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If you are a feminist who poles…
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*feminine
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Whoooa, not saying that I don't enjoy sex with my (now) husband! I'm not saying it's not romantic, sexy, etc.
The transaction goes both ways! We please each other, and for us, sex is mutually beneficient. All relationships are different, though, and not everyone feels the same way. I'm not going to judge a sugar daddy/May-December relationship any differently than I would judge two young star-crossed kids getting married right after high school. As long as everyone is happy, why should I care?
Relationships have so many different ways of working out successfully. I just think it's terrible when people judge them against a standard they've created for themselves.
And as for pole, I get what you're saying about feeling uncomfortable when people express a sexuality that you don't share, and that's fine. think when that happens, people should just turn their heads and look the other way and move on, which is unfortunately not what we tend to experience outside of this community. To do otherwise sounds uncomfortably close to what people say about the LGBT community: "Your version of sexuality doesn't match mine so you should change to what I find comfortable."
I'm not saying that anyone here is alternative lifetstyle-bashing, or that anyone here is suggesting that people should not inject sexy into pole dance, just that the exact same argument is used against gays demonstrating affection in public. I'm also not comparing our troubles to the LGBT community–just putting out there that the argument is ridiculous no matter what the subject is.
I also agree with scarletthoney that it's really tough to get people to listen to you about a job if you haven't worked it the field!
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This is a good question and something that the author of "Living Dolls" felt was a sign of a backlash against feminism, while I personally feel it's anything but, or at the very least, that "it depends" on the person.
For me: I took a pole class because – big deep breath and- I thought it was tacky and couldn't understand why women today would sign up for this. So naturally, the best way to understand something is to just do it, and once I did I loved it and I've been thinking about my prior opinion on it a lot and where it came from.
Ok, we know where my old opinion came from: I can't watch re-runs of the sporanos without scenes of zombified girls rubbing themselves against poles unenthusiastically in every episode. That's the common preception of pole dancers. I didn't even know there was more to it than dancing around a pole naked until I youtubed it.
The bigger annoyence for me is the "but it's sexual" part. here's the thing: guys are turned on by women, no matter what we do. Woman washing a car: SEXUAL. Woman bending over to check something in the oven: SEXUAL. Woman doing yoga: SEXUAL. Woman in rain (ffs!!): SEXUAL https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_surprised.gif. That's how horney guys are! We have no control of what someone sees as "sexual" and it's not our problem. And this is especially important for me because I grew up in the arabian gulf where just walking down the street covered in black (not that I ever needed to do the all black thing 'cos I'm not from saudi or iran, but most women do dress that way in my country because it's culteral) are sexy. They actually find blobs of black silk SEXY. They'll point out a particular blob and say to their friends "she's hot. I think she's fliritng with me". There is nothing women can do to discourage sexual thought, and in the torah, apparently it's pretty explicity said that this is men's problem, not womens.
Pole dancing in itself is neither repressive nor liberating: it depends on the context.
A (hypothetical) pole dancer who is being exploited is no worse off than a girl working in a sweat shop and being exploited (so is my sewing machine a tool or repression too? or just a money saving gizmo?) or spraying pesticides on tomatoes (same question re: my watering can), etc.People object most vocally against the symbols that they can't hide of things they wish didn't exsist; the girl in the sweat shop or tomato feild aren't visible, but the pole dancer is. What they should be objecting to is inequality, but it's easier to hide the pole dancer than it is to change inequality.
Lots of other sensitivies are representative of this sentiment.
xxxxx
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I hope I didn't come off like I was judging your particular relationship Fever. I do think it's sad when people judge what works for someone else. I was illustrating the difference between judging, and knowing what turns me on vs. what doesn't turn me on, and why the stripper scene doesn't turn me on. Some people are really into the stripper aspect of pole: love the shoes, love poling in lingerie, go to pole classes called "stripper 101". And for a while I thought it meant I was judgmental if I didn't, which had me wondering if I was a walking contradiction.
I knew the first time I tried it that I loved pole dance, the sensual aspect, the strong aspect, the exercise aspect, the dance and artistic aspect, and I'm even fascinated by pole dance's relationship to exotic dance and think that aspect has a lot to teach me. I think it's fun to pay homage to every aspect of pole (still working on my booty pop and sexy floorwork). I loved learning from Fawnia in Vegas. But at the end of the day l have a dance style preference that's all my own. I can understand why some people aren't into certain parts of pole dance, and I realize their preference might not have anything to do with judgment. It is true that some people's aversion to pole dance may be based on judgment, stereotypes, jealousy, or just irrational negative feelings that they don't really even know the cause of, but I'll try to anticipate the best from people.
I don't think that anyone has to change their style of pole dance to fit anyone else's either, I think diversity is one of the things that makes the pole community great and keeps it from going stale.
girlunblogged, thanks for sharing your pole story! Pole dance has been therapeutic for me, as I grew up in a conservative family where I was taught I had to strictly cover my body between x and y in order to not be thought of as a sex object. That way of teaching modesty really just reinforced to me that my body was indeed a sex object. Even as an adult I felt like my body was not for my own enjoyment, but for my husband. I had been so conditioned to go out of my way to keep it covered, often at the expense of my own comfort and preference. Pole dance has helped me be able to acknowledge that my body was built to house an analytical mind, to appear sexy, to perform physical labor, to bear children, and (no less important) for my own joyful experience, and that a mature person will see me as a whole person, and not objectify me, no matter what I'm wearing/doing.
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