Lapdancing club for women opens in Birmingham, UK

[delphyne]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/ ... 19,00.html

"Do women really want male lap dancers?

Lap dancing has been huge for years - so why is Britain's first male lap dancing club only opening now? And will it make any money? Ellie Levenson reports

Monday September 18, 2006
The Guardian

Given that Birmingham is regularly called the "lap dancing capital of the UK" it is no great surprise that a new club is set to open there this week; but this is a venue with a crucial difference. Tricky Dicky's is the very first club catering solely for straight women, with no men allowed through the doors - except for the 22 thong-clad male dancers.
Entry costs £5, and the customers buy £10 tokens at the bar. A dancer - chosen by the punter - gets one token to perform a dance in the club's main section, or two for a private dance in a booth. There is strictly no touching, with six female security staff on hand to enforce the rule.

So far, so predictable. The question remains though: can women - like men - be turned on by a visit to a lap dancing club? There is no doubt that, since 1980, when a San Francisco dive had the idea of charging men $1 a time to have a naked woman sit on their lap, the industry has become big business. As these clubs have grown in popularity, it's become increasingly acceptable for women to visit them with their partners.
When it comes to a club catering solely for women, though, is the aim to titillate us or just to provide some hen-night, Full Monty-style fun? Beyond the visual thrill, the sexual frisson between a male client and a female lap dancer seems to be based on a complex, and perilous balancing act of deceit and domination. To be properly turned on, then, the customer either has to fantasise that the dancer finds him truly attractive, or enjoy paying someone for a sex act that they aren't truly up for. A friend of mine, Leonie, who used to work as a lap dancer - strictly for the money - says that she was surprised by just how easily the men bought into the whole fantasy that they might be turning women on.

Most women I spoke to agreed that, for them, though, buying into such a fantasy would be difficult, if not impossible. The reason may partly be that men are easier to dupe, but also that women lack confidence. Bethany, a political researcher, has never been to a lap dancing club and doesn't think she ever will. "I just don't see how it's attractive, there's no intimacy and the other person is only there because they're being paid. In fact it's a guaranteed way to lower your self-esteem, because you are having to resort to payment for your sexual kicks."

Sarah, an acquaintance, recently went on a night out with some female friends to a lap dancing club where there were male and female dancers, but didn't find it a turn-on at all. She had been looking forward to it, but ended up not paying for a dance "mostly because I didn't think I would derive pleasure from it," she says. "I was fairly sure the bloke wouldn't either; it seemed rather pointless."

Not only do women have trouble buying in to the whole pretence then, but they don't come up with the money either says veteran sex-industry entrepreneur, Peter Stringfellow. His new Soho venue has been open for three months and provides male and female dancers on Saturdays. "It's great for the atmosphere of the club because it brings in groups of women as well as groups of men," he says, "but it doesn't make money." He has found that women might club together for a dance but that just one satisfies their curiosity: "Women treat it as a party and have fun whereas, for a man, getting a dance from a girl is a more serious thing." Because of this, he questions whether Tricky Dicky's will be able to make enough money to survive. And, whereas a sizable amount of Stringfellows' business comes from men who visit his clubs alone, he doubts women will do that: "Men can come to the club on their own and girls will talk to them but you never see a single girl doing it."

The manager of Tricky Dicky's, Richard Power, a 36-year-old former cleaner, admits that clients are unlikely to come to his club alone or for a serious sexual experience. "They're coming for fun and a night out with the girls," he says. Beyond that, he guesses his club might facilitate nights out with the boys too. Tricky Dicky's is located above Legs Eleven, a traditional strip club, so Power suggests that men and women can separate off at the start of a night, before meeting up afterwards and going to a club. While women might not have been fully satisfied by the floor-show then, any titillation that they might have experienced can be followed through later.

Of course, with the no touching rule, the lap dancing experience is largely visual. John Lenkiewicz, director of the London-based Institute of Sexuality and Human Relations, and a psycho-sexual therapist, believes that women are unlikely to be turned on just by watching. "They would go for a laugh rather than for sexual gratification," he says. "Women are interested in attention, protection and humour rather than physical attributes."

Although I am inclined to agree with this, I do take umbrage at a man, even a psycho-sexual therapist, telling me that he knows what women want. The long-standing theory, that women aren't turned on visually, feels like something men may have made up to make themselves feel better, telling each other in secret exchanges in changing rooms or masonic temples: "Yes, I'm ugly, smelly and have a small penis but she loves me because I make her laugh and know how to unblock the sink." "Get a grip," I want to say. "What we really want is a big, hard ..." Alas, this is probably only true when it comes attached to someone who can make us laugh and unblock the sink.

Although Tricky Dicky's is likely to see a lot of business from groups of women - when its opening was recently delayed Power had to cancel 48 pre-booked groups - it would be wrong to think that the club is providing a service to women, or trying to bridge the gender gap by providing equality. It seems to me that this club isn't set up to please women, but to exploit them. Not perhaps in the traditional way that sex workers can be exploited, but by taking women's money for a sexual experience and almost certainly leaving them unsatisfied. As one of the women I spoke to said: "I would much prefer to spend the money on a manicure"."

Can't see it making any money. Has anybody heard news on Heidi Fleiss's venture?

[annared]

I do not look at men as ‘objects’. Strange but true

[Pony]

I don't either. I think women might go to this once, women who are trying to appear 'with it', women who have been brainwashed by the pornstitutionists to think this is how it's done--and come home kinda puzzled. They weren't getting it on. WTF? And they won't do it again.

[sunnysmiles]

I do not look at men as ‘objects’. Strange but true

No matter how hard I try to, they just don't turn into objects, cause at the end of the day to them I'm just a fat, ugly, man-hater-dyke-wannabe. So, I'm just going to keep on looking at them as objects - a girl can have some fun, cause I can always 'look and not get anywhere near touching'. [end sarcasm].

But in all seriousness, I do 'objectify' men for what it's worth (obviously, it holds no bearing on what I do/do not think - ultimately a man is in control of what I "think" of him). If we just examined and magnified a goodlooking man's body a zillion times over, it would be a 'turn on' to the point of stimulation. This I am certain of. As my lesbian friends put it, the best scene in "van helsing" was when Hugh Jackman ripped off his shirt. Of course this scene was rife with 'hyper masculine' attributes, but both my female friend and I've felt the same way towards Dave Gahan (depeche mode) dancing shirtless - and he's 'gay' by conventional lookist standards.

Maybe strip clubs will be one of those 'trade off things' as suggested by the article. You know, where the super - pornstubating bfs go out with their friends to the strip club and the women go out to 'theirs' for payback... not necessarily enjoyment. I don't think a woman who did 'objectify' men, would really be stimulated by this, of course I think presentation/context would matter.

I think Pony said somewhere about how 'camera-play' made this happen. The only situations I've 'objectified' men have been 'via a camera' (large screens). I think it's one thing to say someone is "hot", it doesn't really "mean" anything. But I think it's totally different to see someone wiggling their naked bodies around while you personally pay them to do it... We attach meaning to this.

That's why so many men find it 'uncomfortable' to have someone they know strip for them... because of the associated meaning. I think women know it's pathetic to watch a male stripper, so they laugh it off. I think it's the given context that makes them disassociate from being turned on. Had women been trained to be more in-tune with their sexuality, and had it been more acceptable for women to 'objectify' men - then they may actually be 'physically stimulated visually'. I wonder if these same women would be stimulated if they were to find themselves alone with a man who was attractive and stripping for them in private. I also think it is 'easier' to 'objectify' men of colour to that degree. It's 'okay' to objectify naked bodies of men of colour. They are 'exotic', they are other, they "MEAN" less and therefore the 'associated meaning' is different.

However, I do think women get 'turned on' by watching female strippers. Whether that is because they are 'imagining themselves' in the stripper's position or whether they really 'see' it as sexy, is difficult to say. It could be either way, but it is definitely different from the way men "see women".

It's a totally different 'ball'-game ...

[deedle]

I agree.

I think this is yet another example of an attempt to demonstrate that, these days, women are "empowered" by our obvious "equality" to behave as the men do.

But that's a crock of shit to start with so, while there might be an initial flurry of curiosity, the whole concept is empty, shallow and, as the article said, unsatisfying and there are many more things most women would choose to spend their spare cash on.

It'll bomb.

[delphyne]

The problem with this is that most people misunderstand what is actually going on at strip-clubs or in the rest of the sex industry. The men are getting turned on by the women's submission, vulnerabilty and humiliation which to them looks sexy and because their whole identity as men (which for a lot of men means their whole identity full stop) depends upon being one up on a woman. They get a huge amount out of treating women this way.

It doesn't work the other way around. That's why it pisses me off when people say men are more "visual" than women when what they really are is more visually stimulated by seeing women sexually degraded.

[jo]

Well said Delphyne.

[SaltyC]

Yeah, that is what the code "more visual" means, because it doesn't make sense literally.

Women's magazines have tons of pictures, look at the home decorating mags, with pictures of homes fantastically well-kept. They don't describe fantasies of clean homes with words.


Romance Novels are not women's porn. They don't objectify men, they are sick rape fantasies for women with mid-grade level Stockholm syndrome.

[annared]

I have read quite a few studies debunking the ‘males are more visual than females’ theory. I cannot find the article I especially wanted to show, but this study shows equal stimulus to erotic materiel.

A great deal of past research has suggested that men are more visual creatures than women and get more aroused by erotic images than women. Anokhin says the fact that the women's brains in this study exhibited such a quick response to erotic pictures suggests that, perhaps for evolutionary reasons, our brains are programmed to preferentially respond to erotic material.

"Usually men subjectively rate erotic material much higher than women," he says. "So based on those data we would expect lower responses in women, but that was not the case. Women have responses as strong as those seen in men."

http://www.dimaggio.org/Eye-Openers/sex.htm

[delphyne]

OK, this is my favourite line of the week -

they are sick rape fantasies for women with mid-grade level Stockholm syndrome

That's a really interesting study, annared.

[annared]

It is my favourite also

they are sick rape fantasies for women with mid-grade level Stockholm syndrome

I have used the Stockhom Syndrome suggestion my self, it does make me wonder.