Cbt work part 1.
Now, I will identify the disturbing ideas that are triggered when I read the following feminist quotes about stripping...
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...many feminists' concern is that stripping simply represents the appropriation of female sexuality for men's gratification and that it demeans women. Thus, the standard feminist response to stripping...is to condemn the stripping industry as yet another sign that we are living in a patriarchal society wherein women are still viewed and valued as sex objects for male pleasure...the existence of the industry itself still harms women overall by contributing to societal expectations that women should be young, thin, busty, groomed, ever-eager for a man's attention, and wanting nothing more than to writhe naked on his lap.
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1. I am not allowed to take pleasure from women's bodies.
2. Women's bodies do not exist for me to look at and enjoy.
3. I turn women into sex objects whose only reason to exist is to serve me.
4. It's wrong for me to want women to be young, thin, busty, and made-up.
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But I felt extremely bad that I was at the club, and that I was physically enjoying the sight of a woman’s body, who was only there because of an imbalance of power. There I was – the male with privilege and money to see her dance naked …I was just like the rest of them, contributing to the misogynistic view of women.
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1. Women are only showing me their bodies because I and other men are forcing them to.
2. I have all the power and women are my victims who I oppress and abuse.
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...stripping is a highly gendered occupation. In the vast majority of cases it is women who strip and men who watch and pay - and it doesn't help the feminist cause because it reinforces sexual objectification of women...
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1. I am hurting women because they get naked for me but not the other way around, which is totally unequal.
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Firstly, it perpetuates the idea that women should primarily be judged on their looks and sexual attractiveness. This cultural norm causes many women to have an unhealthy preoccupation with their appearance, to engage in objectifying themselves, and thus limit the range of options they have in life...Women had 90% of all cosmetic procedures in 2010, the same percentage as in 2009 and 89% of eating disorder sufferers are women. It is women who swell the ranks of dieters and have any number of beauty regimes to get through in a week.
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In a quick experiment I decided to view music videos for the current top 10 singles in the UK charts and found that at least six out 10 feature women in bras, suspenders or knickers and in the most wonderfully original ones, a splendid combination of all three. The even edgier ones have women dancing happily and seductively on top of tables, gyrating their crotches or their enviable bottoms towards the camera. The others couldn't be clearly labelled but what is conspicuous by its absence in them all, is men in their pants, thrusting their crouches towards the camera.
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Finally, in a strip club, women have to perform for men within the confines of what is acceptable behaviour for a stripper. Thus punters, who are men, have the power over women, who are primarily there to satisfy the sexual desires of punters. The men decide who they want to see dance and who they want a lap dance from - and ultimately the dancers have to please their customers.
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I immersed myself in writings by sex worker feminists, clinging on to anything that would make me feel radical, as opposed to treacherous, for working in the sex industry. By showing my vagina I was challenging the patriarchal taboo against female nudity. By deploying femininity as a tool I was exposing it as a construction. By making men pay to see me naked I was making the economic power dynamics underlying normative heterosexual behavior explicit.
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The difference between stripping and other professions is that the dancers know they’re being exploited, and the man in the cubicle deludes himself into thinking he’s not.
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Yet a stereotype persists in the media: stripping is an industry of underage, drugged up, sexually abused girls working in a brothel with semen covered walls and in desperate need of rescuing. Society assumes these are “fallen” women who have no other options or are not capable/smart enough to get a real job.
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I will do the rest of these tomorrow. I am tired now.