The dancer waltzes onstage, scantily clad but clothed nonetheless. She teases her audience with a twirl around the pole before descending on the crowd. She then slowly begins taking off pieces of her flashy outfit in tune to the music and starts to make her rounds.
She catches a man’s eye, and he responds with an eager nod. She dances over to a table, flashing her breasts as she gives him a lap dance. He holds up a dollar bill from the pile stacked high in front of him, and she grabs it with her cleavage. The dance is over, and he waits for the next.
For many college students, especially men, a night spent at a strip club is harmless fun. People get to see naked women — live. The dancers make money, and plenty of it — sometimes to feed themselves or their families, other times to put themselves through school.
But historically, strip clubs have also been a hotbed for sexual assault, drug abuse and other dangerous crime. While stripping is legal in most states, women who work at strip clubs are subject to many of the same dangers as adult film stars and sex workers.
Some people say adult dance clubs in the Eugene-Springfield area generally are much tamer and cleaner than clubs in bigger cities. University senior Robert Collett, who goes to strip clubs with friends a few times every month, said in some larger cities, he’s seen bigger problems with drug addiction and what he called “shady and perverted” managers and patrons.
“The whole crowd is less dirty here,” he said.
He added that he’d go more often if he had the money — although he does feel bad for the dancers.
“It’s degrading, for sure; I would never let my daughter do it,” Collett said. “They don’t like it, but they’re doing it for the money. They do like it when you bring girls in — they’re more comfortable with you.”
And while he enjoys interacting with the dancers, he said it’s hard not to judge them, adding he would never date a girl who strips because she is essentially selling her self-respect for money.
“If you’re willing to take off your clothes and dance in front of a nasty, greasy guy with a mullet, then how am I going to love or
respect you?” he said.
Freshman Anthony Warren said he thinks stripping is a degradation not only to the women, but to society as well.
“If girls feel it empowers them, fine — but I think they could probably show a lot more respect for themselves,” he said. “It’s just kind of a perverted sense of how you should spend your Friday night.”
Warren said although he thinks pornography is disgusting as well, it doesn’t mean the sex industry is going to go away.
“Some people will always have lower standards of entertainment and will see this kind of thing as entertaining,” he said. “It’s just not high moral or ethical behavior. These guys don’t respect the girls for who they are — they’re just an object of lust and entertainment.”
That objectification often can turn ugly. Twenty-year-old Sara, who preferred to use only her first name, said she’s seen her share of shady scenes. Before moving to Eugene in December, she worked in a club in Los Angeles, and before that she was in Las Vegas, where her friend was working.
“It’s a scary world out there,” she said. “It does open women up sexually, because it’s a very sexual job.” But, she said, it’s the financial benefits that are most enticing.
“In one night, you could easily make $500 or $600, as opposed to working for weeks to make that much,” Sara said. “But some women take it too far, which isn’t OK.”
She said she has seen people do things outside the bar for extra money, where there’s “no security, no protection.”
Many people say that while sexual culture isn’t harmful, objectification culture creates a haven for violence against women as objects. Sophomore Austin Shaw-Phillips said this is one of the primary arguments for decriminalizing some parts of the sex industry, namely prostitution and the adult film business.
“If women’s sexuality weren’t so taboo, the sex industry itself wouldn’t be so taboo,” he said. “And if sex workers had rights, they could protect themselves legally.”
He added strip clubs are only a problem insofar as they foster objectification culture — if the woman is merely an outlet for sexual release, she is not a subject or a person.
“I’m not against women working in the sex industry,” he said. “I’m just against the exploitation of women by men in the sex industry.”
Senior Angelica, who also preferred to use only her first name, agreed.
“Porn is positive in a lot of ways — people need to be more open with sexuality and not feel like it’s a bad thing,” she said. “But if we want all of it to be more positive, we need to stop the objectification. It’s about placing the same value on women that we place on men in this society.
“Sexuality is one of the few powers women have over men,” she said. “It’s sad to see women give up their sexuality, to men, for money.”