“Dirty Dancing” by Sarah Luck Pearson [June] presents a very one-sided view of the people who are impacted by strip clubs. For the past ten years, through my work at an organization called Adults Saving Kids, I have learned a side of stripping that most people never hear about and is seldom expressed in the mainstream media. I carry with me the stories of many different kinds of people: There are the women who have survived the drug abuse, harassment, and prostitution and who are sad for the women they know who are still trapped in stripping. There are the women whose pimps shipped them around the country to various strip clubs and consigned them, like some tradable commodity, to club owners and their customers. There are the men who are recovering from sexual addiction who have spent thousands of dollars on their strip-club fantasies, only to lose those they really loved. There is the former strip-club manager who clearly articulates the manipulation and deceit that goes on at the strip clubs, and lives and struggles with the fact that he helped destroy lives. There are the devastated parents and siblings of young women whose lives and careers got derailed because of being manipulated into stripping and from there into prostitution. There are the women who work downtown who feel the harassment from their male co-workers who have just returned from a business lunch at a strip club. There is the child who was left in the car in the parking lot for several hours while daddy was inside the strip club living out his fantasy. Fortunately, all of their stories are also protected by the First Amendment. Unfortunately, most folks do not hear these stories because strip clubs and other sexually oriented businesses dominate the media with claims of their First Amendment rights being attacked. It seems that if we are really concerned about protecting First Amendment rights, we first need to give a voice to those people who have been silenced, damaged, and destroyed by “harmless” activities at strip clubs. Once we have a complete and balanced picture of what’s really going on, each of us can judge for ourselves whose rights are being violated.
Amy Hartman
St. Paul
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