Garrulous Geek

By the time I get round to uploading this, I will probably know who has been voted off Strictly Come Dancing this week. As it is, I'm writing this in Notepad and will have to upload it later, as I'm on the train and Orange 3G perplexingly classifies my blog as "pornography" and unsuitable for anyone under the age of 18. Obviously my last entry raised more eyebrows than was immediately apparent.

So, I'm probably on decidedly safer territory if I stick with good, wholesome family entertainment like Strictly. I'm obviously getting dangerously middle-aged and middle-class, as I'm an ardent Strictly fan. So much so, that Alison and I are going to see it live when they go on tour in the New Year. Excellent.

We had our staff ball a few weeks back. We all headed down to the Kensington Olympia, ate fairly forgettable food, drank lots of free drink and generally had a good time. As part of the entertainment they had a bit of Strictly Come Dancing competition with various of our partners dancing with professional dancers and being judged. Brendan Cole and Lilya Kopilova from the show were there.

After they were done, and whichever partner it was won and was given their trophy, the dancing became decidedly less sophisticated and artful. The DJ put on the dance music and thousands of accountants descended on the dance floor. I resisted the pressure to dance, informing people that they'd have to get several more drinks into me before I'd go anywhere near the dancefloor... Well, being as the drink was free, this wasn't too difficult to achieve. I went and had a dance, in so far as my uncoordinated flailings can be called dancing. I don't have a problem with rhythm - I'm pretty good at keeping to the beat - I just have a problem with moving my limbs in anything like a sensible fashion and without causing bodily harm to my fellow dancers.

So, I danced for about an hour or so... Me and a thousand other dinner jacketed men and evening gown-ed women, aged anywhere between 20 and 60, letting our hair down and taking a break from our hours sat at desks counting other people's money. "This is weird", I think to myself, my and many other arms raised in the air as Faithless' Insomnia booms out at us. "Dun-dun-da-dun-dun-dun-da-dun-dun-dun-da-dun-dun-dun-dun". I wonder how silly we all look, sweating away in our black suits, dancing with other people's spouses to 10 year old records. I can't bring myself to worry for too long though, carried away as I am by alcohol and deep bass notes and the sheer physicality of this slinking, gyrating mass of people...

It's a curious thing, but it's strangely liberating... Moving to the music, following the beat from song to song. I am, admittedly, relieved that I don't have to try to impress anyone with my "moves" - I don't think Alison really saw me dance till after we were wed, by which point it was too late - but perhaps that just leaves me freer to enjoy myself. I doubt I'll make a habit of it, and I'd rather be able to dance properly, Strictly style, than to do anything that might fit in at a club, but perhaps once in a while it's fun to give it a go.

***

And lo, it was Dominic who left. Not to worry.

"Don't go a strip club - those women have mother's, fathers and they want to have children one day!"

So went the exhortation from a friend of mine, shortly before she left the pub wherein we were celebrating our tutor's stag do. Predictably, we proceeded to go to a strip club, but not before getting a few more drinks inside us, losing several quid to the quiz machine and eating lots of noodles.

I have mixed feelings about strip clubs. On the plus side, there are women taking their clothes off; on the other hand, it's really nothing more than the more socially acceptable face of the sex trade. You see the dichotomy, I'm sure. Strip clubs are respectable and enough to appear on high streets up and down the country, but I'm inclined to say there's something a bit more sinister at work than just a bit of smut at the end of a lad's night out.

I suspect that of those people who would ever go to a strip club, most would only ever go for a stag do or birthday party or the like, irony optional. But what of the numerous people I saw at the club I attended, still in their pinstripe suits after a day at the office? Don't they have homes to go to? Wives? Girlfriends? Or are they too busy spending their Thursday evenings in strip clubs to find any such partner? What of people attending strip clubs on their own, with no leering accomplices? Could there be a sadder way to spend an evening?

I wonder who is exploiting who, in the strip club system. The most obvious suggestion would be that I, the punter, am exploiting the stripper, forcing her to take her clothes off for my money. Having thought about it of late, I think that's a rather simplistic way of looking at things. Rather, I would think it more accurate to say that it is the proprietor who exploits me and my fellow punters, by way of exploiting the girls that he employs. I think it is men who are exploited out of their money on account of being too controlled by their sexual urges. To put it succinctly - it's just too damn easy to persuade us to give an unknown girl a fiver to take her top off for two minutes. I'm not saying that the women aren't being exploited too, but that's not the financial incentive for the guy in charge - he's just out to betray his fellow men by taking our money.

Now, admittedly, this is not exactly what was on my mind when the pretty blonde was taking off her rather inauthentic airline stewardess uniform, but I digress. It's easy to look at this seriously now, when I'm not full of alcohol and surrounded by hordes of baying City workers.

Now of course, the women are being exploited too. We pay women to take their clothes off and show us their bodies for our enjoyment, without really caring a jot about any aspect of their lives that doesn't involve their being nude and in our presence. Anything else is irrelevant. They are paid for their physicality and nothing more. However, the trouble with such a line of thinking is that it paints me into a corner regarding nigh on any other trade that depends on a person's physical traits and abilities. Is a model being exploited any less just because they get to keep their clothes on? Is a construction worker being exploited any less just because he's a guy building a house? The work is entirely contingent on his body. Hell, sometimes even he doesn't keep his shirt on. Is a sportsman any less exploited just because they're using their body to run around a pitch or swing a tennis racquet?

The corollary to that argument is that I'm then obliged to say that prostitution is legitimate, which is rather more difficult to justify. Working on the prior line of reasoning, a prostitute is making their physical abilities available to another person for money. It's their body to do what they want with, surely. Perhaps the problem there arises when you introduce a third party - the guy pimping the girls. Now that's real exploitation, never mind just paying women just to take their clothes off. That's when things get ugly. That's when people start getting shipped in from other countries, bought and sold like animals. That's when people start getting beaten and abused. Clearly there is a line somewhere between being paid to play tennis and being paid to have sex with someone, but for the life of me I'm not quite certain where that line is. That being said, I suspect that stripping lies on the wrong side of the line.

Now, it's all very easy to argue for and against prostitution when I'm not letting morals cloud things, but as a Christian (albeit the kind that occasionally finds himself half drunk and in a strip club - go figure) I'm compelled to think of things rather differently. No, it is not right for women to be exploited for their bodies, be that for page 3 modelling, prostitution or rape, take your pick. I suspect the whole problem arose back in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve first became aware of their nakedness and were embarrassed of their forms, and God gave them their clothes. From that point on, the body was something to be covered and hidden, and from that point on it was inevitable that one person would pay another to reveal their hidden body. Were it not for the fall and our subsequent hiding of our bodies, there would be no need for strip clubs in which to see other bodies exposed.

So, with that in mind I can only resolve to not set foot in such an establishment again.