Big Porn Inc by Reist Melinda Tankard Bray Abigail

Author:Reist, Melinda Tankard, Bray, Abigail
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spinifex Press

Academic discussion of stripping rarely examines it as an industry, or as harmful to the women who work in it and to women’s equality. Some writers in the field of gender studies even defend the practice of stripping. They euphemise the industry, calling it ‘exotic dancing’ or ‘entertainment’. They argue that stripping should be understood as socially transgressive, an exercise of women’s agency, or a form of empowerment for women (Hanna, 1998; Schweitzer, 1999; Liepe-Levinson, 2002). These arguments exemplify the decontextualised individualism which is common to many defences of the sex industry. Katherine Frank who worked as a stripper before researching a PhD on strip clubs and their patrons, says that she had ‘increased feelings’ of ‘self-efficacy’ when ‘dancing’, though she acknowledges in her work that the fact that she was known to be a graduate student and had other options, is likely to have made her personal experience atypical (Frank, 2002). She says that ‘sex work cannot be dismissed as a possible form of feminist resistance or an exercise in female agency’ (Frank, 2002, p. 16). Feminist critics, however, are arguing that stripping needs to be understood not as resistance to women’s subordination, but rather as a most powerful example of it, and harmful both to the women who strip, and to the status of all women (see also Stella, this volume).

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