Yesterday, after our Valentine’s meal in an Italian restaurant, we went to see our chav neighbour J. who we love, and who recently landed a full-time job as bouncer for a strip club. J., who left school at 12 and can’t read or write properly (well he can, i.e. he’s not dyslexic, but leaving school at 12 means that he was never fully trained in reading and writing to the extent that regular people are), last year got his door supervisor/security license and has steadily worked his way up.
When he first got his license, his job was guarding some building site overnight, with really shit pay and his ‘bosses’ treating him badly. After various other shit, exploitative jobs, he started doing the strip club door only a couple of months ago, and has since been promoted to do it 5 nights a week. We wanted to see him at work as it were, especially as it was Valentine’s day and he doesn’t have a Valentine.
My BF had been to see J. there previously, and I’m always interested in the seedy underbelly of London anyway. Not as a main pursuit of pleasure, but to just dip in to sex, drugs, crime, punters, and anything else that could be part of an episode of Eastenders - only it is real.
It’s very strange, this seedy underbelly ‘tourism’ of mine. I’m not like a fish out of water there, as I can pass as ‘one of them’ if I have to, at least for a short period of time (all I have to do is expose my tattoos; my accent doesn’t give anything away as I’m German - i.e. unlike a native English speaker, who would immediately be categorisable in terms of class, as soon as they open their mouth). I’m also a very atypical woman, and as such I guess ’safer’ within the underbelly, in that I have more freedom to say and do what I want without the alpha-males feeling threatened (as I’m not a man).
So, the strip club. It was extremely strictly gendered, and I felt more like a male than a female in there. All the women were semi-naked, dressed in high heels and skimpy outfits (no breasts etc. on show - we only stayed for half an hour, just to see J. - I guess the real stripping etc. starts as the night progresses). All the men, on the other hand, typical punters: looking at the women, buying them drinks etc., and overall a very weird and fluid power-relationship in there (I’d say that the women are definitely ABOVE the punters, but BELOW their boss of course).
Being a feminist, it’s difficult to really understand and assess the experience. The strangest thing is the fact that I felt absolutely *not* like a woman, or maybe the women didn’t feel like women (or maybe they aren’t women, just male fantasies). For instance, the boss, an East End boy with a tattooed face (who’d apparently just come out of prison) came up to us as my BF has offered to help them with their website (as a favour for J.), and I immediately took over the conversation and started talking to him on his level. I didn’t even introduce myself, so I was quite full on and non-submissive. His relationship with all the other women, on the other hand, was very strictly gendered, and the women are sexualised to the point where they don’t really seem to have any other function, and submission to male fantasies is unfortunately part of their job.
It’s definitely an experience that I wanted to write down, and that gives me plenty of material for a short story. I guess that’s how I justify my foray into some territories that politically I can’t really abide with. I.e. the feminist in me is absolutely annoyed when J. tells us that he ‘might get a blow job after work; it’s only £40′, and the commodification of women that his attitude seemingly entails. But it’s not as simple as that - J.’s mum is a strong, fiery alpha-female, and whenever J. is around ours he knows who’s the boss (i.e. me) and for instance he’s not allowed to burp here and I tell him off for stuff. Generally speaking, J. is a softie who wants love, and who is *not* sexist. But somehow, the culture he lives in encourages the commodification of women as sex objects. I.e. J. daren’t see women as anything else other than sex objects, unless they’re his mother or his friend, in which case he respects them.
But he can’t get emotionally close to women. I guess that degrading them helps reinforce his non-existing, imaginary masculinity.
Filed under: Daily life, Feminism, Friends, London, Sex | Tagged: chav, Feminism, Sex, sexism, strip club, valentine
