Springing into Dangerous Territory

Green enfolds me. It creeps out of the forest ... closer, closer. Soon green will hang, leafy, above me; lie, mossy and glowing, beneath me; and press its tender glossy arms around me in a months-long embrace. Becoming green.

It’s been a strange spring. The forecasted exotic dancing at Gill Net Tug Bar began the first weekend in April. The bar lies directly across the road from Same Spirit. It claims the other end of the 40 acre parcel purchased by the previous land owner. Frances and I are not happy about this new business plan. Obviously, the bar operators are not making enough money selling booze so they've decided to throw in some women's bodies and see what it gets them.

Male dancers performed over Mother’s Day weekend. Then a Tuesday night Town of Russell board meeting last week ensured that the bar is good to go for up to six performances this year. Frances and I fought with a torrential burst of energy to prevent the bar from segueing into this new territory. To no avail. My objection: men’s violence against women. It’s a hard road to travel. Men demand their rights and freedom to do as they please. Women want to believe that their men don’t act as obnoxious, violent, and degrading of women as they suspect.

Interestingly, the First Amendment to the Constitution protects the right of bar owners to offer women’s bodies up as tempting hors d’oeuvres for their male customers to sample. That, by the way, is the same Amendment that prohibits the U.S. Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” What a weird web we weave. Freedom of religion equates with freedom of sexual slavery.

When you look up information on our Founding Fathers, you soon discover that this bizarre flip from protecting religious freedom to protecting men’s ongoing use of women as sexual objects isn’t so unexpected. A listing of the men present at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, PA in 1787 (Bill Bigelow, based on writings by Charles A. Beard and Forrest McDonald) reveals that the majority of these 55 men were lawyers, judges, doctors, bankers, all men of wealth and privilege.

Hmmm. Were these men present to draft the Constitution in order to protect assets they already owned: slaves, property, bonds, estates, plantations? The authors of our Constitution were white, upper class men. Today, over 220 years later, we can boast a slight increase in diversity in the ranks of our current government officials, corporate heads, and world leaders. Still, they typically share a common ground: wealth. And a common goal: protecting their wealth and privilege.

Some may say, “You’re just a woman. What do you know?” It’s true ... I represent the rights of a minority class whose voices are seldom listened to and, when heard, often discounted, ridiculed, or ignored. Why would anyone listen to strippers or prostitutes? Other women may, when they’re not worried about what their men might think.

Even so, the stories of strippers and prostitutes seldom surface because sex workers reside in the lowest realms of society, buried deep in a morass of shame and disgust. We know deep inside ourselves that these professions are demeaning to all of us, women and men. Still, we smile, joke, and wink about venues that offer exotic dancing because we are told that men cannot control their sexual appetites just as they cannot control their ever-expanding desire for power.

In 1998 researcher Kelly Holsopple conducted a set of interviews with over 40 strippers and gave a 250 question survey to 18 others. She found that all of these women were physically assaulted during their careers as strippers.

When asked for examples of what their customers did, they said men had “yanked their hair, arms or ankles; sprayed beer, flicked lit cigarettes, or spit at them; pelted them with ice, coins, trash, condoms, room keys, pornography and golf balls; bit, licked, slapped, punched and pinched them; and ripped or tried to tear off their costumes.” (Galena Gazette, Dec. 18, 2007) Healthy, positive self-esteem would be impossible to achieve in a workplace like this.

My thought? This abuse was all part of the “entertainment.” These women weren’t really women, they were simply the body parts their jobs required them to reveal. Women’s body parts don’t have rights now, do they?