difference between selling apples pies and selling hummers?" went for
naught!? (It's a Marxist feminist framework for thinking about the
commodification of the "private" sphere, asking why we come to view some
things, which used to be created in the home with the loving hands of women
and given *cough* freely to their families, but are now see as acceptable
to sell as opposed to the insistence that some things just shouldn't be
sold (for some, parenting, sex work, etc.)
I certainly assume this macro level view. The issue is a recycling of old list debates where I've objected to the description of sex work as uniquely crappy because of the nature of what is being sold, because what is being sold is seen as something we _shouldn't_ sell because selling it defiles it in a way that selling apple pies, therapy, advice, etc. isn't defiled. And the argument in the past has been that, somehow, those who sell it and those who buy it are particularly sad creatures in a way that sets them apart from the rest o' us good folks who don't watch or patronize strip joints, prostitutes, etc. (I didn't check the archives so I may be misrepresenting this position.)
So, this ground--the marcro-level--is assumed, just as it was assumed in my discussion of Walmart workers. They may _think_ they're freely giving of their hard work, not driven by the absolute necessity of earning a living, but they are, like every one of us, wage slaves. But what I object to is a tendency to view these folks as completely blinded and duped by society and somehow others, like us, aren't.
What I've tried to do was explain why these folks don't necessarily see themselves as victims, without necessarily judging that or trying to explain it, just yet. This is probably my training as an ethnographer. I tend to believe it's important to listen to and take very seriously what people tell you, constantly pushing it up against your inchoate conjectures and tentative explanations, altering them when necessary, and from there we can build theory (Michael Burawoy's stuff, with a little Roy Bhaskar and feminist theory thrown in.)
Is that helpful?
To Dwayne I'd add that there are a number of other products being sold that exploit alienation and loneliness. (At the same time, I know a few men who've frequented strippers and prostitutes when they were in the Navy and I'm not so sure that they were lonely. Also, I'm not so sure that the women with whom I've gone to strip shows with were lonely. Some were very happily married. Some were pretty happy being single and playing the field. Some just liked to go out for a night on the town with the girls.
But, I'm not dismissing your point, just making it a little more complicated by wondering how sexual orientation/gender play into all of this.
I could probably move from talking about M's more positive view of her sex work to what I see as something M doesn't realize: If you take a particular feminist view of what she's saying, it's really clear that both M and the student found stripping empowering precisely because capitalist patriarchy has alienated them from their sexuality--when I talked about how the student felt she had to disavow her sexuality in public. It is a misplaced (?) way to reclaim her body from a larger macro-level social process.