Destin, Florida- [thedestinlog.com]- If it looks like a rat, smells like a rat, and walks like a rat, then by-golly, it’s a rat.
The Destin City Council saw a rat scurrying its way into town and decided to trap it before it turned into an infestation.
That rat, of course, is stripping, which often goes by other names such as exotic dancing or cabaret.
Indeed, good governments accept that stripping is here to stay, and instead concentrate on keeping the business clean and safe. On this note, the Destin City Council drafted an ordinance that green-lights “exotic dancing” and simultaneously protects women’s rights by keeping the stripping clean and safe.
Strip club owners cringe because such ordinances, like Destin’s proposed ordinance, poke holes in the bubbles of fantasy that strip clubs give off in order to strip the hard-earned paychecks off of strip club patrons.
Strip club owners protest by claiming that strip clubs offer a tempting eye-candy buffet for people to feed on while taking a break from the rat race of their regular daily routines. However, in actuality stripping is a “viral marketing campaign,” which can promote both prostitution and the trafficking of women.
For example, many customers buying lap dances automatically assume that they are entitled to haggle for sexual favors.
“Adult entertainment” attorneys try to sweep such behavior under the rug and instead maintain that strip club sexual exploitation is merely just the “freedom to express one’s sensuality by dancing.”
In similar fashion, in Europe brothels are referred to as short-time hotels, massage parlors, saunas, health clubs, adult clubs, or sexual-encounter establishments. Older men who buy teenagers for sex in Seoul call prostitution “compensated dating.” In Tokyo, prostitution is described as “assisted intercourse.” In Brazil, prostitutes are called “erotic entrepreneurs.” While in America, prostitutes can call themselves strippers, exotic dancers, and escorts.
In reality, strippers merely pull the wool over their own eyes in an attempt to label themselves as something less disgraceful. Moreover customers see these smiling women waving from the dance floor and assume the stripping lifestyle must be a free choice. This smile, however, is a form of Stockholm Syndrome — a psychological condition hostages experience in captivity when they bond with their kidnappers.
The bond established between sexually exploited women and their handler is identical to the bond between battered women and their batterers.
While strippers do not necessarily face the threat of physical violence, they instead are pressured into a lifestyle of dependency on sexual exploitation, and often times, substance abuse.
What’s worse is strip clubs usually classify strippers as “independent contractors,” and thus give the strippers no job benefits or job security. Ironically, strip club owners, after luring the strippers into the lifestyle, then act as a big brother or friend.
If you disagree, then ask yourself, in what other industry are the bouncers trained to respond to direct sexual assaults on the female employees? In what other profession are the bouncers encouraged to beat up customers when they do not tip the employees? In what other industry does the bread-winning talent seem to live in such squalor while apparently pulling in buckets full of cash?
Indeed, don’t let the “adult entertainment” industry pull the wool over your eyes too.
The Destin City Council wasn’t fooled — they called the exterminator. The Destin City Council started 2009 off by getting it right.