Stripped

I went to a strip club this weekend. I don't go to strip clubs often but on occasion, typically at another friend's request I end up in a strip club. I rarely have an amazing time in strip clubs but this weekend was especially disturbing. I walked into an all black strip club located in a a area with a several other multiracial strip clubs and a few predominately white clubs. In the club I entered there were at least 30 women working in a one large room, with one stage. One woman danced on stage while the others lounged or tried to work the audience. I had no money and I was with a group of 4 other people, one of those people and I were the only white people in the bar.

I felt guilty for being in that space without money to give the women dancing. I had not planned to end up in a strip club. The women were not turning me on, really I had no desire to tip them beyond a sense of obligation because I was in the bar. Tipping is the point of being in a strip bar. I grew very uncomfortable, here I was with over 2 dozen black women working their bodies because that is how they make money. It would be very rude to go into a restaurant, sit down, and proceed not to order anything. In fact I would be asked to leave. As a white person I knew I took up space that no one else in the bar took up. Lots of people were tipping the women a dollar here or there, way less than any of the women's worth. When I say I took up space that no one else did its for me to explain. White people are privileged in this country. So there is an assumption that I have access to resources such as money. I don't think any one should go to a strip club unless they are ready to tip the dancers. Due to systemic racism, as I white person I most likely have access to certain resources that a black woman may not have access to. Thus making it even more important that as a white person in an all black strip bar I go ready to tip.

There were dozens of black men in the bar who were not tipping. For me, this did not justify my inability to tip. I did not want to do what those men were doing and I have no idea if the same men who were not tipping the woman on stage had at least paid for a "lap dance" in the back. My discomfort was about my relationship to that space. It felt reminiscent of a slave auction block, and yet I did not even have money to justify my voyeurism or participation. I did not want to participate in that kind of exploitation of black women's bodies. I am not against strip bars, sometimes I even have a good time. I think the thing that bothered me most is that I had no money to tip and the people I was with had very limited money to tip. Essentially the money my friends had was not enough to justify a group of 5 people inhabiting that space. Strippers don't strip for fun generally, they strip to earn $$$.

I voiced my discomfort to my friends, including the other white person. I was not heard by my friends and we stayed for a while before we left. I woke up thinking well if nothing else at least I have something to blog about. I definitely felt disappointed my friends are OK with being in that space with little money to compensate the women for their work. I was in a group of both people of color and white people, as well as straight people and queer people. So for each of us the space we take up in this particular situation varies and I cannot speak to whether they should have been in that space or not but I knew that personally I did not have any reason to be there without money. Had I been in a group of people who had big $ and could "make it rain", maybe the dynamic would have changed. For me it was not right to be in this strip club with a group of people who had little to no money to tip the dancers.

Someone I know is making a documentary about black strippers in gay communities who strip for gay people. Once she said part of what her documentary looks at is "how work shapes identity". I think about this statement partly because she was referring to how work as a stripper and entertainer helped shape the identity of the people she followed in her documentary. For me working in abortion has shaped my identity. I did not know I had so much feminism hiding in me until this weekend. I identify as a feminist but I have never had this kind of anger arise as a result of the objectification of women's bodies, at least not that I could really identify in real time.

I can not disconnect my work in an abortion clinic from experiences like this one. I kept on thinking of the stripper I got into a conversation with at work a few weeks ago. I kept hoping none of these women would end up in the clinic and remember my face because I watched and did not tip. My work has informed my identity as a feminist and anti-racist woman.

Guest Blog: When the Movement Disappoints

A warm welcome to Steph, a fellow blogger at Abortion Gang and the founder of I Am Dr. Tiller, a site for abortioneers to make their voice heard. Steph is guest blogging at Feministe this week and has graciously agreed to cross-post here because the topic is so important to me, and one we've discussed privately many times. Expect to see more on this in the near future. Steph can be reached at twitter.com/iamdrtiller

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When the Movement Disappoints

I moved to Brooklyn from Philadelphia almost a year ago. My partner got his dream job here, so I left my decent reproductive health gig to live in the feminist mecca. I had high hopes – almost every major feminist and/or reproductive health organization has a presence in NYC. Surely, I thought, it will take me no more than a few weeks to find a job that I love.

You can imagine my excitement when over the course of a few months, I landed interviews at many of the big pro-choice organizations here. I don’t have to name them. You know who they are. I interviewed for jobs at these places that fit my experience, jobs at which I could’ve kicked ass. But each interview ended with some version of this: “I’m sorry, but you are too radical/too much of an activist to work for us.”

At one particular organization, a senior executive looked me in the eye and said, “If you work here, you have no voice on reproductive rights.”

Another organization wanted me to delete my twitter account. Some wanted me to stop blogging. Others said that because I have a published opinion on later abortion, I would be a liability. One wanted me to resign from all my volunteer pro-choice activism, namely being on the board of the New York Abortion Access Fund.

These requests were not implied. They were said to me in no uncertain terms.

I have a few theories about why this happened. Each theory deserves its own blog post, but I’ll summarize them in three bullet points.

1. New media is still, somehow, an intimidating enigma to these organizations, and they have no clue how to deal with it and with people who know how to use it well.
2. The thought of new leadership coming in means the old leadership has to go somewhere, and, well, where would they go?
3. Fear of the anti-establishment approach and of hiring someone who could potentially offend your board/donors.

Or I just could’ve been wearing the wrong outfit.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many reasons I could’ve been rejected from these positions. I’m not on some kind of vengeful rampage against these organizations. What I AM on a rampage about is this: how can a pro-choice organization tell a job candidate that her dedication to pro-choice activism disqualifies her from a job? How can you STILL, in 2011, not understand the activist potential of new media? The necessity of using anti-establishment approaches every now and then?

I can’t tell you how profoundly disappointed I was in the movement-at-large every single time this happened. Not because I’m special and deserve to be hired, but because I can’t be the only one having this experience. There is something perverse about not wanting to hire people who are so committed to the movement that they work in it in their spare time.

How many other young activists are being cast aside because we are “too radical”? How many people who do great work on their own are disqualified for being “too established?” How is a young, fired up activist supposed to pay her rent in this town without selling out?

It breaks my heart that so many of the organizations I admire mirror the corporate world: they are just as hierarchical and scared of the power of young people. We should not have to apologize for our experience or our passions. I ultimately got lucky and found a job at a place that does great work AND doesn’t force me to compromise my extracurricular activism. I remain furious that young people are treated this way, this profoundly un-feminist way, in our own movement. If your organization isn’t going to treat young, committed activists with respect and dignity, it has no future in the feminist movement.

Need for the Women's Movement?

So, I'm slightly obsessed about Lauren Zuniga now. I'm not ashamed. She's fucking amazing. And if you haven't watched her yet, then watch her. Now. Yes. Now. Take a minute. Sit down. Turn up the volume. Consider it a reminder of what our worth is. Our worth as women.



If you want more, check her out on YouTube or re-watch my previous post here.

A surprisingly delicate subject*

Lately I've been spending more shifts in the surgical suite, where I check on patients' wellbeing after their abortions, sterilize instruments, or play some role in the procedure itself. Often that means serving as a "patient advocate" (attending to a woman's emotional and physical experience of the procedure, similar to the role of abortion doulas) or as an interpreter. But I'm also spending more shifts assisting the doctor providing the abortion, and that means seeing lots of vaginas.

Vulvas, to be more exact, of which the vagina is really only a small part. And here's one thing I keep incidentally noticing when I'm on this side of the sheet and stirrups: many women's vulvas are shaved! Not merely trimmed, but all the way de-pubed (whether bald or stubbly).

I don't want to be overly crass. And I'm certainly not judging -- over the years I've gone through many "hairstyles" myself. It's just that I started wondering why it's so common. I came up with a couple of possibilities:

1) That's just a lot of people's preferred habit, and the appointment day is just a day like any other.

2) You've heard that before a surgery, you're supposed to shave the area to be operated on. You figure that might be true of a "surgical" abortion even though you've been told there's no cutting involved. (You can't automatically know that a sterile speculum will be used to hold your vagina open, so that the sterile dilators and cannula don't touch your vulva on their way to your uterus, which is much more sensitive to germs than your vagina or vulva.)

3) A stranger is going to see your vulva, and that makes you anxious about being hairy. So you shave before going for pap smears, and this gyno visit is no different in that respect. You've seen "Knocked Up," and that woman's vulva -- in the middle of giving birth -- was, well, strikingly bald. Actually, how did she pull that off with her theatrically giant belly in the way? If Katherine Heigl's body double (vagina double?) had to be shaved for a delivery scene, it must mean real-life women ought to be trimmed to that aesthetic at a moment's notice, because what if you have to go to the doctor? A shaved vulva is basically the new clean-pair-of-underpants, amirite?


In contemplating these, I found myself really hoping that #3 is not at play, because I'd hate for an appointment that's likely staffed with strangers and already stressful to generate that unnecessary layer of extra anxiety. Note to potential patients: Don't worry! No one here will have a problem with your hair. At least at your abortion, of all places, of all times, I hope you can rest easy with your vulva the way it is.

Unfortunately, I also found myself thinking that my least favorite hypothesis seems like the most plausible.

And with that, we conclude the shoddiest descriptive study ever.


*The hesitation I felt when writing this post did take me by surprise. I blog about abortion, for chrissake! What could be a more delicate subject than that? But take an important personal decision, mix in the "violation of privacy" feeling that many of us get from any brush with the old stirrups and duck-lips, and then bring up pubic hair, which at a minimum probably calls up most people's anxious memories of being twelve years old and wondering if you've got too much, too little, too bushy, too wiry, omfg...And suddenly adult-you can't figure out if this feels weird because you're violating HIPAA (you're not), because you're talking about something dirty (you're not), or because you're acknowledging you saw people's vulvas (well, duh). (Otherwise you'd be doing abortions blindfolded, right?) (PPS, a nurse friend recently told me that standard nursing textbooks instruct to "note hair distribution" during a vaginal exam!)

Anyway -- I promise I wasn't staring; I promise I didn't take mental note of how much you, as an individual patient, grow/trim; and I promise that whatever you personally do with your personal hair is no biggie to me. We'll offer you safe, friendly care no matter what's underneath the sheet. Even if for some reason you've got it painstakingly waxed into an Italian status symbol.

Wordplay

In a recent chat with fellow Abortioneers, the question arose of whether it is possible to work in Abortion Land without being a feminist. About a Girl recently expressed her discontent at the diminishing sense of feminism in our clinics, superseded by a for-profit model that shifts the focus from the woman to the service-payment exchange. I can't really begrudge that; you provide a service that people want, one that will never diminish in demand, and you've got a pretty steady stream of income. It's good business sense, not personal. Then again, it's not a dental office. It's an abortion clinic. Women go there to make some of the most important decisions of their lives. Shouldn't the clinics give a damn?

I suppose, by default, if you are providing a service that advances women, you hold some feminist ideals. Even if you are just a health care tycoon by day, the fact that you enter into the line of abortion fire confirms your feminist leanings. I would agree with that. But if I were to ask the manager of a large clinic chain if he were a feminist, what would he respond? Might he identify as a not-feminist, yet still commit to his position and intend to provide quality services? I would agree with that also.

I think there are two separate ideas at play: feminism and Feminism. You can be feminist, and believe in "the radical notion that women are people", or you can be a Feminist and officially align yourself with a cause that holds certain and specific ideals. And while this distinction may seem slight or nitpicky, I consider it important in distinguishing the who from the what, the estar from the ser.

Example: I have Depression. I am a Depressed person. This is a label that I wear, because having a clinically-diagnosed, chronic mental illness that necessitates treatment with drugs and/or therapy is a part of my being. It is a part of who I am, and not just a condition or a state. I rally 100% behind the Depression cause, because it is a struggle I will likely battle throughout my lifetime. On the other hand, some people are depressed. They feel sad from time to time, but not for unusually long periods of time. They may seek drug or psychotherapy, but those avenues are not essential to alleviating the condition. Depression is not an part of their being, but it is something about which they have some feelings, however strong, and experiences that do affect how they react and respond to life circumstances.

Wax philosophical, much?

The point is, I think that people are generally able to relate to feminist causes. People can stand behind women obtaining education, women receiving equal pay, and women having the same opportunities as men without too much debate. I believe in all of the above, and then some, but I can't say I stand 100% behind all Feminist ideals. Frankly, I feel there are too many different schools of thought, too many "waves" to keep track of, in order to arrive at a cohesive and concise definition of a Feminist movement. And so, I appreciate that folks can support and even enable a woman's right to choose without having to declare a commitment to Feminism per se. Maybe it's because they don't like labels. Maybe because they consider capital-F-Feminism to be a movement in a more stringent sense that they don't feel comfortable aligning with. Or maybe because, sometimes, you don't really need to give a special name to what it is that you do. Because you must. And no matter what you call it, you are in it for the women.


(That said, I absolutely adore About a Girl and love her post!)