Live Nude Girls Unite!

Today the Feminist Reading Group screened the documentary, "Live Nude Girls Unite!" about the unionizing of workers at a San Francisco peep show. The documentary led into questions of how feminists and feminism is positioned in relation to this type of work. Here are a few point form comments and questions that were posed and addressed:

• Documentary suggested that the way to fight patriarchy is by taking their money. Is this intersection of economics and social issues a viable place to situate a fight?
  
• Ultimately, is sex work empowering, or is it only empowering as a means to an end, specifically an educational end? Many of the workers were Women Studies or Philosophy graduates, does being positioned as educated or going towards education change the way this type of work is seen, as opposed to say it just being a job to pay rent or bills, without a larger goal? This is also seemingly a class issue.
  
• There are moral divide operators. The mind is being respected here but the body seemingly isn't.
  
• There are good examples of this mind body divide as seen in characters on TV today. For example Catherine Willows on CSI was an exotic dancer who did it to advance her education. Similarly Lady Heather, the dominatrix character, used her money to receive a psychology degree.
• The documentary also spoke to the intersection of sex work and social work and how those two are not mutually exclusive positions.
• There was a large amount of classification done by the peep show managers along lines of race, hair colour, and body type, yet a lot of the bodies were the same. Little discussion was given in the documentary about body types in specific. Is this comfort level, a level where discussion is not necessary, the logical conclusion to say the type of activisms that Dove commercials promote?
• Was there ever really a threat of the peep show going out of business? How does this reflect in the union/management negotiations.
  
• This documentary promotes the choice of sex work as a feminist choice and not a bad moral judgment a la McKinnon.
  
• This can also tie into Irigaray and her work on the economy of the female body.
  

The next Feminist Reading Group meeting will be sometime in mid January. Details to be announced and posted soon.
Thanks to all that came out for this lively discussion.
THE FRG