Biting Beaver Gags (Again) On Stripping

You know....there are times that I could excuse some of the totally whack pseudo-radfem psychobabble over at the Biting Beaver blog, considering all the hell that BB (the female voice of the duo that runs that space) has had to endure. No one should have to endure the horror that she has had to face, what with being a victim of a brutal rape and going through a hellish divorce proceeding...among others. It almost allows me to have even a twinge of sympathy for her rage against men.

Then she goes and posts nonsense like the following...and I am jolted back to reality and reminded of what a sex-hating, male-hating crackpot she really is.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Stripping...my experience

Whew, ok... this is a post I've put off for a long while. I touched on it somewhat in My Story, but didn't get too in depth with it. What I think I want to get out today is the real story behind the sex industry, and it's a post I've long been loathe to write.

First, I want to make sure that everyone understands that time in my life was exceptionally chaotic. Many of my memories are through a haze of alcohol and seemingly endless parties, and often I've had to piece things together to find the right chain of events. With luck I've gotten the timeline correct, but many of the finer details have become dulled and blurred through the years. I was underage when I was enmeshed in this life; I had just gotten a car and I was barely 16 years old.

[...]

See, you to know that those women hate you. They don't like you, and no amount of money you can give them will make them stop laughing at you. If you've ever given money to a stripper, you've probably given money to a girl or woman who has spent the last 20 minutes laughing at you, either with the other girls or on the inside. You buy a lap dance and inside she's criticizing you, laughing at you, mocking you. She's mocking what you’re wearing, how you’re speaking and everything about you.

When a man would pay me to give him a lap dance I would spend the entire time internally laughing at his breath, his pimples, his fat belly, anything and everything I could. These women hate you, and no amount of money you can give them will make them like you anymore.

See, here's the deal: just as the men who come to the bar have to be completely devoid of empathy for the women they're buying, the women also have to be completely devoid of empathy for the men who are buying them. It's a survival thing, and besides, how can we like you when you're paying to own us? No, oftentimes women will think and fantasize about smashing your head in with a baseball bat while they gyrate in your lap. But of course, we can't really do that can we? For whatever reason, we must allow ourselves to be bought and sold for the erections that men get over the power associated with owning a human being.

So, while we may be thinking about how disgusting your teeth are, how horrible your breath is, what a stupid shirt you're wearing and how we'd like to run a cheese grater over your smug face, we're smiling and looking at you through submissive eyes as we robotically rub our bodies over yours. But that anger has to go somewhere doesn't it? And, just as with everything else, it does. The anger turns into something else, and oftentimes it is turned inwards. We starve ourselves and abuse ourselves, and let you abuse us because we believe we deserve it. Other times we dull the pain, using alcohol and downers to rid ourselves of the anger, to crush it and keep it in check.

Most often we use several of these options simultaneously. We turn our anger onto other women, onto ourselves and onto our children but we can't turn that anger onto men; that would be too dangerous. We learn, very early on and particularly when we strip, that men are dangerous. They are more dangerous than anything else we’ve ever known.

Be assured that the stripper you see hates you. She drowns her hatred in alcohol, or burns it in a cloud of pot smoke, but she’s still angry.

Now, I don't know what's more hilarious...Beeb attenpting to speak for all sex workers in describing the total loathing they apparantly have for their clients; or the assumption that she can actually lecture male strip club patrons on their innate essential evil..as if they are going to be flocking to her blog to begin with. But then again, that's standard operating procedure for her and other radfem sex fascists, as we should well know by now.

The life of a stripper is a life of sexual harassment. Men grope at you constantly, trying to put their fingers inside of you when you walk past. You are called names, and told to “Bring that cunt over here you little whore”. And you do. You bring it over there because you've told yourself that you are powerful when you do so. That's yet another way to control the anger and the humiliation. You wrap it in empowerment, telling yourself that you're the one who’s really coming out on top. You tell yourself that you're the winner because that nasty fucker gave you every bill in his wallet, but deep down inside you know what's really going on and you continue to medicate, you continue a cycle of ups and downs.

Sometimes, as a 16 year old stripper, I would find myself on the floor of my rented bedroom at Deanna’s house, surrounded by the things I had taken from my room at my parent's house. I had a stuffed clown and large black and white stuffed panda bear. At times I would fall into a heap on the floor of that bedroom, an ashtray and a can of Old Milwaukee beer at my feet, while I cried into the fur of that panda bear. I remember thinking that if one more man tried to stick his fingers inside of me that night then I’d fucking kill myself. I remember looking longingly at kitchen knives but always being too terrified to actually do it. And then, about an hour before we were due to leave, Deanna might knock softly on the door.

OK....all stop!!! 16 year old stripper?!?!?!?! First off, most strip clubs I know are very perculiar these days about legal age of their performers, since that is the first thing that attracts the vice cops....so how in the hell did Beeb end up there to begin with??? Either that club was more underground and illegal (and that reflects little or nothing on those clubs that operate to the letter of the law)...or there may be a bit of exaggeration going on here to comfort Beeb's present myopic biases. I'll just let you read on and decide for yourself which is more true here.

Sometimes, we laid on that floor together and cried. Me, a 16 year old girl with a bag of vibrators, dildos and anal beads stuffed into a briefcase for use with my ‘clients’ on the escort side of the business, and Deanna, a dark haired, dark eyed woman who’s face showed more pain than any face I have known before or since. Sometimes we’d cry on the floor of that bedroom and then, after our tears were spent, we’d stand and smile and hug each other and go about the task of getting our things together. We’d change into our makeup and our clothes and we’d leave and drive to whatever club we were due at, or to the office itself to await the phone calls of the men who wanted to buy us.

[...] [Snipped for brevity]

I've had men call me the most vile things imaginable and I've had them pay me to do the sort of degrading things I can't even talk about.

The anger that stems from this is all-consuming; it eats away at you slowly, despite the efforts you make to contain it. A full 17 years later and I'm still enraged. The seed that was planted all those years ago has turned into a tree and that tree has branches that are vast. Every thread of anger goes down another path until I find even more anger at the end of it.

I remember now how angry men would get at me when I told them that the woman who stripped for them the night before was most likely silently laughing at your hair or teeth or bad clothes. I think about how angry men have become when I tell them that the poor woman whom he tossed his $20.00 at would probably just as soon have gouged his eyes out with her nails as looked at him. I remember how mad these guys got, how they seem to think that they should be able to buy not only the bodies of these women to degrade and to use, but that these women should also be grateful for it, they should actually like him.

They think to themselves, "Hey, I'm a nice guy! I was nice to her!", but never once do they connect the fact that buying another human being for the purpose of controlling that human is NOT a ‘nice guy’ thing to do. Of course she should like it, she’s a whore and she should love it when I give her money for doing what she would normally be doing for free anyway. They always seem so shocked when I tell them the extent of the hate. When I tell them the things that us girls would say behind their backs, or after our set when we would get back to the house. These men seem livid and surprised that we would discuss how you were so fucking disgusting that it was all we could do not to throw up on you. Then, we’d knock back another shot.

OK...so what does that say for the female strip club workers who weren't nearly as disgusted and full of loathing at the men who were throwing money at them for such apparantly horrible and "degrading" behavior??? Oh, I forgot...they don't even exist..or they are really LYING to protect those evil male patriarchial rapists and abusers who control their bodies!!!!

Thinking about these guys, these men who get insulted that the object they purchased wasn’t particularly enamored with them, makes me even more irate.

The rage still consumes me, the anger lies just below the surface.

I remember it well, and now as I sit here typing on my laptop in my bedroom I realize that the anger and indignation is still just below the surface. I am disgusted by them. I am enraged at them. At this moment I can say that I literally HATE each and every single man who thought it was his entitlement to BUY a human being.

What I learned from these old experiences is that men are sick. Men are demented and men hate women. I learned that it wasn't about sexual excitement for these guys, it was about entitlement and degradation. It was about power and control, it was about owning another person, another human being. They were rarely just happy with just buying us, they wanted to degrade us and make us perform disgusting acts for them. I know that these men who visit strip clubs and who watch pornography and who pay prostitutes would also buy a slave to work the fields if they thought they could get away with it. These men who like to believe that they are forward-thinking 'nice' guys are the same men who would buy a slave, and to be completely honest, I don’t give a flying fuck if that enrages them or not. These are the men that would buy another human being because they get off on power and control.

Buying a woman is little different than buying a slave, and I’ve been bought before. Cloaking it in ‘free will’ is a lie, a great big steaming lie. How much ‘free will’ does a 16 year old have when she's been kicked out? Every girl I knew, every single one of them that I worked with, had stories. Those stories are stories that curdle the blood, stories of rape and incest, stories laden with abuse and selling the only thing they had of value in this society.

There is no doubt in my mind that these very men would purchase slaves, sexual or otherwise to work their fields and jerk them off when they wanted it.

Ahhh..so if I read BB correctly, being a woman -- let alone a woman sex worker -- is the equivalent of being a slave..and any man who pays even so much as $20 to watch a woman dance is the functional equivalent of a slaveowner. How nice to show your innate ignorance and bigotry, Beeb....does that mean that when I pay someone 5 bucks to mow my lawn, does that make me a slaveowner, too??? And since when did rape and incest only happen to strippers and sex workers, anyway...you do know that rape and incest can occur even to more sexually "pure" women, do you???

Men who buy and look at pornography are exactly the same. These are also men who feed off of power and degradation the way a tick feeds off blood. They are parasites and they are incapable of finding any worth within themselves, therefore, they steal it from women, they take it and use it and then they look for more power when the rush of degradation has worn off. They believe that they have an inherent right to the flesh of women, to the point that ‘Free XXX pics’ is one of the biggest hits I get on sitemeter. They don’t even feel they should have to PAY for, it but that’s another rant entirely. And don’t kid yourselves, these men do believe this. They believe, with every fiber of their being, that they have a right to buy human beings. If you, as a man, look at porn, frequent strip clubs or buy prostitutes then you also have a problem with entitlement.

I want, once and for all, for men to know that women in the sex industry have been abused by men just like you. Rape and incest are the recruiters for the sex industry, and you are victimizing her just as her rapist did. She hates you and she hates all that you represent. She smiles because she must smile, she dances because she knows no other way, but she despises you and others like you.

Hmmm...entitlement...that's a unique way of slamming men who simply like to watch women who enjoy sex and don't mind showing it to the world. I mean, really...a man who simply gets a hard on watching a woman do erotic dance -- or heaven forbid, actually gets off watching a woman or group of women having enjoyable and enthusiatic sex -- is not only supporting the total domination of women by men (apparantly gay men who watch other men doing the same thing are given a free pass, since no women are involved), but is a prima facie abuser on his own...regardless of whether or not he actually abuses a woman on his own.

This is the perfect testimony of how legitimate rage at an act of personal brutality can spiral out of control into mass bigotry and ignorance...that this is being sold as "radical feminism" doesn't make it any less hateful or brutal.

That rage has not faded, and I'm surprised by the ease at which I have tapped into that anger. It's frightening just how close to the surface it remains. The memories that are so old now still bring the old warrior back to the surface.

I can remember, very vividly, the first night I stripped. I was terrified. That first night was at a hotel that was pretty strict with it's nudity policy, and all I had to do was wear lingerie and then try to sell it and garters. Easy...right?

I nearly chickened out entirely, but I had just been kicked out and needed that paycheck, I needed the promised tips and the 'big money' that everyone talked about. I was 16 and scared and needed to come up with my rent money quickly. Deanna was trying out her first night as an escort while I began here, in the hotel. It was terrifying, but I got through it. Halfway through the night customers began buying me drinks. I don't know how many I consumed but I remember being concerned about driving home. Wow, this has been so much more difficult than I ever imagined it could be. There is still shame that lies beneath the surface, and anger, more anger that I thought possible at the cruelty of men and their thirst to control and dominate.

Through that period of time I not only stripped. I also did bachelor parties and worked as an escort. The degradation and terror that is always there is just another part of the job. The hands, the greasy, disgusting hands, were always there, groping at you while the eyes were staring at you. I was little more than a walking Barbie doll, and I was critiqued by some, and worshipped by others. Of course, that worship consisted of men telling me what “nice tits” I had, or how they’d like to “bang that pussy”.

There’s more, gods, there is so much more, but this has exhausted me. I plan to continue adding more entries to this section and I’ll compile them into the ‘personal stories’ category on the sidebar. For now though, that’s the most I can get out. I’m going to find something to eat and maybe try to meditate for a bit and clear my head again. ~ BB

Goodness.

An effective antidote to this bullshit can be found here:

Alysabeth Clements -- Gotta Dance: Why I Love Being a Stripper

BTW....Alysabeth is a professional erotic dancer who considers to be herself a feminist of the highest order...compare her experiences to that of the Beeb, and decide for yourself.

And check out her the rest of her Feminist Stripper site, too.