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Because of the landmark decision in 1986 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Renton vs. Playtime Theatres, cities can use zoning to control the location of adult theaters.

Striptease: To annoy a person sexually by the repeated action of someone removing their clothing time and time again.

More on Global Refs Etc

Japanese film Stripper into pop culture section...

• • • http://books.google.com/books?id=fEtWpyiGxDAC&pg=PA264&dq=japanese+striptease&hl=en&ei=-6wuTIiCDIL_8Aa1pL2zAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=japanese%20striptease&f=false

Tokyo Sex Wars, Salon, KARL TARO GREENFELD

Japanese Wikipedia: Strip joint

1947 January 15 , Tokyo, Shinjuku Tsunohazu (current Shinjuku San-chome) of imperial seat in the album "masterpiece" in events that began as. The fact that customs seized a disturbance model operates with GHQ had been received from to, Western women nude扮Shi the actual show was called because the frame was not sit still dancing. After regulation has been relaxed to give change, and shows the variety of movements taking a bath in an outdoor washtub. In 1948 , Taito-ku Asakusa was held at the seat first striptease dance inspired Tokiwa. Then, attracted nationwide, and to popular entertainment.

In 1950-60, French seat and locked position , such as parks Asakusa Rokku the intermission in the theater of control is often done, Kiyoshi Atsumi and Kinichi Hagimoto , Takeshi Kitano , including Showa leading comedy to the stage to produce a lot of people had been. This time a kind of butterfly called before tension was attached to the groin.

Since 1970, is the Kansai area around naked (total cost) to show bare female genitalia look特出Itizyou Sayuri they are popular. Article has been caught, all strikes were increasingly common. We also conduct a couple of performers on the stage production "Black and White Show", to the dancers and the audience on stage sex show "Board Mana" (discussed later) was the prime. The show is further escalated by the dancing girls and a pony " bestiality show "that also appeared, in 1985 an entertainment fell sharply after the enforcement of the strip for enhanced police enforcement. 1980s, the popular idol as a stripper Mika Madoka , doing production, " Masturbation Show "made famous by Hitomi Shimizu , after "legendary dancer known as the" 莉菜Kageyama , including a young idol good looks He was a dancer. Since 1990 the popularity of the audience for adult had appeared on an actress on stage will often be initially made the introduction of a long line of venues before, but the system to become popular, such as replacement , continues to attract decreasing, by the time the 2000s was a miserable situation than in his prime. In recent years, sometimes more other sexual entertainment choices, reduces the number of visitors, many theaters will be forced to shut down the business Ri Tazu. But there are several mainly urban theater has secured a number of customers to some extent while that theater will be closed, the theater these Polaroid has a strong side that supports the management theaters proceeds from show .

Russian: Striptease

Russian: Cabaret

Korean: Prostitution

AUSTRALIA: Brisbane residents stuck with nude car wash! Presentation by Ganesh Srinivasan, By ANI Thursday May 17, 03:17 PM Sydney, May 17 (ANI): Brisbane residents may have to get used to nude car wash that renders x-rated services, after police and Brisbane City Council said that the matter isn't under their control. The 'Bubbles 'n' Babes' service charges 50 dollars for a topless car wash and a nude car wash with x-rated show included, for 100 dollars. Talking about the business in a meeting, local councillor David McLachlan said that the police and council officers have been passive about the issue. McLachlan said that the service, operated by strip club entrepreneur, Warren Armstrong, was originally approved to be operated as a motor vehicle repair shop. He added that the authorities have not got back to his query on how the service is operating in its existing form. "To date I've not been provided with an answer to the questions I've asked," Sydney Morning Herald quoted him, as saying. Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said that the issue comes under the purview of the police and the Queensland council has nothing to do with it "If it was approved for a car wash then I can't imagine how we can stop them," Newman said. "If there are other things going on, which shouldn't be going on, that are regulated by state law, then that is a matter for the Queensland Police Service," he added But, Metropolitan North District Officer, Col Campbell, said that the cops haven't found anything illegal in the business. "We'll continue to monitor the situation but anything we've investigated so far has been lawful," he said.

However, McLachlan claimed that a senior officer had told him that the police

department had received complaints about the services. Presentation by Ganesh Srinivasan; for Knowledge Exchange and not for any commercial gain

MALAYSIA: Dancers who strip to lure more customers, Thu, May 28, 2009

DANCERS at a club in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, are resorting to stripping in a bid to attract more customers, China Press reported. The daily said the club recently employed a group of young and good-looking dancers from the Philippines and Thailand to perform on stage. The dancers would dance and strip at the same time, said the daily. They would also dance seductively and invite clubbers to touch their breasts. The club is well patronised by Singaporeans, added the daily. The paper also reported that a religious function in Segamat, Johor, was marred by the presence of scantily clad women who were invited to perform by the organiser. One of the performers even mingled with the crowd, much to the excitement of the men. - The Star/Asia New Network

THAILAND: Pay, or perform in sex show, By Dawn Tay, my paper | Fri, Sep 4 2009 Singaporeans intimidated into paying more in Bangkok nightclubs. top photo - SHADY STRIP CLUBS: Showgirls (above) at a Patpong street bar in Thailand. Some visitors to strip clubs in Patpong were asked to pay up to 20 times more than the initial amount quoted] WHEN civil servant Guo Qihui, 24, and five of her friends visited a strip club in Bangkok’s Patpong district in May this year, the bill came up to almost 14,500 baht (S$600) – more than 20 times the price they had been quoted. They had been told that they would need to pay just 600 baht in total – or 100 baht each – for the show and a drink each. Miss Guo said: "Many showgirls came (to us) with their drinks asking for tips, and the club put the drinks that the showgirls had drunk on our tab. "We refused to pay (the inflated bill) and threatened to call the police, but the staff turned nasty and said that they would call in the local mafia." The hostile staff surrounded them, and shut the doors to prevent them from leaving. The condition for leaving? Pay the full amount – or perform in the sex show. Half an hour of bargaining later, the group relented and was allowed to leave after paying almost 10,000 baht. Miss Guo said: "The situation got really nasty; we were really angry yet worried at the same time. After that, we felt very cheated." Like Miss Guo and her friends, a 21-year-old national serviceman who wanted to be known only as Daryll, was prevented from leaving a Patpong strip club in May by its staff members, including two bouncers wielding what appeared to be Taser guns. He and four friends were also quoted a price of 100 baht each for a show, which they were told they need not pay if they did not like the show. But they were subsequently billed 6,000 baht – 12 times more than the initial amount. Daryll said: "We didn’t dare to leave because of the two burly bouncers with Tasers. If we had made a dash for it, they would have taken us down." He believed that his friend's beer was spiked, as the latter got unusually tipsy after downing a single pint. They were allowed to leave only after giving the club all the money they had on them, which amounted to about 5,000 baht. Neither Miss Guo nor Daryll reported the incidents to the authorities as they did not want to go through the hassle of making a report. Daryll said: "It's funny in hindsight, but we were really shaken then. "We didn’t think (such a thing) could happen to us."

SOUTH AFRICA: Gigi's pad 'no clean-cut strip club' ILHAM RAWOOT | JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - May 28 2010 14:16, Mail & Guardian Online

Anyone who watched this year’s Survivor South Africa would vow that Gigi was hellbent on giving the strip-club industry a good name -- no drugs and no sex. But employees and customers say her club is not as clean as she punts it. Perle van Schalkwyk, or Gigi, her stage name, has become a household figure following her victory on the television show. From the small town of Paarl in the Western Cape, Van Schalkwyk is a former stripper and now co-owner of the Lollipop Lounge strip club in Randburg, with her business partner, Mike Crole. But although Van Schalkwyk presents her establishment as the epitome of innocent stripping, dancers in the industry say otherwise.

One former dancer at the Lollipop Lounge, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Mail & Guardian that while working at the club she was “raped in one of the cubicles for R300”. “I fell pregnant with my rapist’s baby and had to have an abortion,” she said. “Two weeks later, Gigi called me and asked me to come back to work. I went mad.” The club has nine booths -- six upstairs and three downstairs. Claire (not her real name), who worked at the Lollipop Lounge for a few months this year, said: “That’s why girls work there -- because the rules are so lenient. There are tissues in the private cubicles, and bins with used condoms … Of around 60 girls at the club, at least half do extras.” The price for “extras” varied, she said. “A black girl charges R300 for sex; a white girl charges R1 500 for a blowjob.”

Dancers can also leave the club for the night if the client pays a “book-out” fee. “The client pays R1 000 to the club, and the girls take out whatever they want on top of that. Then they tell Gigi they’re ‘going for dinner’.” She said that although “Gigi is great to work for”, she spends most of her time at the club signing autographs. Leigh (not her real name) said she left the Lollipop Lounge after a bad experience in a cubicle. “I had a client who wanted a lapdance in the booth,” she says. “I took him to the ones upstairs … It was just supposed to be a lapdance but this guy’s hands started moving lower and lower and I thought, ‘This is not what I do’.” She said that the client said he had done this on his previous visit. “I felt totally molested,” she said. “And if I’d yelled, no one would have heard a thing.”

Leigh said that she finds it hard to believe that Van Schalkwyk has no clue about “extras” in her club. “If Gigi says she doesn’t know about it, she shouldn’t be running a club, because it means she doesn’t have control,” she said. “It’s a club owner’s responsibility to look after the girls.” Ukrainian customer Ivan Sabrinovi told the M&G that he often went to the Lollipop Lounge for extras. “Lollipop is the easiest place to get anything,” he says. “I got a blowjob for R1 500, but they’re always offering more. Everyone knows they can get it there.” Van Schalkwyk’s longstanding relationship with Andrew Phillips, the man in charge of The Grand in Rivonia, has raised further questions about her business. Phillips is the former owner of the Ranch and Titty Twister clubs, shut down by the asset forfeiture unit it in 2000. The M&G reported two weeks ago that sex is allegedly sold regularly at The Grand, but because it happens illegally, it often leaves strippers open to abuse and infection. Phillips said that he is a “business consultant” to the Lollipop Lounge. “I set up Mike, Gigi and Wayne [Stone] to work there. I’m not a partner there; I haven’t a clue what goes on.”

Simple semantics

The strip-club industry has always straddled the fine line between fantasy and prostitution. But even though the government views the one as legal and the other as a criminal activity, strippers often face the same difficulties as sex workers. Vivienne Lalu of Sweat said: “Just because strip clubs are not criminalised doesn’t mean that dancers have access to their rights. The industry is still treated with the same brush as if it were criminalised. There’s no civil society body looking out for strippers’ rights.” Lalu said the fact that strippers are raped and assaulted at their place of work “speaks to a lack of any responsibility placed on their employers”. “We urgently need sex work decriminalised,” she said, as this will protect sex workers, including strippers, who sell sex in locked booths at strip clubs. “Lots of women exchange sexual favours to make a living, but somehow, arbitrarily, the government decides which is legal and which is a crime. As soon as there is an acceptance that sex work is work, people’s rights [in the sex industry] will be respected.” -- Ilham Rawoot

Local News | Johannesburg 17 strip club customers arrested for ‘illegal acts’ JP du Plessis | 5 Days Ago

Seventeen strip club patrons will appear in court next week after they were arrested during a raid at a Cape Town club. The police, Metro Police and the Department of Home Affairs officials raided the premises on Saturday night and arrested 35 eastern European exotic dancers who were working without the correct documents. Home Affairs said the dancers will be deported soon. The department’s Ronnie Mamoepa said foreigners are among the patrons arrested. “Seven South Africans, one [Briton], five Turkish nationals, two Dutch nationals, one Indian citizen and one Chinese national will appear in court as soon as investigations are completed,” he said. The department said the arrested patrons were caught while participating in illegal acts but stopped short of explaining what these acts were. (Edited by Deshnee Subramany) Eyewitness News (Primedia Broadcasting)

A friend tapped me: "The chick who now will not you, it's really nice, not to film dude!" That whole evening I had never seen beautiful things I believed no word from him, but I looked carefully at the appearance to the stage. Ze had krullen tot aan haar stuitje, een lief buikje en borsten waar je me s'nachts wakker op mag maken. She curls up to her tailbone, a sweet belly and breasts where you can make me wake up at night. Door haar kom ik nu terug op mijn woorden aangaande het vrouwelijk schoon in de Amsterdamse stripscène, deze kwam zo uit de film gelopen. Through her come back on my words regarding the female beauty in the Amsterdam comic scene, it came straight from the movie run. Ze was verkleed als buikdanseres en zo eentje zoek er ik al jaren, omdat ik dan een schuddebuikgrap kan maken. She was dressed as a belly dancer, and if one is looking for me for years, because then I can make a joke belly shook. Ze deed me denken aan Shakira, alleen wist deze dondersgoed dat ze niet kon zingen. She reminded me of Shakira, they only knew darn well that she could not sing. Dansen kon ze wel en hoe en terwijl mijn vrienden onaardige dingen in haar richting liepen te gillen nam ik nog een slokje bier. Dance and how she could do while my friends and unkind things in her direction were screaming, I took another sip of beer. Langzaam maar zeker verloor ze al haar kleding en was ze druk bezig met haar bh. Slowly but surely she lost all her clothes and she was busy with her bra. Niet veel later gooide ze deze in het publiek en tijdens de vlucht van haar ondergoed had ik mijn ogen dicht en mijn handen voor mij uit. Not much later she threw it into the public and during the flight of her underwear, I had my eyes closed and my hands for me. Mijn handen bleven helaas leeg en toen ik mijn ogen opendeed zag ik nog niets. My hands were empty and unfortunately when I opened my eyes I saw nothing. Haar glinsterende bustehouder was namelijk op mijn gemillimeterde kruin beland. Her bra was shining into my head millimeterd ended. Ik legde het uittreksel zorgvuldig in mijn schoot en dacht terug aan mijn middelbare schooltijd terwijl ik door wildvreemde mannen gefeliciteerd werd. I put the extract carefully in my lap and thought back to my high school while I was congratulated by strangers men. Dezelfde vriend die mij eerder aantikte zei: “Zie je wel dat je mee moest komen, je kwam naar binnen met niets en nu heb je een bh!” Ja, nu heb ik een bh. The same friend who told me earlier tap: "You see that you had to come along, you came in with nothing and now you have a bra!" Yes, now I have a bra.Dutch

The Reagan-Bush war on pornography coincided, however, with a dramatic increase in America's consumption of sexually explicit materials. According to Adult Video News, an industry trade publication, the number of hard-core-video rentals rose from 75 million in 1985 to 490 million in 1992. The total climbed to 665 million, an all-time high, in 1996. Last year Americans spent more than $8 billion on hard-core videos, peep shows, live sex acts, adult cable programming, sexual devices, computer porn, and sex magazines--an amount much larger than Hollywood's domestic box office receipts and larger than all the revenues generated by rock and country music recordings. Americans now spend more money at strip clubs than at Broadway, off-Broadway, regional, and nonprofit theaters; at the opera, the ballet, and jazz and classical music performances--combined. Schlosser, Eric 1997. “The Business of Pornography.” The U.S. News and World Report. February 10: 43-52.

The 1980s saw a proliferation of upscale exotic dance establishments. The United States now has about three thousand adult entertainment clubs, as well as an annual national trade exposition and several exotic dance organizations and publications for club owners and for dancers. These organizations deal with issues such as litigation, club management, employee relations, sexual harassment, fire safety, theft, equipment, lighting and sound systems, and beverage and other services. The industry is estimated to be a $15 billion business. Average annual individual club revenues are estimated to be more than $500,000. Top-end clubs may net $100,000 monthly. See Exotic Dancer’s Club Bulletin (ED Publications) and White Paper 2005: A Report on the Adult Entertainment Industry [in California] (Free Speech Coalition). Clubs pay substantial local and state taxes, and some contribute to local charities and work with their local Chambers ofCommerce for thecommu- 118 Journal of Planning Literature Copyright 2005. Permission Granted by SAGE Publications nity welfare. The stocks of some exotic dance clubs are traded on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange (Schlosser 1997). PT Showclubs chain, with sixteen clubs in eight states, was traded on the American Stock Exchange in 2004.2005c “Adult Entertainment Exotic Dance: A Guide for Planners and Policy Makers” (CPL [Council of Planning Librarians] Bibliography 375), Journal of Planning Literature 20(2):116-134

Benefits to California – The Exotic Dance Industry In California’s exotic dance industry, there are an estimated 7500 full-time dancers with another 5000 working part-time. These entertainers represent a broad range of women, including students, professional women and single mothers as well as exotic dance professionals. What they all have in common is that they enjoy the financial independence of self-employment in the adult entertainment industry, and many find exotic dance to be the perfect outlet for their erotic artistic expression. There are over 175 exotic dance clubs in California. The clubs create over 20,000 jobs in the state, while generating almost $1 billion in revenue. The dance industry brings in an estimated $500,000 to local governments in tax revenue. In the exotic dance industry, many entertainers earn 5-6 times the state's official minimum wage or even more as headliners. Generally, dancers choose their own working environment and work schedules and enjoy a level of financial independence not found by women in other areas, in some cases opening a business with their earnings. In addition, female dancers earn 3-4 times the amount of money earned by their male counterparts and considerably more than in most traditional female jobs. The adult entertainment industry is one of few industries where this is true.

strip club in house London Stock Exchange...

Japan's recession hits sex clubs As expats lose their huge expense accounts and Japanese men hold on to their money for fear of losing their jobs, hostesses are taking greater risks to augment their income

AFP , TOKYO, Monday, Feb 25, 2002, Page 19

A neon sign showing a portait of a woman is displayed at the Tokyo's Kabukicho area Friday. Kabukicho, an area of flashing neon lights and pounding music, is still packed with hostess bars, sex clubs, massage parlors and strip joints, but the nightly crowds of drunken businessmen are gone.

Sex is cheap in Japan these days and foreign hostesses must take greater risks to earn hard cash. "I finally quit when the club owner suggested it would be a good idea for customers to drink for free for 30 minutes while all the girls danced naked in front of them," said Karen, a former hostess from Germany. The allure of easy money and lavish gifts attracts thousands of girls to work in Japan's sex industry, but as the economy slumps many businessmen can no longer afford to play in hostess bars and strip joints. "I wanted to make some cash fast before I went travelling," Karen said. "I've heard you could earn up to ?150,000 (US$1,130) a night working as a hostess in Tokyo. All you had to do was talk to customers, pour their drinks and maybe do a striptease, so I decided to give it a go." But with a salary of only ?3,000 an hour, Karen quickly realized she had to do a lot more than serve drinks to make good money. "We had to convince at least three men a week to take us out for dinner," said Karen, aged 24. Failure to do this meant an immediate ?2,000 fine. "I remember a night when I went into a bar and spent US$10,000 in two or three hours. We used to flush money away." Anonymous British businessman "If someone offered to take us to a love hotel, we would earn ?10,000. But if we refused to sleep with them, we would be fined," she said. Girls were also penalized for refusing to dance or sing with guests, no matter how lecherous the men were. Many became indebted to the bar and were forced to strip to avoid further punishment, recalled Karen, who has since left Japan. Her story is typical of an industry that once turned young girls into princesses overnight as men showered them with cash at the height of Japan's economic boom in the eighties and early nineties. "But as the economy gets worse, the sex gets dirtier and cheaper," said a British businessman who has used hostess bars for over 10 years. Everyone in the entertainment industry hopes a boozy carnival of football fans will boost business when Japan co-hosts the World Cup at the end of May. But temporary fixes will never bring back hostesses' glory days, said the businessman, who declined to be identified. x"I remember a night when I went into a bar and spent US$10,000 in two or three hours. We used to flush money away." The whiff of easy cash attracted gangs from across the world to set up hostess bars in Tokyo, but as the money dries up, many clubs go bust, tempers fray and the streets of the capital have become far more dangerous. "There is a lot more fighting here now," said the businessman. "People aren't making the money they had expected, they get desperate and violent." Kabukicho, an area of flashing neon lights and pounding music in the heart of Tokyo, is still packed with hostess bars, sex clubs, massage parlors and strip joints, but the nightly crowds of drunken businessmen are gone. "Our work is much tougher now," said Christopher Okoloigwe, the general manager of Ocis, a hostess bar in the basement of a shabby building. "People, worried about their jobs, are less willing to go out and spend money. We used to have customers in the club every night, but now the only night we're busy is a Friday. "Look behind you -- that is the heart of Kabukicho and it's almost empty. Ten years ago the place was crammed with people wanting to spend money." Companies have slashed corporate entertainment budgets as Japan wallows in its worst post-war recession. The move has hit hostesses and strippers hard. "Before you would get huge groups of foreigners with their expat accounts. They might spend ?2 million a month taking clients out," said a Japanese stripper who asked to remain anonymous. "But they haven't got so much now and don't go out as often," she said. "We still see a lot of Japanese, but they don't like spending and when they do, they want extra. They want a private dance in a hotel or a blow job in the bathroom." British hostess Lucie Blackman was brutally murdered two years ago after she accepted a date with a customer outside of work, but girls still take risks to make money. "After Lucie Blackman we were all really scared but work is work and so we just get on with things," said Monika, a hostess from Romania. Clubs make a fraction of what they did a decade ago, said Okoloigwe. "In the good days we used to get at least 90 customers in a night but now we have 30," he said. However there is still money to be made, with some girls in the larger hostess clubs and strip bars are earning around ?100,000 a week simply for dancing and talking to customers, they say.This story has been viewed 8268 times.

International, legal, and trafficking

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Various mechanisms developed over the years to suppress the contradiction between the theory and practice of temporary work permits in the "3D" (dirty, dangerous, difficult) sector. With respect to exotic dancers, the cross-border movement in the 1970s and 1980s consisted mainly of Canadian and U.S. women engaging in an informal stripper exchange program. This presumptive reciprocity provided legal authority for dispensing with the requirement of applying and obtaining a work permit from overseas (Immigration Regulations: s. 20(5)(e)(iii)) and from the requirement to obtain an employment validation from HRDC (Immigration Regulations: s. 22). By virtue of a special exemption, strippers with a job offer from a Canadian employer could arrive at a Canadian port of entry, apply for and receive a work permit on the spot without any state scrutiny of the circumstances behind the demand for their services. Various mechanisms developed over the years to suppress the contradiction between the theory and practice of temporary work permits in the "3D" (dirty, dangerous, difficult) sector. With respect to exotic dancers, the cross-border movement in the 1970s and 1980s consisted mainly of Canadian and U.S. women engaging in an informal stripper exchange program. This presumptive reciprocity provided legal authority for dispensing with the requirement of applying and obtaining a work permit from overseas (Immigration Regulations: s. 20(5)(e)(iii)) and from the requirement to obtain an employment validation from HRDC (Immigration Regulations: s. 22). By virtue of a special exemption, strippers with a job offer from a Canadian employer could arrive at a Canadian port of entry, apply for and receive a work permit on the spot without any state scrutiny of the circumstances behind the demand for their services. THE GLOBAL TRAFFIC WOMEN: EAST EUROPEAN SUPPLY MEETS CANADIAN DEMAND In the early 1990s, the source region for foreign exotic dancers shifted from the United States to Asia and Eastern Europe. The reasons for the escalation in emigration of Eastern European women as exotic dancers are rooted in the gendered impact of the economic and political upheaval and the proliferation of organized crime in the region. In most states of the former Soviet Bloc, the anticipated transition from communism to capitalist democracy actualized as a convulsive lurch to a dys-functional market economy. In much of Central and Eastern Europe, the process stalled at a stage characterized by varying degrees of chaos, corruption, economic decline, massive unemployment and wrenching social dislocation. According to a 1997 report by the Global Survival Network on trafficking of women from Russia and the Newly Independent States (Caldwell et al, 1997:17-21), some experts estimate that women comprise up to 80 percent of those fired or laid-off in recent years due to downsizing and economic shifts. Women account for two thirds of the unemployed nationwide and up to 85-90 percent in some regions. Some 98 percent of women are literate, and many are university educated, but sexual harassment is endemic and employment discrimination condoned. About 70 percent of women graduates report that they cannot find gainful employment. Social services such as daycare, preschool, maternity leave and public health care have collapsed with the transition to a market economy, leaving even professional women with no work and no recourse to private or public support. As one Russian scholar commented bitterly, "Women in Russia have a choice now: they can be prostitutes on the street, or they can be prostitutes in the office" (quoted in Caldwell et al, 1997:20). A growing number of women and girls conclude that "they might as well take their chances abroad" (Caldwell et al., 1997). This macro-geographical shift in source countries for strippers in the 1990s coincided with a micro-geographical shift in the Canadian job site, which descended from the stage to the table-top to men's laps. The advent of 'lap dancing' exposed women to uninvited and unwanted physical contact with male customers. Lap dancing refers to the practice of a nude or near nude woman straddling a seated patron and more or less simulating sex. In principle, patrons are prohibited from touching the women. In practice, they do. Because bars that offer direct access to women's bodies draw more patrons than those that do not, market forces (as personified by bar owners) pressure women to 'consent' to physical contact. Lap dancing and related practices occupy a grey zone in the Canadian legal landscape. Section 167 of the Canadian Criminal Code prohibits "indecent performances." Canadian jurisprudence measures indecency according to "the community standard of tolerance" for social harm. In R. v. Mara (1997), the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the "relevant social harm to be considered pursuant to s. 167 is the attitudinal harm on those watching the performance as perceived by the community as a whole" (Mara, 1997:para. 34). Applying this test to the facts of the case, the Court ruled: Any finding of indecency must depend on all the circumstances. I am satisfied that the activities in the present case were indecent insofar as they involved sexual touching between dancer and patron. Thus, the fondling and sucking of breasts, as well as contact between the dancer or patron and the other person's genitals, in circumstances such as the present case gave rise to an indecent performance. It is unacceptably degrading to women to permit such uses of their bodies in the context of a public performance in a tavern. Insofar as the activities were consensual, as the appellants stressed, this does not alter their degrading character. Moreover ... "[s]ometimes the very appearance of consent makes the depicted acts even more degrading or dehumanizing." (Mara, 1997:para. 35) Assuming the presence of consent while disregarding its relevance allowed the Court to dodge the delicate task of interrogating the nature, scope and quality of the putative consent granted by individual women. Even if one concedes some form of meaningful consent at the outset of the performance, the judgment leaves unexplored the risk of subsequent nonconsensual contact - sexual assault - arising in such a context. Elsewhere in the judgment, the Court remarks that the risk of harm to the performers themselves - identified as exposure to sexually transmitted diseases and prostitution-related harms - was of marginal relevance unless it also exacerbated the risk of social harm (Mara, 1997:para. 37). Thus, the protective ambit of the Court's concern appears to encompass women in the abstract, whose dignity and humanity are denigrated by these performances, but manages to avert its normative gaze from any real harms committed against the real women engaged in the performances. In a subsequent case arising in Quebec, R. v. Pelletier (1999), the Court restored a trial judge's ruling that touching a dancer's breasts and buttocks in a 'private' cubicle in a bar did not constitute an indecent performance. From the Court's perspective, the designation of a booth in a club as private meant that there would be no spectators who would suffer the attitudinal harm that criminal prohibition on indecent performances seeks to prevent. On the facts of the case, the touching in question arose from a transaction between an undercover police officer and several dancers. The police officer did not opt to go further in his touching, and both the trial judge and the Supreme Court of Canada accepted the testimony of the accused manager that she had both means and will to effectively patrol behavior in the cubicles through peephole surveillance to limit contact to the type in which the police officer actually engaged. In fact there was no evidence of managerial surveillance of, or intervention in, the particular transaction. One is left to conclude that it was merely fortuitous that the undercover police officer did not exceed the boundaries that the law subsequently deemed permissible and that management would have caught him had he done so. It requires little imagination to recognize that the risk of harm to performers in the form of nonconsensual contact could only be exacerbated in circumstances where the patron and the performer are secluded from observation. The curtain shielding what happens on the other side of it from public and, therefore, judicial scrutiny is precisely what heightens the performer's vulnerability. The parallels between the regulation of private and public space in these cases and historic patterns of judicial treatment of domestic violence seem striking and obvious. Aside from criminal regulation, individual municipalities also attempt to restrict lap dancing and related activities through by-laws. The municipality of Metropolitan Toronto passed a by-law in 1995 that prohibited physical contact between exotic dancers and patrons. The enactment withstood a constitutional challenge before the Ontario Court of Appeal (Ontario Adult Entertainment Bar Association v. Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, 1997). A few months after its decision in Mara, the Supreme Court of Canada denied leave to appeal the Ontario Court of Appeal's ruling. One might reasonably conclude from the foregoing that lap dancing violates Toronto municipal by-laws and, depending on the circumstances, also constitutes an indecent performance contrary to s. 167 of the Criminal Code. However, a visit to any one of several clubs in the Toronto area would suggest that these laws frequently do not get past the front door. The availability of lap dancing and other sexual acts involving physical contact attracts more customers than other noncontact sexual performances, so club owners have little commercial incentive to monitor their patrons' behavior in jurisdictions where lap dancing is illegal. Official disinterest in enforcing the law renders lap dancing and other similar activities effectively available in 'no-lap-dancing' municipalities. It appears that this latest degeneration in working conditions furnishes the context for understanding the factors precipitating the decline in the supply of available Canadian and permanent resident exotic dancers. Feminists disagree about the extent to which prostitution constitutes a chosen occupation versus systematized violence against women; it is impossible to test this hypothesis by introducing prostitution into a world where it does not exist. Conversely, the advent of lap dancing is a relatively recent addition to the exotic dance repertoire. Based on anecdotal evidence, it appears that, all other things being equal, exotic dancers prefer noncontact forms of sexual performance over lap dancing and generally deplore the introduction of contact into their occupation. Their reasons include potential health hazards and threats to their physical safety, sexual integrity and personal dignity (Exotic Dancers' Alliance, 2000:4-5). Of course, all other things are not equal: lap dancing is more lucrative than noncontact alternatives because more men want it and will pay more for it. In response to the redefinition of the tasks expected of exotic dancers, it appears that many exotic dancers balked. "Canadian women won't take the jobs," lawyer Mendel Green declared (Oziewicz, 1997:A1). The demand for strippers exceeds supply. Enter the East European (and Asian and Latino) women - women from poorer countries, with fewer options and less information. Thus, the rise in the trafficking of women from Central and Eastern Europe to Canada as advertent, unwitting or coerced sex-trade workers is attributable to the 'push' generated by the degraded citizenship status of women in the new regimes and the 'pull' of an apparently insatiable appetite in Canada for commercial sex. When Russian and other Allied soldiers celebrated their victory over the Germans in World War II, they enacted their conquest on and through the bodies of German women. If the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolizes the defeat of communism and the triumph of capitalism, then perhaps commodified East European women, exported to serve Western men, are the spoils of the Cold War served up by the global market to the victors. This contemporary trade in women is facilitated by an extensive (if loosely organized) network of smugglers, traffickers, pimps and brokers based in Canada and in Eastern Europe. They work in conjunction with Canadian club owners to unite East European supply with Canadian demand. Canada's employment validation exemption for exotic dancers provided a legal circuit for making the connection. Canadian club owners negotiate with brokers who guarantee delivery of exotic dancers. Using job offers issued by the clubs, women could obtain work permits at the port-of-entry. In a recent study of eighteen Eastern European women working in the Canadian sex trade, none claimed previous experience working in any aspect of the sex trade in their countries of origin (McDonald et al., 2000:13). One woman interviewed by a journalist ruefully lamented her change of career from pediatric nurse in Romania to exotic dancer in Canada (Globe & Mail, 1998). The women's advance knowledge of the work they would be doing in Canada appears to vary, but even those who know they will be stripping report that did not anticipate the physical contact. The following comments by two Hungarian women typify the range of responses: When I get to the flight and was one girl and we had a work contract and then I didn't write English either. But I keep see every time one word strip, strip, strip, strip and I start to thinking on the flight and I was ask her: "What is this strip, strip, strip, strip. Do you have any idea?" She go, "Ya, it's dance like you know when you have to take ..." I go, "And why I have this strip there. I'm not going to dancing." And she go, "Sure you do, that's why you came to Canada." And then I did find out what went on" (McDonald et al., 2000:44) I heard that they keep the rules very strictly so I shouldn't worry about the dance. They knew I'd never danced before that's why they said it. That nobody can ever touch me . . . always security everywhere. And so I won't have any problems with any customers, nobody can come close to me .... The difference was that of course people tried to touch me, of course they were closer to me than I expected. There was no security where we danced. So the customers could do whatever they wanted (McDonald et al., 2000:44-45). Once in Canada, agents routinely and unlawfully seize the women's passports and visas, confine the women's movements and interactions, restrict their ability to interact with Canadians (other than customers), and intimidate them through physical and sexual violence, retaliation against family members in the home country, or by warning the women that they can have them jailed and/or deported by Canadian authorities (McDonald et al., 2000:25-26). The women do not speak English, do not know what Canadian law permits, and are multiply stigmatized as foreigners and as sex-trade workers. Indeed, a recent study suggests that strip club owners, agents and brokers intentionally isolate foreign sex-trade workers from their Canadian counterparts and warn the women not to talk to or trust anyone but them. Predictably, this encourages ethnic enclaves, resentment and economic competition between Canadian and foreign women. The tension is evident in the comment by one Canadian exotic dancer, "There's clubs I won't dance at because of what you're expected to do .... But there a lot of new women who've come in from Eastern Europe especially who don't care, they just want the money" (Appelby, 1998). Moreover, the foreign exotic dancers are segregated from the one group of women from whom they might acquire vital information and build productive coalitions. McDonald et al. summarize the dynamic as follows: Foreign women were brought to the clubs where they received no training or preparation for their job. In addition, they were told little or were given the wrong information so they were deceived about nature of stripping. As a consequence, they ended up providing sexual services for the same price Canadian women would charge for less intimate acts. Being cheaper, the Slavic women attracted all the customers and the Canadian workers were expected to redraw their own personal boundaries and provide more sexual acts for less money if they wanted to survive. The fact that they spoke little English and were told by their agent not to talk to anyone because they might be some kind of 'government person' just added to the problem. And, that so many "were just desperate to pay these fools off" ensures that the women would not be influenced by other workers (McDonald et al., 2000:57). The financial arrangements with respect to women working in strip clubs involve paying daily fees to the club and the disc jockey, plus special fees for the "VIP rooms" (cubicles). These fees can exceed $70.00 per day. Most women are not paid at all by clubs, but rather earn their income by charging individual patrons for lap dances, table dances or sexual acts. The women's earnings depend on how much they 'hustle' and what they are willing to do (Taylor, 2000) to make enough money over and above their 'fees.' The pressure to perform sexual acts ranging from masturbation to intercourse arises from their escalating debt load, backed up by threatened or actual physical/sexual coercion. In addition, agents demand hefty daily fees or may force the woman to hand over all her earnings for 'safekeeping' or with the [false] assurance that they will deposit the money in an account in the woman's home country. As one police detective put it, the fees women must pay give "new meaning to Owing one's soul to the company store' and encourage if not compel, these women to prostitute themselves to meet expenses" (Oziewicz, 2000a). In some cases, women may believe they are working off a debt incurred for transporting them to Canada and arranging for jobs, yet the debt never diminishes. In other cases, women are trapped in conventional pimping relationships. Both scenarios constitute typical examples of debt bondage and/or forced labor. Some women are not paid and are held in real or virtual slavery. One Hungarian woman reported paying a Canadian agent $140 per week and Hungarian agent $200 per day. Another Hungarian woman described how her agents' rationale for extracting money alternated between debt repayment and a perpetual commission:

B. Exotic Dancer Visas. Although this was not explicitly stated in Bill C-57, the former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the Hon. Diane Finley, made it clear that the bill was introduced to preclude situations in which temporary workers, particularly exotic dancers, may be exploited or become victims of human trafficking. Currently, foreign exotic dancers may apply for temporary work permits to fill temporary shortages in the Canadian labour market. Historically, to fill this shortage, the applications of foreign exotic dancers were “fast-tracked” without the case-by-case confirmation required of most temporary foreign workers. Foreign exotic dancers with job offers from Canadian employers could apply for and receive their work permit at a port of entry without detailed scrutiny of the circumstances underlying the demand for services or the labour shortage. Strip club owners did not need to seek job validations under the terms of the exotic dancer visa.(7) Although foreign exotic dancers had traditionally come to Canada from the United States, by the late 1990s, when far greater numbers were arriving from Eastern Europe, concerns about human trafficking began to emerge. In 1997, the federal government announced its intention to revoke the labour validation exemption for exotic dancer visas. However, the Department of Human Resources Development issued a letter stating that employment opportunities for Canadians and permanent residents would not be adversely affected by the current level of foreign exotic dancers entering the country on a temporary basis. At the same time, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration implemented a number of unofficial measures to ensure that few applicants for exotic dancer visas were actually accepted. These measures included refusing visas because of lack of work experience and also because it was found that applicants were unlikely to return home after their visa expired.(8) The issue came to a head in 2004, when former Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Judy Sgro resigned amid accusations that she had granted a visa extension to a Romanian exotic dancer who had worked on her election campaign. Ms. Sgro was cleared of all conflict-of-interest allegations by the then Ethics Commissioner,(9) but the policy allowing the fast-tracking of visas for foreign exotic dancers was abolished in December 2004, when the Department of Human Resources and Social Development rescinded its positive labour-market opinion of the exotic dancer industry. Since then, applications submitted by exotic dancers have been processed on a case-by-case basis. Immigration officials working at foreign missions require applicants for exotic dancer visas to present a valid work contract; the officials then verify that the employer is legitimate. They are trained to detect and screen out applicants who may be potential victims of trafficking. The officials also apply health and security criteria and ensure that arrangements have been made for the applicants to return to their country of origin once the visa has expired.(10) Since 2004, the number of permits granted to foreign exotic dancers has declined dramatically. According to information provided by the Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 423 work permits and work permit extensions were issued to foreign exotic dancers in 2004, but this number had dropped to 17 by 2006(11) and stood at 21 in 2007.(12)

In Russia, a grassroots coalition of groups known as the Angel Coalition is fighting a human-rights battle to save women and girls from trafficking and prostitution. Their expected opponents are organized-crime groups, corrupt politicians, and strip-club owners. But there are some shocking additional opponents, comprising what can be considered a pro-prostitution mafia: the U.S. State Department, U.S.- and Dutch-funded nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and a Russian political party — the Union of Right Forces. So far, President Putin has given some indication that he will side with the Angel Coalition against the pro-prostitution mafia, but the battle is still raging. Russia has one of the worst trafficking problems in world. Each year, thousands, and possibly tens of thousands, of Russian women and girls are recruited to go abroad in search of work and other opportunities only to be deceived and coerced into slavery and prostitution. Russia is also a receiving country for trafficked women; there are an estimated 150,000 women from the former Soviet republics on the streets and highways around Moscow. To make matters worse, Russia does not have a law against trafficking.

Escort service. Some guests prefer a more private environment to the crazy funny club atmosphere. That´s why they choose our escort service. One of the possibilities to find the girl of your dreams is to visit our club and to select one of the fourty girls present here every day. The advantage is that you can chat for a while with your chossen one, to find out if it "sparks". In this case you know that there is something around that would make the time spent together unforgettable. We will choose for the guests who prefer the stimulation of "blind dates" and be sure we will make the right selection. Most of our girls speak at least one foreign languane, lot of them are somewhere working or they are studying and therefore we are able to offer the right escort for a variety of occasions and according to your taste.

NEW figures released in Australia indicate you may not be as safe in a church as you are at a strip club or in a brothel. The latest data, compiled by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, showed 1,600 people were charged with committing a range of 27 offences in the state’s “places of worship” in 2008. But the figures showed only 282 people were charged in premises classified as adult entertainment with the same offences. Bureau director Don Wedderburn said the data showed people were just as likely to be assaulted or robbed in the sanctity of a church as they were on the streets. Most people would think of churches and synagogues as sanctuaries in society. But maybe that’s naive, because the statistics show they are likely to rob, assault or steal from people there like anywhere else. A breakdown of the figures showed that 85 people were assaulted in places of worship, compared to 66 at an adult entertainment premises. According to this report, places of worship include churches, synagogues, monasteries, mosques, convents, cathedrals and chapels. Premises listed under adult entertainment included strip clubs, sex shops, brothels, massage parlours, gay clubs, gaming houses as well as gambling clubs. Places of worship were also ahead on sexual offences (16), theft from motor vehicles (33), resisting arrest (seven) and liquor offences (10). Harassment and threatening behaviour at places of worship (30) was more than double that of adult entertainment (13). Two people were charged with possessing or using marijuana in places of worship. The figure was a 90 per cent decrease on the previous year, when 20 people were charged with the offence. Only one person was charged with the offence at an adult entertainment premises in 2008.

The strip club boom pages... pgs 87-106

At the time of the change of the licensing laws last year putting more power into the hands of local councils it was not clear if this would benefit the lap dance/strip industry or not. Now after the law has been in place for over 6 month’s it’s pretty clear that it has in fact made things much easier in most parts of the country. Clubs have opened up all over the UK and where appeals have been required the court has found in the clubs favour in almost every case. Most councils now have realised that to refuse a license will result in an appeal that they will lose and therefore waste money on. The rationalisation of laws also resulted in many more late night pub openings making many old fashioned nightclubs redundant thereby creating a ready pool of vacant premises. The combination of more rational councils and plenty of empty sites has resulted in a 2nd boom in club openings which are happening now at a quicker pace than even in 2001/2. There are currently around 250 clubs operating in the UK and at least 10 new clubs a month seem to be opening. The result is that places like York and Crewe which had no clubs at all until 2006 now both have 2 with others in the pipeline. Solidly anti strip Manchester { at the same time the massage parlour capital of the UK} which previously only had 2 topless clubs which shut at 11pm now has 4 full nude club with late licenses and there are several others in the pipeline. Central Birmingham now has 12 clubs, Leeds 8 with another on the way, Brighton 3 with 5 more apparently coming. Most of the UK’s rather run down seaside resorts like Morecombe, Skegness, Weston super Mare, Southport now have at least 1 club and new clubs have opened during 2006 in towns as small as Cannock, Tamworth, and Banbury. There are several places in the UK {eg Newcastle, Blackpool} that are still topless only but the granting of full nude licenses in previous hold out places like Brighton and Manchester make the end of this restriction across the UK inevitable as soon as the first club decides to take it to appeal. The above applies to England and Wales only as Scotland’s “Mickey Mcmouse” Parliament appointed a “task force” {consisting of hand picked Fem Nazis} on lap dancing clubs which came to a pre ordained conclusion that a “crackdown” was required. The draconian proposals {3ft rule, no cubicles, CCTV everywhere} have been watered down somewhat as the legislation has progressed but the uncertainty has resulted in a hiatus of club openings north of the border. This latest boom has also resulted in a restart in the rapid growth of chains of clubs with a number now actively looking to buy existing clubs or start up new ones. The largest national chains remain Spearmint Rhino and FYEO, both have actually shed clubs since 2002 but 2006 saw a return to expansion. Spearmint has 5 clubs {London, Colnbrook, 2 in Birmingham, Sheffield} and during 2006 bought and converted the old Truffle club in Glasgow and opened a brand new club in Norwich. It has a license to open in an old cinema in Brighton during 2007 and is actively looking for further clubs. FYEO also has 5 clubs { Bournemouth, Southampton, Croydon, 2 in Newcastle} and did not add to the chain in 2006 but already has 3 new clubs { London City Rd, Cardiff, and a 3rd in Newcastle} set to open in 2007 with others almost certain. Rivals as the largest chain have emerged from 2 northern based chains Blue Box and Wildcats. Blue Box has 5 clubs currently {4 in Leeds, Liverpool} 2 of which opened in 2006 and they have stated that they expect to open 5 new clubs in 2007. Wildcats has 4 clubs {Wakefield, Blackpool, Harrogate, Barnsley} with 3 more {Leeds, Huddersfield, Birmingham} due to open within the next few months. In London Peter Stringfellow opened a 2nd club in 2006 and Secrets which already has 5 clubs in the capital has announced that a 6th club will open in 2007. The thing that is vital for all this expansion is the availability of nubile young girls prepared to strip off in public and the lack of enough good looking girls is normally the reason given when any club closes. The recent boom in UK club openings has though coincided with the expansion of the EU first into places like Poland and the Czech Republic and more recently to Romania and Bulgaria bringing in many girls who can work here quite legally. Some clubs have targeted these girls as future staff and Blue Box has even set up an office in Prague to recruit girls for England. My personal opinion is that the current boom will not last and that like Irish themed bars and Berni Inns the total market for clubs as they are at present is not large enough to sustain the current level of clubs. The better ones will survive but I expect closures to start exceeding openings by 2008.

The Sexy-Up School in Osaka trains strippers and porn actresses. It offers classes in dancing, "bedroom techniques" and male sexuality. It has graduated 100 women since opening in 1996. (Yasuo Yaniyama, Director, Sexy-Up School, "Pornography Easy To Find in Japan," Joseph Coleman, Associated Press, October 1997)

Western-style excess is, predictably, the predominant ethos among Dubai nightclubs, which are almost always inside hotels. The mainstream places include the European-style Peppermint Club, in the Fairmont Dubai, the South Beach-esque rooftop playground at the One&Only and an outpost of Paris’s Buddha Bar in the Grosvenor House. But in old parts of town like Deira, Al Karama and Bur Dubai, you can glimpse the full United Colors of Dubai. Within several square blocks are a Russian music club, several Indian strip joints (partial-nudity only), a Japanese karaoke bar, a few hangouts popular with Eastern European prostitutes, a mixed gay-straight disco and a spot where you can catch an Iranian belly-dancing act. The most popular dives, for the moment, are the dozens of clubs featuring Filipino cover bands, like Maharlika Café, where the headlining act is a six-piece all-girl group called Night and Gale that writhes its way through “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses.

All the other formats of sex business are also readily available in Zurich. Especially there is a great demand for strip clubs in the city. Due to the legal support, the strip clubs operate very freely. So you have the lot freedom to even enjoy on the dance floor. A lot of action takes place in the club floor. Kissing and fondling of boobs is just one of the smallest actions that take place on the club floor. There is a great no of strip clubs found around the city for giving you a lot of entertainment. But you will find a lot more strip clubs here in Zurich. And in most of the strip clubs you will find gorgeous ladies with very nude dress up just to show you up the sexy boobs, the sexy thigh and even the sexy pussies. And you can even take these girls for a sex drive at your room. And one thing is for sure is that most of the ladies are very gorgeous to look at and with beautiful boobs. So just enjoy at the strip clubs of Zurich.

St. Lucia: "Prostitution is illegal, but it was a growing problem. Some underground strip clubs were fronts for prostitution and reportedly were owned by corrupt police officers. There were no arrests for prostitution during the year...There were reports that some women from Saint Lucia were trafficked to Saint Marten and Barbados, and that women from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil and some Eastern European countries were trafficked to Saint Lucia, where they worked at strip clubs and brothels. There were reports that police owned many of these clubs, particularly in Rodney Bay, and that women who fled the brothels were sometimes returned to them by police." US Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, "2008 Human Rights Report: Saint Lucia," www.state.gov, Feb. 25, 2009. Phillipines: "'Hey, Joe,' they shout at passing men, much the way another generation of prostitutes once shouted to 'GI Joes' at the former Clark Air Force Base across the street from the red-light district. Neon lights, strip joints, 'girlie' bars and 1950s-style hotels jam together as pop music blares from the clubs. For more than 100 years, this area has been a capital of prostitution and hedonism, dating back to a time when the women were called 'camp followers.'...Nursing and teaching, more traditional women's work in the Philippines, pay a fraction of the sums these women can make. That is, if their pimps allow them to keep their money. A University of the Philippines study in the late 1990s estimated there were about a half-million prostitutes in the country." Mike Comerford, "A Look at Life in the Red-light District," Daily Herald, Apr. 17, 2005

Police in Bucharest are hunting for an attractive young lady who is performing an ad hoc pole dance on the cities underground railway system. Passengers described the dancer as a “well-dressed, attractive, student-like young woman”. The young lady performs her routine between stops, to the tune of Tom Jones’ You Can Leave Your Hat On. She starts the track up on a portable CD player then removes her clothes and gyrates around one of the trains handrails. Once the track finishes she puts her clothes back on and passes around a collection tin for people’s “donations”. One passenger who witnessed the act, said: “I can’t say I didn’t like the show but I found it unusual. There are lots of kids who travel by underground and I just don’t think it’s proper.” If caught the woman could face charges of indecent exposure and public begging.Authorities want to catch a woman who rides the subway in Romania's capital city -- and strips down to her underwear to dance for passengers. Passengers have reported seeing the woman's routine on the underground railway, with one person describing the act as "not proper." The culprit is described as an attractive, student-looking woman who gets up during the More.. subway ride and turns on music from a portable CD player. Witnesses say she typically dances to the Tom Jones tune "You Can Leave Your Hat On" -- and strips down to lingerie. After the performance, the woman passes around a gratuity container for passengers to show their appreciation. Authorities have had a difficult time catching the woman because she always performs the strip tease on trains that do not have guards, or closed-circuit television systems. However, at least one passenger has captured the act on a cell phone camera. Officials said the woman can face charges of indecent exposure and public begging if she was caught in the act. Less..

There are 177 strip clubs, X-rated video parlors and peep shows in New York City’s Times Square, one of America’s most infamous red-light districts. Across the New York City’s five boroughs, the number of adult businesses has increased by more than 30% since 1988. ("Zoning law threatens adult business Times Square could lost most of its red-light district if its enforced in city," Milwaukee Sentinel & Journal, 3 March 1998). A new zoning law in New York City will force 150 of the city’s 177 strip clubs, X-rated video parlors and peep shows out of the Times Square commercial district. The new law makes it illegal for adult businesses to be within 500 feet of a church, school, residential neighborhood or each other. It also prescribes 500 parcels of land, many of them in remote industrial parts of the city's outer boroughs, where adult business will have to relocate. ("Zoning law threatens adult business Times Square could lost most of its red-light district if its enforced in city," Milwaukee Sentinel & Journal, 3 March 1998)

Throughout the major cities of the United States, great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and the Netherlands, studies have shown that Russian individuals and Russian organized crime groups are importing women from Russia, the Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Central Europe for the sex industry via the stripping, prostitution, peep and show club service, massage service, and escort service industries, among others (Foundation of Women Forum, 1998; Bertone, 2000; Richard, 2000; Esadze, 2004). In countries like the United States, where brothels are illegal (except in some counties in Nevada), Russian and Chinese organized crime groups establish massage parlors, spas, suntanning parlors, and beauty salons as fronts for the brothels (Richard, 2000). Japan is regarded as a destination country for trafficked women, who are mostly used for sexual exploitation. The typical case is as follows: Brokers reel in victims with promises of work in Japan as dancers, maids, or hostesses with good pay, but after their arrival, they are forced to do prostitution or strip dancing to pay off a "loan" of several million yen (several thousand U.S. dollars) charged for their travel expenses. Frequently, they are brought under the control of Boryokudan members.

In the OSCE region, trafficking is most often discussed in terms of "trafficking in women", "trafficking in women and children", or "trafficking for purposes of sexual exploitation". While trafficking indisputably has a disproportionate impact on women and girls and frequently entails trafficking for commercial sex purposes, trafficking is a much wider phenomenon, both globally and within the OSCE region. In the OSCE region, the trade in people includes, for example, trafficking in migrants for sweatshop, domestic, or agricultural labour, forced or fictitious "mail-order" marriages, as well as buying and selling young women for brothels and strip clubs.

In Cyprus in 2001, the former immigration chief was found guilty of accepting bribes to issue work permits to foreign women (from Ukraine) who worked as strippers in clubs, some of whom were forced into prostitution ("Immigration chief in stripper racket" 2001). In Greece, a number of high-ranking officials have been arrested for involvement in trafficking and prostitution rings with collaboration by the police.

Owners of the Foxy Lady strip club in Rhode Island plan to hold a job fair. They say they're looking to fill around 30 positions, from strippers and waitresses to disc jockeys and bartenders, at that club and two others in Massachusetts. "I need more managers, I need more competent staff, and I need more attractive waitresses to go along with the ones I have right now," said co-owner Tom Tsoumas. The naked truth is that Rhode Island's economy is among the worst in the US, with an unemployment rate of 10.3 percent in January. The Providence club isn't immune from the recession but is still drawing customers willing to drink and pay for lap dances, said manager Bob Travisono. "It's taken a hit," he said. "It's not as bad as restaurants and stuff like that. In times like this, they seem to drink their sorrows away." Tsoumas said he hopes some who might shun strip clubs when the economy is good might consider shedding their clothes now - or at least working as a floor host or bartender.

With bachelor parties kicking into high gear and the summer season about to begin, the Foxy Lady wants to be sure that its three locations are fully staffed and prepared to meet their customers' demands. So the Providence, Rhode Island, strip club will be holding a job fair to fill 30 positions -- bartenders, waitresses, masseuses and strippers -- according to club manager Bob Travisono. "We are looking to find a diamond in the rough," Travisono told CNN. Based on phone inquiries, Travisono said he's expecting a large crowd Saturday for the job fair. "So many people in Rhode Island have been hit hard by the economy that we wanted to do our part," he said, adding that he couldn't think of a better place than the Foxy Lady to find that ideal job. Rhode Island's unemployment rate was 10.3 percent in January -- the third-highest in the nation, behind Michigan and South Carolina, and the highest the state has seen in more than 30 years. Unemployment in the Providence area was at 11.5 percent. But Travisono said the Foxy Lady's business "is doing very well" despite a slight dip. "But nothing major, because people like to drain their sorrow away," he said. Applicants for the Foxy Lady's openings should bring a resume and will have to answer a short questionnaire, he said.

Social Factors

There is no one "stripper lifestyle" where all performers fit neatly into a single stereotype. There is, however, a significant commonality in the experience which striptease practitioners face on the job. The impact of these experiences are far reaching, and can continue to affect how the stripper approaches aspects of her life long after her days of actively stripping have concluded. Research on strippers has examined dancing as a type of sex work in larger sociocultural context, gender, sex roles, and perceived appropriateness of behavior. Findings include that while both men and women prefer sex in a relationship, men are more accepting of casual intimacy and sex than women. The male sexual desire being more likely to allow for causal sex makes men more susceptible to the fantasy intimacy that exotic dancers sell than a female audience. Women tend to fantasize about partners and relationships, while men are more commonly contented through lust and physical gratification that strippers can offer through personal attention or possibly private dances.

A dancer on a flatbed truck pole.

Sexuality and gender bias

Strip clubs have a reputation for deviant activity, such as illegal drug use and prostitution. By association exotic dancing is generally considered deviant as well. Research on linkages between lesbianism and stripping, still classified as deviant behavior in conservative social climates, has asserted that "some exotic dancers become lesbians because of their isolation from effective social relationships and their overall dissatisfaction with males". Women enhance and broaden their sexual activities through lesbian relationships, then carry those attributes into their workplace personas. Female exotic dancers are continually exploited in the club, if not outside as well by men. As a result they may develop hostile and frigid attitudes towards men, potentially finding greater sexual fulfillment in lesbian relationships.

Ethnographic research has observed that strippers, regardless of sexual preference, have a tendency to treat female customers differently than males. Because of the non-physical motivations ascribed to female intimacy, dancers select women to approach who are smiling and sitting comfortably with open body language such as uncrossed arms. Actively participating with the crowd, laughing and engaging with fellow customers, and applauding for dancers at the main stage also increase the likelihood they will be approached. Dancers tend to avoid women with sour facial expressions or visibly hostile body language, again regardless of sexual preference. In order to become approached, men must indicate financial potential through their appearance. Women must actively demonstrate their good attitude and willingness to participate in club activities. At that point, a woman's perceived profitability is also a factor in a dancer's decision to approach a female patron. The presence of male companionship has been cited in research as an indicator used by dancers to gauge the profitability of a female once she is perceived to be a customer.

Work-life balance

Research suggests that exotic dancing can pay well, but often at a significant cost to the stripper. The reason for this is because of the negative stigma associated with exotic dancing.1 When revealing one’s occupation, a person may be seeking immediate social acceptance from others. However, when an occupation is considered illegal, immoral, or improper, social acceptance is not granted. Dancers manage this stigma by “divid[ing] the social world” by only revealing part of their identity. By revealing only a part of their identity, strippers attempt to avoid being characterized by the stigmatizing attributes associated with exotic dancing. Within the context of the strip club, dancers sometimes give the impression that they are revealing private information, or "backstage" information to a customer in order to play the confidence game for increased profit.

A customer often wants a dancer to "drop the act," which makes him feel special and desired . Dancers are aware of this customer desire for increased confidence, and a dancer therefore will give off the impression that a customer is seeing her true self, when in reality it is just part of her act. Dancers also maintain their "front" by creating a carefully crafted illusion of attractiveness and sexual appeal for customers in the club. Dancers use props such as make-up, clothing, costumes, and appealing fragrances to complete their character. Customers rarely if ever see the preparation of these props; they are denied access to the "backstage" of a dancer's performance through the layout of the club. Though the experience as a stripper has been documented in journalistic and academic research to have lasting negative impacts on practitioners, being a stripper does not preclude a balanced life while in the business or personally satisfying future.

Boundaries and Etiquette

Most research indicates that at some point a dancer has felt exploited by customers, management, or other dancers. The most common complaint from dancers is being portrayed as an object or instrument rather than a person. While dancers feel this exploitation, and are affected by it, they also admit to exploiting their customers. The dancers are using the customers for money, employing all of the resources at their disposal to do so. They sell the fantasy of sex but do not typically follow through with the act. Interviews with strippers have reveled that that the customers are generally viewed as “suckers” for giving the dancers money just for their physical attraction. Dancers, in an attempt to acquire a tip or monetary reward, will sell more than attractiveness and fantasy. They portray feelings of intimacy and emotional connectedness for their customers, and most of the time they are overstated or false.

Dancer perspectives

The more one is involved in the subculture, the greater the chance that a dancer will be labeled negatively. We assumed that females would be more involved in the exotic dancing subculture because they experience more negative societal reactions to their work compared to male dancers. We found that female dancers are more likely to rely on dancing as a way to earn a living versus comparable males. Perhaps this is why female dancers do not feel the same positive community support as do males. Whether or not dancing displays the female dancer's real self, this is how she spends much of her time. Given this time investment, she is identified, more so than male dancers, by this occupation. This means the negative connotations associated with exotic dancing are more likely to be applied to her, and she recognizes this. This may well shape the gender difference we find in recommending dancing to others. Female dancers have more reservations about recommending dancing than do male dancers. This supports the work of Egan (2000) who argues that it is difficult for female exotic dancers to keep work and personal “selves” or roles separate and distinct.

Because of the social stigma and the continual exploitation, some research has been done to explore a dancer’s perceived self versus her ideal self. Peretti and O’Connor’s (1989) work aims to better understand how an exotic dancer’s perceived and ideal self effect her emotional stability. They posit that the greater the discrepancy between a dancer’s perceived and ideal self, the greater the effect on a dancer’s emotional stability. Reid, Epstein, and Benson (1994) suggest that many dancers are adjusted to their role, but they may not feel that their role as an exotic dancer (perceived self) is an accurate reflection of who they really are (ideal self). In other words, dancers do not consider this occupation to be a defining measure of their ideal self. Dancing does not display one’s core values and ideologies. Rather, dancing is a means to earn money and is not perceived by most dancers as defining their identity.

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Other perspectives

Wood (2000) suggests that men who frequent strip clubs think of the dancers as "paper dolls," who exist within the realm of the club and do not have outside lives with boyfriends/husbands, children, or other commitments. According to Wood, when dancers reveal that they have spouses, children, or both, it takes away from the mystique of the dancer and introduces a reality that many male customers would rather avoid or deny. Egan (2005) finds that among dancers and their regulars, the regular engages in a delusion and fails to recognize that the performance in which the dancer takes part is a product of her labor (p. 96).