The Spearmint Rhino feminists
A friend told me his student daughter had become a feminist activist. Check out her Facebook page, he said. So I did, expecting posts on the gender pay gap or #MeToo. Instead I discovered the campaign to which she and her mates devoted their energy was to save the Sheffield branch of Spearmint Rhino.
Seriously? A lap-dancing club? Indeed, a multinational lap-dancing corporation, where men from London to Las Vegas can pay near-naked women to grind on their crotches in private booths. Spearmint Rhino, whose posters of strippers dressed in sexy uniforms for “naughty schoolgirl” parties were banned by the advertising watchdog, and which exists to flatter and feed the sexual entitlement of men, according to its founder John Gray.
Not just any old Spearmint Rhino either but Sheffield’s, where the council recorded 74 breaches of the licence and 145 of the club’s own code of conduct, including sexual touching and masturbation. Yet outside the club with placards, demanding the council ignore such violations, were women students.
I suppose all those breaches of the licence and the code of conduct were recorded by wicked SWERFs, right? Who else doesn’t want women exploited and put in danger? The Spearmint Rhino feminists told Sheffield council that stripping “plays a huge role in empowering women.” Hell yeah. Don’t go into law or engineering or politics, be a stripper. That’s where the real power is.
Among the club’s most vocal supporters was Sophie Wilson, 23, a Sheffield councillor and now the prospective Labour candidate for Rother Valley.
Given this constituency includes part of Rotherham, you’d expect Ms Wilson to be mindful of the town’s recent sexual abuse scandal, aware that 20 men were jailed for grooming, rape and trafficking, that her voters include some of the 1,500 female victims. These grotesque crimes, the ensuing cover-up and recriminations, have left a festering wound. No surprise that residents voted for a zero-tolerance policy on sexual entertainment venues: from next year Rotherham council won’t renew any strip club licences.
Yet instead of reaching out to victim groups, Ms Wilson has gone to war against one of Rotherham’s bravest survivors. Sammy Woodhouse described being raped and impregnated as a 14-year-old by Arshid Hussain, now jailed, in her memoir Just A Child.
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Sammy Woodhouse is aghast that middle-class students believe lap-dancing clubs are empowering. Or that Sophie Wilson responded to Spearmint Rhino’s offer of a free night out as reward for saving their licence with an excited: “I’m up for it.” In response, Ms Wilson called Woodhouse — a Rother Valley voter — “SWERF trash”. It is hard to believe such an immature, insensitive person could be selected for a seat beset with complex problems. But the Rother Valley long-list compiled by Labour’s NEC excluded most local candidates. Ms Wilson was a Momentum choice.
That is blood-chillingly horrible.
Yet sadder than this betrayal of South Yorkshire voters by the party they have always trusted with power is the mindset of Spearmint Rhino feminists. Has the first generation raised on internet porn come to believe that sexual objectification is normal, even desirable? They call themselves “sex positive”, implying that women who oppose lap-dancing clubs ain’t getting any. (As if the sex trade has any respect for female pleasure.) They say lap dancers just need unionisation and for men to tip them well.
This, remember, is the #MeToo generation that calls a hand on a knee sexual assault and railed against entitled businessmen ogling hostesses at the Presidents Club charity ball last year. Yet it does not see that the narrative that gave Harvey Weinstein impunity to grab any passing starlet is played out in every £30 private dance. Wrapped up in their own narcissism and “identity” they are blind to the bigger picture. They are Spearmint Rhino’s useful feminist idiots. Ladies, you’ve been had.
300 years ago that kind of sexiness may have been “empowering” in the sense that the only way most women could get power was by sleeping with a powerful man. But today?
Colin, to be fair that might have been true much more recently, and not just for women. to an extent is some professions and for some women it may be still true today (some of the accusations against well known film producers after all is that essentially knackered the careers of actresses who didn’t co-operate). It’s all of a mess.
I regard myself as sex-positive, but I’ve increasingly come to the view that legalised prostitution, a poorly regulated porn industry and a trend back towards equating women’s power and liberation with being sexually available for men’s pleasure is a backward step and delusional while women are neither equal, secure or truly empowered in ways that count.
From a number of studies I’ve seen, I suspect the answer is yes. I am aghast.
I’m reminded of groups like The Pussycat Dolls. A burlesque act that recruited a singer, and whose general theme is about ’empowering’ women by being self-assured enough to …strip?? Fucking numpties.
And picking cotton under the lash is the essence of Black empowerment.
More and more, “empower” is being used to mean “instill confidence” rather than “grant power or authority”. Confidence is great, but without authority to control one’s situation, it’s not very helpful.
And in fact confidence is actually not great in all circumstances for all people. One word will explain: Trump.
Indeed. If stripping is so empowering, why is it predominantly a female profession? Men should be lining up to get their kit off in public. But strangely, there is no male stripper equivalent to Spearmint Rhino.