Sex for Sale~Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry (24 page)

“ordinary” customers consume. A pattern of such information gathering, with a focus on a certain kind of authenticity, is also found in the male customers’

interactions with female dancers, not just in terms of sexual identities but also with regard to “real names” and details about the dancers’ lives. Audience members at BSSDW erotic events indulged in tales of having contact with dancers outside the club that led them to believe the dancer was same-sex identified and they also claimed to witness behavior pointing to the possibility of mutual attraction between them. Such storytelling added to a dancer’s mystique, enhanced the teller’s status and reinforced the space as a safe arena to speak openly about experiencing desire and being the object of desire among women of color.

E R OTI C TE N S I O N S: S A F E T Y/ D A N G E R, I N D I V I D U A L I S M / C O M M U N IT Y

For the male customers, strip clubs also derived some of their appeal from their ability to be both
safe
in a number of ways (when compared with the illegality of prostitution or the disruptiveness, risk, and vulnerability of a “real” affair) and
dangerous enough
to be exciting spaces. Interviewees discussed their experiences in the language of “adventure” in addition to “variety,” “travel,”

“fun,” and “escape.” Some described themselves as “hunters” or “explorers.”

For many customers, especially those who preferred the lower tier clubs, the fact that visits to strip clubs often implied a journey into “bad areas” of town was exciting, a form of erotic slumming. Even in upscale clubs—which were
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not as often experienced as sinister spaces because of their many amenities and because a concerted effort was made to signify “classiness” rather than the potential of contamination—customers still fantasized about the dangerous, glamorous, and exciting individuals or the vice that might be encountered in them (despite their simultaneous lack of proof), such as rich New York gangsters laundering money or dealing cocaine, beautiful women who could lure a man into a private room and out of a month’s worth of income, famous athletes buying oral sex from ex-
Playboy
bunnies, etc. The men’s talk about danger and adventure was connected up with historical discourses about masculinity, travel, and encounters with various categories of “Others.”

Customers also discussed “adventure” in relation to sexual discovery—even without physical contact, they were getting to know someone in a sexualized situation, and engaging in a transgressive, mutual construction of fantasy. The interviewees identified with discourses that associated sexual conquest and desire with masculinity, freedom, and adventure and that made such practices meaningful as an expression of self, identity, and individuality.

Yet despite descriptions of strip clubs as places with “no rules” and as

“outside the law,” and although customers experience and express feelings of freedom, adventure, or excitement during their visits, the clubs have been tightly regulated. The city has usually delineated where such clubs can be located and what types of interactions can be found inside. Clubs also set additional rules for employees and customers, and most clubs have security guards in the parking lot and at least two or three floor managers to enforce those rules. Other kinds of behavior are policed by both the dancers and the other customers—such as proper etiquette in regard to watching table dances, tipping procedures, and customer-to-customer interactions. The men also control their own behavior—few bachelors
really
need their hands to be tied during a table dance, and even men who claim to be wild with testosterone are usually found sitting calmly in their chairs. Further, even men who claimed to be interested in purchasing some kind of actual sexual contact from the dancers were satisfied, over and over again, with
talking about it
and paying for table dances.

Many male regulars also explicitly claimed that strip clubs provided a safe space in which to be both married (or committed) and sexually aroused (or at least, interacting with other women in a sexualized setting). This is related to cultural ideas about heterosexuality, marriage, monogamy, and consumption.

(The boundaries between different venues and services are less rigid in many other countries, with stripping more blurred with prostitution or with customers alternatively visiting venues that offer sexualized conversation, manual or oral release, or actual sex.)37 For many of the American men studied,
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“looking” was the final limit with which they felt comfortable. At the same time, being able to look and express desire in a masculinized and eroticized environment enhanced feelings of independence, freedom, and self-identity.

Although BSSDW also derived feelings of freedom and excitement from their attendance at strip events, these experiences were enmeshed with different cultural discourses and personal meanings. Unlike white customers seeking the thrill of visiting a “seedy” part of town, black women visited spaces proximal to where they lived. As an event promoter explained: Back in the day, only a limited people wanted to rent their spots to gay people.

. . . That’s why we kept stayin’ in that community down there in Southeast because that was designated as “our community.” . . . No matter what club shut down and what club opened up, you’d still pretty much have the community because that’s where the [black lesbian] community went anyway.

Both Cada Vez and Wet are located in traditionally black neighborhoods with low rents (compared to the rest of the city) and a broader reputation for being “dangerous” places to live or visit, particularly southeast Washington.

At the same time, given that these were also neighborhoods known to the gay and lesbian community, these locations were experienced as welcoming and comfortable to these groups rather than dangerous or contaminating.

Further, although individual experiences of desire and performances of identity certainly played a part in the erotics of their attendance at strip events, for the BSSDW, these events were also wrapped up in understandings and experiences of community. In traditional strip clubs for men, male customers usually sit at their tables or line the stages as observers unless it is a special occasion such as a bachelor party and a guest is offered a chance to become part of the performance. While men may visit strip clubs in the pursuit of male bonding, or to instill feelings of camaraderie that might enhance business transactions, they do not usually describe experiences of emotional, political, or erotic “community” in relation to their visits. For BSSDW, however, feelings of belonging and community are important aspects of their visits, and promoters will criticize each other if their events seem to be too concerned with monetary motivations rather than benefiting the African-American women’s community overall. Dancers themselves were judged harshly by audience members if they were perceived to only be participating for the financial benefits. Riley, an avid audience member at BSSDW events, explained: “There’s a few performers [who] are not out there except to make money. If these people were willing to come out more, the gay community would be larger and we would have more events.” Even when promoters or
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performers are making money, they’re expected to put the larger community’s need for spaces of freedom and acceptance above their personal financial gain.

Certainly, male customers worried about being “hustled” by dancers who were more interested in money than genuine interactions. Yet these concerns were expressed at an individual level and tied up with discourses of commodification, masculinity, and sexuality rather than those of group participation or obligation.

There were several ways that BSSDW events in Washington enhanced feelings of community. For example, an evening might begin with pre-show audience dancing or group stepping (e.g., the Booty Call, the Electric Slide, or the Casper Slide). Group stepping helps mark the transition from the outside world into the welcoming, affirming party atmosphere at the parties.

It allows black women to perform as a group and experience themselves as part of a moving entity, literally moving as one in dances rooted in shared history and meaning. Coming together for group stepping can promote black identity and pride and also often reinforce an enduring connection to heritage in Africa and a history in slavery, within which so many meanings around blackness emerged in the United States. Since group stepping is so often performed at other important black life rituals (weddings, funerals, sorority rushes), group stepping helps black women further develop a party space where an atmosphere of acceptance and belonging is crucial to the proceedings.

Events can also enhance feelings of community through the emphasis on

“partying with a purpose,” or offering opportunities for community health agencies to provide wellness and support information (e.g., support groups for black lesbians, free breast cancer screenings, smoking cessation kits). For BSSDW, a lack of health insurance coverage (unable to afford their own or through a partner) can impact their ability to have access to regular healthcare with a consistent health provider. In addition, many lesbians and women who partner with women may not have a health provider they trust and, therefore, to whom they can come out about their sexuality. When health providers administer inappropriate procedures (i.e., all female patients must undergo pregnancy testing as a matter of course) and medical background questions (“Are you on birth control?”) based on heteronormative assumptions, women who partner with women cannot fully disclose their identities or behaviors and may believe the health provider is not aware of the health needs of women who partner with women. The Office on Women’s Health in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services holds that “past negative health care experiences can discourage a lesbian from seeking care in the future, including preventive and screening measures, which further jeopardizes her health.”38

As part of this emphasis on ‘partying with a purpose,’ the promoter of Soft ‘N’

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Wet allowed the Mautner Project, a national lesbian health organization, to set up a breast self-examination booth onsite. As a result, five women, including a dancer, found lumps but remain healthy thanks to the early detection.

Many medical health support service materials mimic the format of erotic party announcements, as organizations are aware that erotic imagery can help encourage both safer sex practices and healthier behavior more generally.

Resources advertising free, local mammograms, HIV testing, lesbian support groups and other health-related services are often modeled after and co-mingled with clubcards or leaflets advertising upcoming events on one table for audiences to take with them before they leave.39 Departing guests would often start at the top of the table and pick up one of everything in an effort to be fully informed about upcoming events, gathering support information alongside event announcements. Sometimes, organization volunteers would distribute cards and giveaway items personally (such as key chains, magnets, safer sex kits, stickers) to the audience or hand them out at the exit. With such little actual distance between medical health support services and erotic party announcements on the table, the boundaries between them blur. Being erotically engaged and connected with one’s community becomes as critical and integral to one’s overall health as an HIV test or blood pressure screening.

R E G U L ATI O N

Despite their popularity and ubiquitousness, strip clubs are also a highly embattled form of entertainment, currently the subject of intense public scrutiny, debate, and regulation. The opposition to strip clubs is often fairly organized and groups such as the National Family Legal Foundation draw on discourses of public and private morality to bolster their attacks against such establishments.40 Hanna notes that there are continuities between the stigmatization of exotic dance and way that many other popular dance forms—

such as waltz, ragtime, flamenco, and tango—have been considered scandalous at times in their history. Condemnations and unfair regulations of exotic dance venues reflect a class bias: “Nudity can be seen in theaters (e.g., Mutations, Oh! Calcutta!) by wine-drinking quiche-eaters but not by beer drinking pretzel eaters.”41 The enactment and enforcement of regulations is also connected up with race and sexuality in somewhat complex ways, as we explore in this section.

Although exotic dance has minimal protections as a form of expressive conduct, there has been a tendency in the courts to allow local municipalities
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to enact restrictive zoning regulations based on claims that strip clubs pose public health risks, encourage prostitution, and lead to adverse secondary effects in areas where they are located—such as increased crime and decreased property values. Some conservatives have also suggested that strip clubs lead to increases in rape and domestic violence in the communities where they are located, despite a lack of evidence.42 As zoning regulations are often designed and implemented to eradicate nude or topless dancing in communities43 and tend to be based on fears of economic or moral blight rather than on solid research into whether or not the clubs cause social problems, they may have unintended or even humorous results. At times, regulations against particular sexual behaviors or adult entertainment venues in general may be deployed to speed the process of gentrification in particular neighborhoods. Four out of five of the clubs Frank studied have since closed their doors; although there are still numerous venues to watch female dancers in Laurelton, the locations of clubs shift for legal, economic, political, and cultural reasons. All three of the regular events Carnes studied have also since ceased to exist in their original venues, due to venue closure or gentrification which encroached on event privacy and affordability for both the promoters and the audiences.