Dominant choices: the ‘anti-lap dancing’ feminists and the morally anxious

The impetus for changing the existing licensing procedure for striptease, which was previously under the Licensing Act 2003 (Great Britain, 2003) to a process which gave local authorities more powers to consider the views and objections of the local community came from a community campaign (in Durham in 2007) supported by MP Roberta Blackman-Woods. In June 2008, the MP raised a Ten Minute Bill in the House of Commons, putting forward a reform of the licensing of striptease. The call for change was claimed to be about giving residents power. Whilst stating the importance of controlling the sexual geography of the city as an explicit aim, the moralising agenda was provided by the feminist group who supported Blackman-Woods in her endeavour. Object, a feminist lobby group, initiated the Stripping the Illusion campaign in 2008, to close down the ‘lap dancing’ industry (note their American sexualised terminology is ‘lap dancing’, which is not what is licensed in the UK). Radical feminists have spoken out about what they see as the cultural turn to the sexualisation of society, with ‘lap dancing’ considered an activity which fuels a misogynist society and the maintenance of gender inequality, violence and fear amongst women (Coy, Reference Coy2010; Pantiniotis and Standing, Reference Pantiniotis and Standing2012). Object waged a broader campaign to curb the ‘sex object culture’ by insisting on a reclassification of strip venues and a change in the licensing process in order to reduce the numbers of clubs.Footnote ⁴

Campaigns to close down strip venues conflate striptease with prostitution and further associate strip venues with organised crime, drug trafficking and money laundering (Jeffreys, Reference Jeffreys2008). Where there are migrant dancers, police intelligence has assumed this is evidence of sex trafficking (Ward and Wylie, Reference Ward, Wylie, Wylie and Redmond2010), only to find out after raids and arrests that women are working as strippers voluntarily. Such campaigns seize on unsubstantiated claims regarding strip clubs encouraging violence against women in the area, or suggesting that customers who buy striptease will become violent and sexually predatory (Colosi, Reference Colosi2013).

Yet claims to the secondary effects of strip clubs are unsubstantiated in terms of increasing the number of crimes (Hanna, Reference Hanna2003; Ward and Wylie, Reference Ward, Wylie, Wylie and Redmond2010; Jackson, Reference Jackson2011). Even the official police evidence presented to the House of Commons Committee considering the evidence for licensing change stated clearly that crime and disorder were not a cause for concern in relation to licensed strip premises in the UK (see Sanders and Hardy, Reference Sanders and Hardy2014, Chapter 3). The focus on macro concerns, such as the disgruntled resident or ‘sex object culture’, masked the realities of everyday working conditions in the clubs and the issues that dancers experienced, preventing any scrutiny of the club operations or internal organisation and practices of strip clubs.

For the campaigners, the threat of strip clubs to the community was prioritised as the impetus for change. The dancers were not considered part of the community and their experiences inside the clubs were not of any concern to them. For the campaigners, it was perceptions of the clubs and what they symbolised, along with the harms to women and society at large, that was their motivating concern.

Dancers silence: voices without a platform

From evaluating the Select Committee ‘consultation’ process that took place in 2008 before the Sexual Entertainment Venue legislation was passed (Policing and Crime Act 2009), it appears that no current dancers were drawn into the process. Although there was some industry representation, this was from a small number of London-based club owners putting forward their experiences of managing and owning strip venues, and the possible impacts of the new legislation on their businesses. The lobby group intent on reducing the industry did display former dancers who reported to the Select Committee their personal experiences and feelings of exploitation and degradation, mainly from interactions with customers and reflections on performing naked. No current dancers or collectives of dancers were consulted.

This lack of inclusion of the core user/client group is somewhat at odds with the processes and procedures that have become familiar in social policy change in recent decades. For instance, Mastin (Reference Mastin, Harrison and Sanders2014) maps out how user involvement has been a common part of social policy change, noticeable in the 1970s community development programmes, and more recently through patient panels and pensioner forums as choice and control are optimised as principles in health and social care. Whilst we expect it to be a given that officials do not ‘speak on behalf of’ groups and stakeholders, but seek out their views and opinions, sex workers and dancers are often sidestepped in consultation processes as they are considered too hard to reach, too difficult to collectively organise because of their (assumed) mobile or alternative lifestyles, or unable to contribute to formal processes of evidence gathering because of assumptions about their behaviour or criminality. The lack of direct consultation perpetuates the marginalised and excluded status of dancers, reaffirming their position as not part of the community, and lacking in equal citizenship rights because of their erotic labour.

In this research, dancers were asked if they knew about the consultations (national and local) that were taking place at the time (2009–11). Whilst not all interviewees were aware of the reforms taking place, there was a strong core of politically aware and active dancers who were: ‘I don't know of anyone who has even heard of this legislation other than myself and a handful of other dancers. So, if we’re not even aware of it, we can't have an opinion on it. As soon as I tell them, they have no idea and as soon as they hear, they’re disgusted’ (Dalia, 20, White British). Those who were aware that the licensing of strip clubs had become a government issue were highly sceptical of who was making decisions:

The lack of consultation amongst dancers was discussed frequently among participants during the research: ‘There's people doing stuff and they don't know what they’re talking about. How can you possibly tell me like you know how a strip club works better than I do? I work there. And I’ve worked in a few’ (Bella, 26, White British). Given that much of the media attention suggested that the new legislation would give communities more power to limit or close down clubs, there was fear that a so called ‘nil-policy’Footnote ⁵ would result in job losses:

The feminist group, Object, specifically fought for the reclassification of the license of strip clubs to be called ‘sex encounter establishments’ (Object, 2008), because, from their perspective, the location of stripping as part of the sex industry should be prominent in the licensing process. Dancers expressed their regret that the term ‘sex’ was to be used in the licensing of their workplace, and by default their work and identity:

Throughout the research, there was a dominant discourse amongst dancers that they were performers and dancers and not sex workers. The majority of dancers did not affiliate with the sex workers rights movement or want to have their identity associated with selling direct sexual services. The very title of the new license increased the stigmatising effects on individual's identity as well as the reputation of the industry. Labelling the activity accurately was a key talking point: ‘I think they should say “adult entertainment” because it is entertainment, that's all that's going on, there's nothing else happening’ (Anna, 27, White British). It is these voices that were ignored by the campaign, which blocked out any recognition that dancers would bear the brunt of any changes.

Amongst interviewees there was, however, a distinct agreement that there was a need for change in the industry, and that this could be facilitated by new legislation if informed with evidence from dancers:

Dancers expressed concern that ‘dirty dancing’ was taking place (Colosi, Reference Colosi2010), whereby some women were offering additional sexual services (usually fellatio) to increase earnings in an economic recession. Dancers expressed how ‘dirty dancing’ had the effect of altering the expectations of customers, increasing requests for sexual services and pressurising other dancers who performed non-contact (see Sanders and Hardy, Reference Sanders and Hardy2014, chapter 5). It was considered that new legislation that increased the policing of venues might discourage dancers who were breaking the licensing conditions: ‘I hope that these new laws will make it better. It's easier to make money when there's no laws. You can be the prettiest girl in the club, but the ugliest will make the money doing extras’ (Una, 29, Estonian). Both managers and dancers suggested that reducing the number of clubs (ironically the objective of the anti-lap dancing lobby) would be beneficial (only if their club remained, of course), as this would have the effect of raising standards by closing down premises where poor management and bad practice occurred: ‘I suppose that it's a combination of things but to make the industry better, I think there should be less clubs’ (Anna, 27, White British). Yet these voices were not part of the consultation process, but instead were filtered out, as those who had access to resources and the decision-making processes became the dominant voices calling for a change in the law.

Resources for dancers

It was important that the legacy of the project provided a tangible and practical output for dancers who facilitated the research, data collection and dissemination. Dancers were part of a circular consultation process whereby we would consult them at each stage of the design of the output. We settled on providing a resource for the dancer community, written with input from dancers, and designed by dancers. We have created a permanent, accessible and mobile resource for dancers, consisting of essential information about personal safety at work (in partnership with the Suzy Lampplugh Trust); tax awareness (in partnership with HM Revenue and Customs); and self-employment information. This resource is available through an Iphone App and website: http://www.dancersinfo.co.uk/. Key ‘top tips’ written by dancers has been translated into Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish and Russian in order to maximise their reach. Direct outreach to promote the resource to dancers has taken place in clubs in London, Leeds, Blackpool, Liverpool and Manchester, reaching approximately a third of the clubs currently licensed.

What are the principles of dancer/sex worker informed policy?

It is well documented that participatory action research (PAR) is a successful methodology for including sex workers in each stage of the research process (O’Neill, Reference O’Neill2010; Van De Meulen, Reference Van de Meulen2011), and where appropriate that sex workers are trained as peer researchers (Pyett, Reference Pyett1998; Wahab, Reference Wahab2003) to fully participate in methodological design, execution and analysis. Here the obvious power differentials between privileged and well-resourced researchers can be tempered by including sex workers in the research process. It was the experience of this project that, through partnership work, researchers were in a position to create the missing platform for dancers’ voices to be heard. Whilst dancers were not physically present in the presentations, seminars and on-going discussions with Licensing Committees (due to restrictions on time and budget), audiences were shown a film made by dancers about their work and environment, with a dancer describing the experiences of their working conditions.Footnote ⁶ Also, the recommendations borne out of the voices of dancers were the focus of the partnership work. In this sense, the researchers acted as a bridge between research participants and policy makers. Pitcher and Wiljers (forthcoming) argue that, irrespective of the mode of governance, sex workers should be included in policy. What they term an ‘emancipatory approach’ should be the basis of any ‘rights-based’ model of governance, which enables sex workers to have control over their working conditions. Given that the silence of dancers forms the backdrop of the legal reforms and the formulation of policy in the UK at a national level, there appears to be more appetite for the inclusion of participants at a local level.

Beyond finding a platform for silenced voices in what O’Neill (Reference O’Neill2010) calls ‘radical democracy’, research findings need to be presented in alternative modes to traditional academic outputs. Through what O’Neill has called ‘creative consultation’ in which participants can express their experiences, feelings and lives, visual information can provide important data to the policy context. The photographic element of our project enabled images of the workplace, work tools and working bodies to express the detail of the dancers’ lives that could not necessarily be extrapolated through traditional social science methods. Indeed, it is the ‘visual methodologies’ in sex work research (Pilcher, Reference Pilcher2012) that can be triangulated with interview data − for instance, to provide further insight into sex workers’ personal and professional lives. In the policy arena, the visual products from the research project enabled the findings of the research to be conveyed in a concise, accessible and lay format. We take from our successful experience of working with policy makers that it is a core principle of policy engagement that creative, concise and clear methods of dissemination are presented to engage core decision makers. The justification for using visual methods with a sensitive topic and for a group of women for whom anonymity is often essential was one which balanced the principles of the research with the somewhat competing objectives of partnership work which required clear accessible messages. Ethical issues are heightened when using visual methodologies with sex workers, most obviously the charge of voyeurism and sensationalism. However, by the dancers taking control over the creation and production of the process, and the researcher remaining as facilitator, the photographic images in this project provide powerful and insightful examples of working conditions and dancers’ experiences that were previously undocumented.

From our experience, what works in turning research into policy is to convert findings into tangible recommendations that can achieve change, no matter how small. This can only be done through insightful and innovative methodology that places the participant at the centre of the research process. Creating partnership work and taking research findings to the decision-making processes can kickstart the breaking down of stigma and marginalisation by dispelling myths and opening up dialogue.