Every once in a while Robert Peters, head of Morality In Media, gets an itch, and when he scratches, it usually means more fun on the moralityinmedia.org Web site.
Bob's latest offering is "titled" (more or less), "There is much more to the alleged rape of a female 'dancer' By [sic] Duke Lacrosse players than 'male sports culture'."
Awkward titling aside, it's not exactly the best jumping-off point for Bob's message – that "strip club culture" is worse for society than "male sports culture" – since DNA tests have shown that no one on the Duke Lacrosse team had sex with the woman (or at least, among the several semen samples left behind, none of them matched a team member) ... not that that lack of a DNA match made any difference to the Durham, N.C. grand jury that indicted two of the team members.
Wait; maybe that IS Bob's point: That the concept of adult women stripping in clubs and at social events can be indicted despite the evidence!
Anyway, Bob (the ex-jock reverend) thinks "male sports culture" gets a bad rap because, after all, "to a significant extent 'male sports culture' simply reflects the values and lifestyles of 'popular culture.'"
And what is "popular culture"? Well, it's "TV, films, music videos, video/computer games, etc." which "has helped make stripping more visible and even 'acceptable' in some circles." After all, "How else do we explain the spectacle of a young female college student agreeing to strip for a group of male college athletes so that they can get sexually aroused and she can pay her bills?"
Wait; I know this one ... could it be ... money?
Could it be that when organizations like Morality In Media browbeat city councils and the like into consigning adult cabarets to industrial zones and the outskirts of landfills and swamps, thereby limiting competition between the clubs, that club owners can charge more for admission ... and that some of that loot might just trickle down Reaganomically to the dancers?
Hey, just askin'. Maybe some Duke student will want to do a paper on it.
Bob's problem, of course, is that people are taking their clothes off – well, simulating taking their clothes off -- everywhere: On TV sitcoms, in music videos, even in Carl's Jr. commercials! Of course, they take them off for real in their bedrooms as well, but for some reason, that doesn't count.
Maybe he needs to see the new Bettie Page movie, to find out how real Christians look at nudity; then he wouldn't get so upset by letters from, say, an "irate" woman in Michigan about how the Girls Gone Wild (GGW) people are taking their shoots on the road.
Seems the Michigan woman sent Bob a Battle Creek newspaper article (sandwiched between cereal ads, I'm guessing) about the "California-based business with a 'video series and Web site that feature young amateur women stripping and engaging in sex acts, often in public places.'" Just what Bob means by "sex acts" is up for grabs, since GGW isn't a hardcore series ... but maybe he's not aware that the series started because women were taking their tops off in public, and the guys that own GGW just decided to capitalize on that fact.
Anyway, apparently it's because of videos/sites/events like GGW and M-TV specials about "the debauchery that occurs among college and high school students during 'spring break,' as [in] the film 'The Real Cancun' in 2003" that lacrosse teams are raping strippers ... even though they apparently didn't.
"But contrary to the 'harmless fun' that stripping appears to be, when seen through the distorted 'lens' of popular culture, stripping in real life is not so pleasant," claims the inappropriate-quote-mark-using Peters.
As evidence of this, he cites a couple of court cases – from 1973 and 1981! – one of which – New York State Liquor Authority v. Bellanca – claimed that, "Common sense indicates that any form of nudity coupled with alcohol in a public place begets undesirable behavior."
Robert Peters, meet Fulton County, Georgia, which had the same "common sense" reaction you have ... but unlike you, they actually went out and hired researchers to go over years' worth of police reports from strip clubs that served alcohol and liquor-only clubs ... and guess what? There were far fewer police calls to the strip clubs for disturbances than there were to the alcohol-only clubs! In fact, the stats were so unequivocal that Fulton County tried to bury the report and substitute the same tired old "secondary effects" reports that other municipalities were using, to support the county's proposed ordinance to require strip clubs to be alcohol free. Long-time AVN readers know what happened to that trickery: The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the fraud outright.
Bob also quotes a statement from Mary Ann Layden, a Ph.D. from U of P who's been a frequent witness at Sen. Sam Brownback's hearings ... and a quote from her Nov. 2004 testimony before Brownback gives a clue as to why:
"Pornography, by its very nature, is an equal opportunity toxin," she wrote. "It damages the viewer, the performer, and the spouses and the children of the viewers and the performers. It is toxic mis-education about sex and relationships. It is more toxic the more you consume, the 'harder' the variety you consume and the younger and more vulnerable the consumer."
Hence, it's not too surprising that in a statement she penned opposing the 1999 Erotica USA trade show at New York's Javits Center, she would cite one unnamed report in which, supposedly, "100% of the strippers reported some kind of physical or verbal abuse on their jobs. Verbal abuse by customers is extremely common with 91% reporting incidents… Besides the verbal abuse, all endured some type of physical abuse on the job. Despite the fact that it is illegal to touch a stripper, strippers reported that customers grabbed them by the arm (88%), grabbed their breast (73%), or their buttock (91%). Customers at strip clubs often assault the women. Customers pulled their hair (27%), pinched them (58%), slapped them (24%), or bit them (36%). The women are often attacked in front of bodyguards and other audience members. If men would do this to women in public, what would they do to women in private? Strippers are often raped."
Leaving aside the fact that it's not illegal in all municipalities to touch strippers, and leaving aside the fact that any job in which people come in close contact with each other – McDonald's workers, for instance – there are going to be some instances of unwanted physical contact, and leaving aside the fact that it's people like Layden and Peters who encourage inappropriate behavior toward strippers by painting them as second-class citizens for their choice of profession, most cabarets have security guards whose job it is to prevent customers from abusing the dancers ... so there's good reason to believe that Layden's figures are wildly inaccurate. We'd be glad to check it out, but Layden gives no clue as to who conducted the "one study" or what its protocols were. (www.obscenitycrimes.org/laydenhealthy.cfm)
"It is not my purpose to absolve 'male athletic culture' or athletes of responsibility for misconduct," Peters writes, "but if the underlying problem is 'male athletic culture' as such, then widespread sexual misconduct should have been occurring all along, including in the 1960s when I played high school and college football. Perhaps I missed something, but I don’t think hiring strippers (or sexually assaulting strippers) or gang bangs (or gang rapes) or even 'hooking up' (or 'date rape') were 'the vogue' back then. Such undoubtedly occurred, but not like they do today."
Um ... Bob? ... sexually assaulting strippers, gang rapes and date rapes aren't "the vogue" today, even though, yes, some of that did indeed happen when you went to high school and college (which was around the time when McDonald's was still working on "Over 1 Billion Sold.")
"When young men on school athletic teams, or on spring break, or in Battle Creek, or on Wall Street pay to have young women in public or private places engage in indecent and lewd behaviors for their sexual pleasure," Peters continues, "we shouldn’t be surprised when the results are boorishness, promiscuity, indecent exposure, prostitution, sexual harassment, and even sexual assaults."
Actually, we should. See, when uptight anti-sex fanatics create a puritanical culture that conflates women displaying their natural sexiness with the idea that that makes them sluts, hookers and second-class citizens, that's when men may get the idea that the women's sexual freedom gives the guys license to behave physically and verbally inappropriately toward the women.
By the way, that's the same puritanical culture that's your stock-in-trade. Try looking in a mirror sometime.
