Violence against women

I recently read a study that was compiled by Kelly Holsopple, a former stripper and the co-founder of the Metropolitan Coalition Against Prostitution in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

You can read the entire study by clicking here. My hope is that local women who have been considering stripping as a viable financial option will read every last detail about what they are choosing to embark on. I would also hope that women who are already involved in stripping will learn more about the cycle of destruction that these businesses create and promote.

The study is three pages long and includes great insight into the many ways strip clubs bring serious harm to both women and men. If you do not have the time or patience to read the entire report, I have included several quotes below.

Please be advised that the study includes a great deal of information that may shock and offend you. Because of its graphic detail, I debated whether or not to link to it. Please use discretion if you choose to read it. In the end, I believe it serves to give us all a valuable glimpse of the ways women are being degraded, right under our noses.

The organization and conditions of stripclubs not only produce and reproduce gender inequality, but facilitate and normalize men’s violence against women. Sexual violence has been normalized, institutionalized, and legalized in the stripclub industry as socially sanctioned male behavior. Stripclubs and the men associated with stripclubs have turned acts of violence into entertainment and tied male sexual pleasure to victimizing and exploiting. Stripclubs are structured according to male domination and control, and are inherently violent. It is impossible to set up stripclubs without sexual violence and that is reason to challenge the legitimacy of stripclubs.

One hundred percent of the eighteen women in the survey report being physically abused in the stripclub.

Women find out about stripping from a variety of sources. Upscale stripclub franchises recruit in new cities by having managers and imported dancers scout in nightclubs. Most women find out about stripping from girlfriends already in stripping, male associates, the media, and some from prior involvement in prostitution. One woman told how she loitered in and around urban stripclubs to pick up customers when she was fifteen and how her pimp eventually drove her to small town strip bars because those bars admitted her and hired her. Someone else got involved in stripping through an escort service for bachelor parties. Another young woman who went to a gentlemen’s club to pick up her friend recounted her recruitment as an eighteen-year-old. She waited at the bar, was served alcohol, and the owner asked to check her I.D. Instead of censuring her for drinking, he told her she would make $1000 per week and pressured her to enter the amateur contest that night. She won the contest, $300, and worked there three weeks before being recruited into an escort service by a patron pimp.

Forty four percent of the women report that men associated with the stripclub have threatened to hurt them physically.

One woman new to stripping was dumbfounded at how little money she was making taking her clothes off, so she asked the manager for his advice on increasing tips. He suggested turning tricks and said he could help her set up dates. Management sets up tricks, says it is good for business, and obligates women to turn over money from prostitution to the club. Women say prostitution is promoted even though owners tell women they would be punished if they turn tricks. Some stripclubs are notorious for promoting prostitution.

Women characterize customers as scum, psycho mama’s boys, rapists and child molesters, old perverted men, idiots, *******, and pigs. Strippers are largely disgusted by customers and describe them as pitiful and pathetic, stupid and ignorant, sick, controlling and abusive.

Women in this study undoubtedly denounce stripclub owners as pimps and "glorified pimps" and maintain that owners misuse power and are sick. The women also label managers as pimps citing that they mistreat women, that they make every attempt to take money from the women, and that they are sick because they are affiliated with the industry and know the harm they do.