Very cool, if true

The truth about life for *some* lap-dancers, surely?

(As you probably know, a lot of sex workers get unhappy with articles claiming their lives are universally degrading and horrible - it distracts from discussing the actual more complex issues involved.)

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Got any links to positive stuff by lap dancers? I'd love to see some!

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I suspect the issue there is one of "false consciousness": One woman says she's not exploited by sex work of whatever and another says that she doesn't really understand her situation and is a victim of false consciousness.

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laplor.livejournal.com

http://sassylapdancer.blogspot.com/

http://caseydancer.livejournal.com/

http://museforallseasons.com/blog/

Certainly it isn't all sunshine and rainbows and it is an industry with a lot of problems and abuses - but it is an industry that could be improved. As it is now, is likely to cause damage to some people, but not all are damaged by it.

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Quite a bit of it was in conversation, and obviously I can't repeat it with attribution for privacy reasons, but I'll go back through my blogrolls and see what I can find.

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Good commentary from Bart Calendar further down.

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The Will Page quoted in the music stars are aging article is the younger brother of one of my school friends. Weird.

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bart-calendar.livejournal.com

Ok. This is anecdotal but from a fairly large sample. I've been writing ads for male and female sex workers for more than a decade. I'd guess I've worked with well over 500 (and probably close to 1,000 men and women in the adult industry.)

What I've found is that the women who work as escorts or in adult films tend to be pretty upbeat and positive about their experiences. They'll admit that they do run into creepy guys from time to time, but it's fairly rare and no more common then running in really creepy guys on legitimate first dates.

The men and women I've talked to who have worked in strip clubs have almost universally said that it's a shitty work environment and a horrible life. A lot of it is just the sheer number of men you have to deal with on a given night. If you are working in porn or as an escort you usually have to only deal with one - or maybe two- guys a night and have much, much more control over your environment. With stripping you are dealing with dozens of guys a night while competing against other men and women for their attention which is really, really bad on your self esteem. Plus, you are constantly getting asked to do stuff by patrons that could get you fired/thrown in jail. And the management often sucks.

So, yeah, you wouldn't think it, but I'm more than willing to believe that of all sex work, stripping is the worst. I think a lot of it is that by the very nature of the job it attracts women who need money but aren't willing to have sex for money (otherwise they would be escorts or in porn) which means they come into the industry much more conflicted and desperate than women who choose to be escorts or in porn and it's much, much easier to take advantage of someone who is conflicted and desperate.

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Your anecdotes are probably close enough to data.

Do you have any perspective on porn performers who do feature dancing, using their image / brand recognition in one area to move into another. And how to those who just do stripping then respond to them?

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bart-calendar.livejournal.com

Feature dancing is an entirely different thing, because they are the focus of the night (which has a different effect on self esteem) plus their security generally keeps them at a distance from patrons - they aren't wandering around tables asking groups of 22 year old dudebros if they want a lap dance and they don't have to deal with the club management at all. They have people to do that shit for them, so it's much more like being a rock star on tour than the normal life of a stripper. Plus, they are more comfortable, in general, being in sex work to begin with than regular strippers.

Obviously, regular strippers hate them because they cut into their income and avoid all the shit regular strippers have to deal with.

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Thanks.

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Interesting. I don't have anything like your range of experience, but I read around the subject widely and have known a fair number of people in a variety of sex work roles. I would have said exacrly the opposite - that of the people I've spoken to and read, most say that stripping is by and large a reasonably decent experience, but prostitution (not just escorting specifically, also "sauna" work) sucked, and bad.

However, I have recently read a number of writers working doing craigslist-style escort work who seem to be at least 50% positive about their experiences, which surprised me. I'm guessing private escorting is a better working environment than saunas, perhaps.

Where are most of your contacts based? I wonder if this is geographical.

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Argh. "exactly", too. On my gaming keyboard here which isn't as large and friendly as my work one.

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channelpenguin.livejournal.com

People are going to see the big bands, and paying big money to do so because they are good because they have been doing it for 20 years! Woh were you going to see in large venues 20 years a go and how long had they been going at that point?

Pop has always had its share of one-hit wonders and short-lived acts.

The article says that live music earnings are outstripping album sales - GOOD!!! That's how it should be. Music SHOULD be live! Yeah, recordings are great, and it's fantastic that we have such good access to so much music these days - and access to music that's not on a label, stuff people record themselves and put out there in online communities or just in YouTube.

But music (I see) is primarily a live activity and the records/videos as adverts for the live act as much as they are individual works of art.

It's down to US to bring up the next generation - go and support local bands, get out there and see them, some of them are just fantastic - how will they get good and keep going if they have no audience? Playing to a near-empty venue is pretty soul-destroying (as I can tell you!). Give them some support, get engaged, get interested, pay up, turn up, (drink up - venues love bands that bring in a crowd, and better yet a profitable crowd) let them practice their trade and get good - it's a win-win, surely?

Better yet - make some music of your own!

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octopoid-horror.livejournal.com

I get pretty annoyed with this rockist point of view. Certain kinds of music are great live, sure, but there are plenty of genres intended for listening in different environments to a gig. Clubs, for example, in particular.

That said, the slow demise of huge stadium-selling artists because they're all 40 or 50something is no bad thing. I'd rather have a slightly more trim industry that thought "hey, we could market these fifty bands a fair bit each" than one that thought "hey we can market this one big old band a lot, and I guess those other fifty maybe a little bit?"

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steer.livejournal.com

There's also the very obvious factor that you can charge much more to an audience who are in their 40s who go to 5 gigs a year than an audience in their 20s who go to 50 gigs a year.

So given two bands with the same size concert going audience, if you're a stadium owner, put on the band with the audience in their 40s because they can afford the stupid ticket prices.

Mind you, since I shun arena gigs, I'm still annoyed when bands on only their first or second album get to arena size before I get the chance to see them.

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I expect different things from different sized bands. For dancing I like things that are Barrowlands-sized, where you can get several hundred-a couple of thousand people in a large room with decent acoustics and rock the hell out.

If I'm seeing a band in an arena then I expect a show. I saw The Wall live, and that was epic. I've seen U2 live and they have a stageshow that blows you away. I've seen Depeche Mode in an arena and they were very, very dull, because they were a few people standing 1/4 of a mile away, sounding exactly the same as the CD.

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steer.livejournal.com

Ah... now I've seen Depeche Mode several times in arena sized gigs (Wembley many years ago, Birmingham and Manchester indoor Arenas and a gig in Aarhus, Denmark) and I always enjoyed them greatly. However, for me, a great stage show is just not interesting if I hate the music so, for example, Metallica bored me stupid while catching fire repeatedly and doubtless spending lots of money doing it (I was there to see other parts of the bill). I'm surprised you didn't enjoy the Depeche Mode stage show. While not at the level of some bands through the 90s they had a pretty good and extensive stage show on most tours. These days though I can't be bothered with arena gigs.

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chipuni.livejournal.com

With all due respect, I strongly disagree.

Music should be about the music, period.

Recording studios, sequencers, and other tricks of the trade allow composers and musicians to create music that is greater music than the band could ever perform live.

Being live is a part of the music... but it's only a part.

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hirez.livejournal.com

It's interesting to note that one of the common problems with live music and lap-dancing seems to be that the people who run the clubs are a bunch of complete tossers who demand money from the punters and the talent.

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laplor.livejournal.com

Word!

I think you've hit on the single biggest problem.

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octopoid-horror.livejournal.com

"Media companies continue to ask ISPs to block sites. ISPs continue to tell them to get a fucking court order. "

Companies GET court order.

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That's fine by me. That puts it into a process whereby an independent third party makes a ruling over the legality of a particular site, weighs up the various harms, and makes a decision. There's also the possibility of appeals to a higher court, changing the law, etc. Basically, it puts it into a system.

The alternative, of "Hey ISP, block this for me willya?" "Sure thing MPA, I'll do it right now." seems more failure prone to me :->

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steer.livejournal.com

The "they're not being replaced by a new generation" article was about a generation of rock stars ten years younger than I thought it would be about.

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Well we have replacement arena bands all the way through to the 90s. Not so many as time's gone on though.

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drdoug.livejournal.com

I hear people like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga have real trouble attracting punters to their live shows. And are pretty long in the tooth really. No future in the business, clearly.

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