Seattle [posted on seattlest.com] – Monday, after posting our pro-lap dance response to Susan Paynter’s PI column, we received an email from an anonymous local stripper:

“I just read your defense of your right to make women touch you sexually for pay and was wondering:

1. How does intimate sexual touching for payment not equal prostitution unless you’re going by a very narrow, fundamentalist penis-in-vagina definition of sex?

2. Why can’t you just be happy looking at us beautiful ladies without making us have to touch your old, skanky, often-smelly manselves to pay our rent?

Strippers really hate the rise in lapdances and private room experiences that johns like you are increasingly demanding from us to have your ‘fun’. If imposing a four-foot rule keeps me from having one more asshole lick me, bite me, jam his fingers into me, rip my costume or otherwise act like an entitled fuckface, then four-foot rule it is. Asking you little boys nicely to stop hasn’t been working, and the last time I complained the manager laughed in my face and said, “You don’t have to work here, lots of girls will be happy to take a finger up the ass for what you’re getting paid.”

Not prostitution? My ass. Literally.

We responded:

I’m not, personally, interested in making anyone do anything to me, though I realize that many, many johns are. Biting, licking, costume ripping? Not cool. Looking at sexy women? Love it. Talking to them? Awesome. Trying to cajole them into bending the rules a little bit just for me? Not cool. And I think it really sucks that management not only doesn’t back you up, but encourages people to break the rules.

Would you be interested in an interview, post-election? As a fellow Seattlest writer put it, most strippers who say anything don’t like the four-foot rule. I’d love to get your comments — anonymously, of course — and thoughts on the issue.

She responded:

“Looking at sexy women? Love it. Talking to them? Awesome.”

There are sexy women to look at and talk with everywhere you turn in this city. I don’t believe you go to strip clubs to look at sexy women or talk with sexy women, I think you go for the same reason other men go, because we’re a captive audience FORCED to smile and nod and defer to your nasty wants because you’re paying us to submit to your idea of what what interactions with sexy women should be. Like you say, men talk “to” strippers, but they don’t talk “with” them. Our responses to men’s banal banter are stock answers pulled from the strippers’ survival guide.

You make us get naked as animals, a vulnerable feeling when surrounded by fully-clothed drunk/drugged men, then make us paint our faces and dance like monkeys for your money not because you respect us and admire looking at and talking with sexy women but because the real sexy women Seattle drips with aren’t obligated to pay you any attention, smile at your stupid jokes, or pretend you don’t make us want to vomit while bumping our cunts into your stiffies til you cream your pants. Real sexy women have thoughts of their own, sexual desires of their own and the ability to say no, and that’s inconvenient for johns who assume their God-given right to access women’s bodies 24-hours a day.

“most strippers who say anything don’t like the four-foot rule.”

What about the ones who don’t say anything because the repurcussions destroy our ability to feed ourselves and our drug habits? 99% of us are addicted to drugs cause it numbs the pain of being treated like semen spitoon targets. I did some digging around for an LA Times article I’d once read that shows how managers pit ‘house hoes’ against independent workers like myself and most strippers to increase profits because the more men get away with rubbing their sticky fingers over us the more they pay (guilt money?)

If I could be kept anonymous I will answer some questions. I want out of this biz sooooo fucking bad but until I can escape I’ll need to stay anonymous or I’ll have a hard time finding work.

Our interview:

Which club do you work at? Are the working conditions there different from the other clubs in town?

I’d rather not give specifics. I’ve worked in clubs throughout the west bouncing between Seattle and Portland in recent years, staying for stints here and there as the seasons changed. Seattle is a little better because Portland’s scene is so saturated it’s really a bend over for a buck town. I was in Salem, Oregon through most of the summer.

How did you get started as a stripper, and how long have you been doing it? How do you think the rules would have changed your job?

The way most of us get here, being poor and pretty. Being molested by my paternal grandfather from 13 to 16 when I ran way to San Diego and married a teen military boy who abused me til I left him had assloads to do with it. I began stripping at 16.

For the second part, it’s about men not having the right to assault me when they get drunk enough to try and use it as an excuse and the boys around them egging their buddy’s weak-willed self on. You never answered me why you think you have a right to make naked women sit on your lap and rub your stiff dick against our legs like a dog humps. Looking at and talking to pretty women, the excuse you gave, has nothing to do with lapdancing and four-foot rules you know.

Given that you really, really seem to hate stripping, why are you still doing it?

Who’s gonna pay me $100-$300 an hour to wash their laundry, work at Carl’s Jr., cashier for a convenience store, sell coffee, babysit kids, or anything else that doesn’t involve sticking my bouncing breasts and little-girl shaved genitals in men’s faces? Men have a real racket going on. Those of us “lucky” enough to be fuckably hot can submit ourselves sexually to men for sacks of cash no ugly or fat women will be offered for working at Wal-Mart or anywhere else. Minimum wage is the best offered to ugly girls without a high school degree (hard to study with Poppy’s dick in me afterschool. GEDs are shit), but I won the genetic lottery and with it what comes behind male-dominated door #2. Surprise!

Or why haven’t you gone to work at the Lusty Lady (no touching) or a suburban club (four-foot rules in effect)?

Why don’t men keep their fucking hands, tongues, teeth, and cocks to themselves when I’m dancing naked in front of them without needing a thick glass wall like LL’s separating them? Why do you think the first and only unionized strip club has a no touching policy, a policy that’s no different in spirit than the four-foot rules you seem to think are unreasonable? When strippers can get themselves off men’s laps without suffering cosequences, they do. Reread the LA Times article http://www.swop-usa.org/news/WeighingStrippersRights.php for more proof that true empowerment for strippers means less touching/prostitution. Here’s a study I found done on lapdancing clubs in the UK that says what I’m saying but better.

When I was younger (6-8 years ago) I worked clubs with more strict rules, but even then they weren’t too strict cause I started illegally at 16. I’ve seen a dramatic increase in lapdancing and private rooms in clubs in that time as well as an increase in the amount of touching/prostitution men expect.

Do you think Seattle clubs are much better or worse than clubs in other major cities?

Covered in #1. Portland’s worse but more varied so you can get a real shitty engagement or a good one if you’re really pretty and willing to let men do more shit to you.

Most newspaper articles about Referendum 1 quoted strippers who wantedthe new rules voted down because they thought they’d lose money.

Duh. Most newspapers are run by men much like yourself, not unlike the whole damn world.

You’ve said strippers hate lap dances and private rooms, though. Do you think strippers opposed to the four-foot rule are lying, or is opinion not really that unanimous on either side of the debate?

It’s rather rude baiting to suggest I think strippers are lying when they don’t oppose the proposed rules. Seems you can’t understand how strippers can both hate lapdancing and love the money it brings. Deoderizing from a stinky lapdance experience isn’t pleasant but the $$$$ sure as hell is. Again I’d ask you to think about why the only unionized strip club of about 10,000 strip clubs in the USA has a barrier-enforced no touching rule. Don’t forget to muse hard on why the Mitchell Bros are making a lot more money than the LL gals because they let the johns in their clubs get away with everything, including rape in the private rooms. After one raped stripper came forward the bastard bros made a t-shirt saying “What happens at Mitchell Bros stays at Mitchell Bros” pretty much telling men then can get away with raping strippers in their clubs and they’ll pretend they didn’t see anything.

This whole industry is one big pretending. Johns pretending strippers really like them despite the bills prying compliance out of us and strippers pretending they don’t despise the johns as much as they really do.