Empowerment or objectification?
The London Abused Women’s Centre [that’s London, Ontario] posted on Facebook Monday morning:
London Abused Women’s Centre withdraws support of the 2016 Take Back the Night
The London Abused Women’s Centre is withdrawing from the Take Back the Night march on September 15, 2016. We are withdrawing because we cannot tolerate an environment that condones violence against women.
Four days prior to Take Back the Night, the Women’s Events Committee posted a request on Facebook for consultation on possibly having a pole-fitness group attend the Take Back the Night gathering. This does not allow proper time for community feedback. Moreover, the consultation was framed in a way where pole-fitness was stated to be “body-positive” and “empowering.” No alternative viewpoint was provided.
Pole-fitness emerged from pole-dancing in strip clubs—where women, whether there by ‘choice’ or not, are sexually objectified by men. They are leered at and groped at by men who view them as objects for their own sexual gratification. Women and girls are also sex-trafficked into strip clubs and other areas of the sex-trade. Pole-fitness cannot be separated from this history and context. The symbol of the pole is one of sexual objectification and violence against women. Thus, while pole-fitness may be empowering for individual women, it is not empowering for women as a whole. It is a reminder that our primary role in this society has been delegated to one where we are an object to be used and abused as men, and others, see fit.
Because of this, hosting a pole-fitness demonstration at a Take Back the Night is antithetical to its purpose. Take Back the Night is supposed to be an event where women demand their right to be free from violence, including sexual violence. It is an event where girls and boys have the opportunity to learn what rights and freedoms girls should have. A pole-fitness demonstration reinforces the daily messages girls receive that their primary purpose is to be sexy and an object for the purpose of pleasing men. This is especially concerning given that young women are at high risk of being both sexually assaulted and sex-trafficked.
The London Abused Women’s Centre does not believe in colluding with messages that support the objectification of women’s bodies and violence against women and thus will not be participating in the 2016 Take Back the Night march.
The pole-dancing community is livid.
Yesterday the Centre posted a follow-up:
From the President of the Board:
The Board of Directors of the London Abused Women’s Centre (LAWC) provides direction to its staff regarding the values, beliefs and principles of the agency.The Board is committed to ending men’s violence against women by addressing the underlying cause of it; patriarchy. In Canada 50% of girls born today will be abused after their 16th birthday; one in four women is abused by her intimate partner; and every six days a woman is murdered. There are more than 1,000 murdered and missing Aboriginal women and girls in Canada. Girls as young as 12 are recruited into the sex trade by pimps and traffickers. Globally, amongst other atrocities, women and girls face female genital
mutilation and forced underage marriage.The London Abused Women’s Centre recognizes that personal empowerment is important. However, the goal of LAWC is to empower women as a group by ending the oppression they face in their daily lives. It is for this very reason that LAWC believes that no woman is free until all women are free.
The actions taken by the London Abused Women’s Centre are now, and have always been, consistent with benefiting our sisters across the world. As such, the LAWC team did exactly what was expected of them when they spoke out against pole fitness at the Take Back the Night event. It is unfortunate that the Women’s Events Committee chose to minimize our concern around the issue and publicly attack LAWC for its views. This backlash likely contributed to the fear some women feel when asked for input.
The Board of Directors continues to recognize the impact its staff has in shifting the culture for future generations.
The pole-dancing community is still livid.
Such an eloquent statement of something that should be obvious. Women choosing to be sexy? Fine. Body positive, sex positive. Women being shown how to be sexy at an event to end objectification? Not fine.
I’m am tired of the preachy moralizing of the sex-work advocacy community (yes, moralizing is the word I meant, and yes, I do know what it means). The constant degradation of women is brushed aside and minimized (or even celebrated)) by a holier-than-thou attitude from those who believe that sex work is like all other work. While there are some similarities between renting your body out to perform work like, say, my job of teaching, and renting your body out to perform different work like, say, having sex, there is a world of difference. And it isn’t just in society’s attitudes. There is nothing in my job that enforces the idea of women as commodities. It is a job that can place me on an equal footing with the males who work with me. It does not reinforce the patriarchy, though it could at times reinforce corporate consumerist culture (that’s an unfortunate direction in which education is heading). And there is no abnormal amount of violence against women that occurs in jobs like mine, or the myriad other non-sex work jobs women do every day around the world.
Pole dancing is being presented primarily as a excercise method, being reclaimed from its exploitative roots. See: pole fitness rather than pole dancing.
But if you oppose the pole fitness demonstration, you are being sex negative.
@ 2 Holms
What is your point? That if advocates of an exercise see it as being about fitness, while opponents see it as being about sexual exploitation, then it is wrong of the former to mention the rationale of the latter?
No, my point is that if you claim to be demonstrating something that is non-sexual, your defense of it is to argue that it is non-sexual. Instead, they called the Abused Women’s Centre that most awful new sin: body negative.
And next? Some would-be participants in the event may have been so shockingly immodest and exploited as to RIDE BICYCLES. Obvious symbols of phallic violation and gasoline on the fires of male lust.
But frankly, the entire notion of ‘pole fitness’ is grotesque. Even if the strip club were a temple of wimminz empowerment, a ‘fitness’ scheme built around such a bizarre and useless piece of furniture…
Unless you’re a firefighter?
Is it really so sex positive to pretend that pole-dancing is just about fitness and not in any way about wanting to be sexy? It’s like pretending that boxing has nothing to do with a desire to fight.