Posts by Heather Gaye
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Awesome, thanks for that, Stephen. It's a take that never occurred to me before.
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OK, I was thinking about the whole stripping thing a bit this weekend, & there are a few things that I'm curious about WRT to the sex industry.
A thought that follows on from discussion about the gender imbalance - that the sex industry is primarily women catering to the needs of men. It's easy to suggest the absence of an equivalent industry catering to women is proof of gender power imbalance, but I think it's a bad example, as there's a big difference in what triggers sexual arousal in men & women. Men tend to be turned on by what they see - generally, naked woman = aroused man. However, as thousands of pages of soft porn in such upstanding publications as Cosmo would vouch, outside an actual sexual encounter, women seem to get their kicks more from elaborate fictional accounts: often imagining the kinds of scenarios that there's no way they'd ever want to act out. So in that respect, even in a completely balanced world, I don't think there'd be the call for a male stripping industry in the same way as female. This kind of plays out in the traditional difference between a "girls' night out" hooting over men strutting around in their g-strings, and men hiding in corners and jerking off over writhing girls. Perhaps there's a sex-in-the-city kind of market for day spas with erotic massages? Again, I'm not sure whether women would just think this is a kinky idea, but wouldn't actually want to go there.
Also, based on the idea that perhaps female stripping is starting to fall more into line with male stripping in the way it's becoming more of a "fun night out" - and I imagine this is one angle that'd be pushed by that branch of feminists who think we need to empower women in the sex industry rather than rescuing them from it. Would this mainstreaming of the profession - particularly sliding emphasis away from sexual gratification - detrimentally affect a stripper's income? Surely all the money that's to be made in the industry is because of the more seedy element? With that in mind, I'm also curious to know what kind of wage difference there is between male and female strippers.
Also, someone mentioned rent boys before, suggesting that prostitution isn't purely a feminist issue. What proportion of transactions involve male escorts sleeping with women though? I was under the assumption - and I have no idea whether I've just been watching too many arthaus movies - that men still make up the bulk of their client base. I'm not sure what my point is there, but just I don't think the existence of rent boys implies the industry is any better balanced.
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Not sure if Georgina Beyer counts in this context as being a female MP,
She certainly counts by virtue of being at the receiving end of gender discrimination. The thoughts behind my original post were driven in part by how the trans-gender community has also fought for recognition.
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I think the very nature of the sex industry means that a woman will always have a problem getting into a high-profile role when there are men out there who have paid money to see her naked and gyrating in their laps.
..oh, I guess I inadvertently showed my colours on that one - that regardless of why a woman chooses to strip, her profession is all about objectification.
Hmm..now I have to work out what to do with that little revelation.
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my gut tells me that those 40 years of apparent progress in gender equality would evaporate. does that mean that all this "empowerment" is so much hot air?
..I don't know if it proves it's all hot air, but it's a good example of an issue that's being both resolved and inflamed by differing schools of gender politics. You've got all sorts of angles, from "no shame in that" to "woman finally frees herself from the shackles of oppressive profession and makes good".
Granted, regardless of how enlightened we get, I think the very nature of the sex industry means that a woman will always have a problem getting into a high-profile role when there are men out there who have paid money to see her naked and gyrating in their laps. However, I also doubt that every stripper wants to be a politician, and stripping isn't the only bad career choice.
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(lightbulb) Wow, I never made the connection before...
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why are we so loathe to accept this reality and do something about it, rather than pretend that we live in a society that treats women as equals?
This is kinda where I was headed. A lot of people - men and women - think that acknowledging and solving the problem happened in about the same paragraph, but that's clearly not the case. But instead of having a society with strongly defined and oppressive gender roles, we now have this weird mishmash that's neither oppression nor enlightenment. We've got people who are trying hard to address practical gender stereotyping issues - from such perspectives as career choices and pay equity; others that are worried the first group's attempts will transform us into sexless automatons; people that don't even think these problems are even related to gender oppression; people that think "reclaiming" and "empowering" existing oppressive gender roles (such as in the sex industry) is sufficient to justify them; others that think they should be banned altogether; etc etc etc.
It's two steps forward and one step back - for every attempt at a solution, there are new, more nuanced problems. It's a long arduous journey, but my original point is that we're still moving forward. Heck, we've seen the complete transformation of centuries of gender oppression in just 40 years, hands up who thought it was going to be that easy? :)
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Sexual exploitation is still alive and well - obviously young women are more repressed than ever they were, and have stupidly bought into all the brainwashing.
I don't question the ongoing existence of sexual exploitation, but I don't agree with the tabloid alarmism. I think the problems that we have now are a kind of communal maturing - the rebellious teenage years of society, if you like. The existence of sexual exploitation has been acknowledged, but we're still not quite sure how to fix it.
I think our current media/society saturated with sexualised images/entertainment isn't so much a symptom of sexual oppression any more, but a step in the attempt to resolve it. Society's pendulum swing - we're still trying to find that equilibrium between allowing people of all genders to express themselves as sexual beings, while extending gender equivalence to all the other areas that have previously discriminated.
I don't know if that makes any sense or not.
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The page now has a hilariously stern Wikipedia warning stating "the factual accuracy of this article is disputed."
Wow, now someone's reverted & protected the article. AND they berated everyone, including the band, for vandalism, & attempting to "compromise the integrity of wikipedia". Hahahahaha!
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I wonder if Asian students don't sometimes feel like that in NZ. By that I mean that we just want their money (or their parents money) and don't care much about their welfare.
That's exactly the feeling I got from the experience. I think a lot of kiwis (or aucklanders at least) think "oh, racial attacks are just one-off lunatics, we're pretty enlightened, the asians don't have anything to worry about here". But it's a terribly isolating experience just sticking out, even in the absence of overt racism. 10 times worse if you have a bad experience. It's absolutely no wonder that Chinese students keep to themselves, & have arguments about their cohorts whiting up.