Friday, March 26, 2010

Icelandic Strippers- Cold & Banned

This is almost a mirror image of the "ban the Burqa" debate:

Iceland has banned striptease shows, making it an offence for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees.

.....

"They are closing striptease (clubs) because they think there is prostitution there," said Asgeir Davidsson, owner of Iceland's largest strip club, Goldfinger.

"They think there is organised crime. They have been thinking this for 12 years. They have had the police running around, and they have not found anything."
As in the burqa debate, professional busy bodies want to control what women wear ostensibly on the grounds that the women are being coerced into it, even though such coercion would already be illegal. In both cases it seems more like a pretext to prohibit something that they want to ban for reasons of personal distaste than the true motivating factor.

I have never set foot in a strip club and wouldn't want one to be open next door to my home or outside a local school, so I'm hardly an enthusiast for lap dancing clubs, however unlike the Icelandic parliament I don't consider my personal tastes to be a grounds for ordering other people about.

6 comments:

Furor Teutonicus said...

I have never set foot in a strip club and wouldn't want one to be open next door to my home or outside a local school,

Why?

Do you think they will start shoving a shotgun up your arse to force you, and the bastards from the school to attend one session daily, or what?

Unless they start displaying their talents on forty foot screens outside the shop, then what's the problem?

Furor Teutonicus said...

ANS, except on duty, I have never been in a strip club either.

Pat said...

I can see far more point in banning the Burqa- in public that is. It provides a disguise for the man or woman wearing it- and has been so employed on occasion once or twice in the course of robbery. Stripping, even if done in public, doesn't offer this potential.
I tend to interpret the arguments for the banning of the sex trade as "I wouldn't do it, so anyone who does must have been forced". This approach overlooks two points- firstly that those who believe that they themselves wouldn't do it usually have pretty good alternative life choices available to themselves, and secondly that not everyone shares their values.
It would be as sensible to say that because I have absolutely no desire for a gay relationship, any more than does any normal woman desire a lesbian one, then gays and lesbians must have been coerced.

Ross said...

FT- It is the potential clientele that I would have reservations over rather than the dancers or anything.

"I can see far more point in banning the Burqa- in public that is. It provides a disguise for the man or woman wearing it"

Sure, but I don't see any reason to treat it differently from any other kind of face covering, like a motor bike helmet.

"It would be as sensible to say that because I have absolutely no desire for a gay relationship, any more than does any normal woman desire a lesbian one, then gays and lesbians must have been coerced."

Yes, that is a good analogy.

Pat said...

Sure, but I don't see any reason to treat it differently from any other kind of face covering, like a motor bike helmet.
Indeed- a motorcyclist is identifiable by the make and reg. No. of the machine he is riding, has to take his helmet off before , say, paying for petrol, and is subject to effectively random document checks from the police, during which he is compelled to take off his helmet.

Ross said...

I don't object to things like shops insisting on the removal of burqas, just government bans I oppose.