I’d like to respond by pointing out that you seem, in the main, to be missing the point of my post. It’s ironic, because you cite the women-and-porn post that was foremost in my mind when I made this post. I agree with you, it’s exactly the same situation. The punchline in that post was “you didn’t join him;” the punchline in this post was the blowjob story, where, in effect, FF *did* join him, metaphorically speaking. Thus proving herself smarter, or perhaps more mature, than the legions of women who needlessly fear competition from porn and sex workers.

You’ve made your point about FF’s generalizations; let me just say that I’m pretty bored by those politically correct games. She has, and has expressed, pejoritive attitudes about random strippers she’s never met; you’re offended by that. Fine. But we are not the language police, and those negative attitudes don’t detract from her story; in fact, they are a part of her motivation, they are part of what makes the story interesting. If you still think I endorse everything and everyone I quote, you haven’t been paying attention. Nobody’s lionizing FF, so there’s no need for you to demonize her. And it’s completely off topic to do so.

“If you think the things that I’m saying are mean, then you must get your feelings hurt on a daily basis. I have seen some truly evil flaming online, and I don’t consider anything I’ve said to be in that category.”

Actually, I’ve got a pretty thick skin, which is why I don’t mind your repeated snide remarks suggesting that I’m somehow besotted or “enraptured” by FF. (Actually, she’s far too young to be sexually interesting to me.) But, to go with my thick skin, I have extremely high aspirations for the civility and friendliness of the ErosBlog comments. This is supposed to be a friendly, warm, supporting community. We can’t always manage that in the content — it’s not a friendly, warm, supporting world — but in the comments, there’s no excuse not to try harder than you did at first.

Flame, your comments may not have been “evil flaming”, but they were the carefully crafted verbal daggers of an experienced flame warrior, one who wants to be able to deny actual flaming. Sorry, but we just don’t play those walk-the-tightrope flame games here.

“When people post things on a public medium, not every comment is going to consist of kudos.” To be sure. But that doesn’t mean that insulting language (like your “stench” business, or your “ignorant” epithet in the comment that I nuked) is necessary or allowed. Nor, more importantly, is this a public medium. It’s my private salon, you’re a guest in my virtual home, and if you aren’t as polite as I could expect a dinner guest to be, you’ll be leaving.

“This is the caveat involved in freedom of expression.” Except,of course, that I’ve never offered “freedom of expression” here. “Don’t be a dick” has been the rule since I first opened comments, and it’s not a negotiable rule.

“Sometimes people are not going to agree with or like the things they read and hear, and they will express that dissatisfaction.” Granted. And they will express it politely, with civility, and without personal attacks. Or they will express it elsewhere.

“There are bound to be repercussions when someone makes a negative generalization about any group of people.”

Perhaps there are. But — especially when those repercussion are off topic — they will be polite and civil repercussions. Or they won’t be here.

Starting to detect a theme?

Thanks again for returning. I’m actually not unsympathetic to your concerns about negative stereotyping of sex workers, I just thought the example you chose for toasting was minor, off-topic, and peripheral to the interesting part of the story.

IMO, this is the same sort of situation, only FF didn’t (as pointed out by Bon Gart), take it to the extreme of contacting a/the stripper personally. Instead, she contacted possibly THOUSANDS of strippers, via the internet. She made a sweeping generalization, based upon fear. I do, however, give her credit for taking the issue up with her boyfriend. But I am not so enraptured by her erotic prose that I can ignore the fact that she (however unwittingly) bought into and is helping to perpetuate the stereotype of exotic dancers (or any sex industry professional) as “dirty”, “skanky” or any other pejorative you care to insert. Yes, some dancers are skanky. But they are not skanky simply because they are dancers.

What if Femme Fatale had instead said “dirty n******”? Would you make allowances for that based on her entitlement to insecurity, or based on her youth? Would she continue to be lionized as long as the rest of her writing provoked engorgement of the genitalia?

I am a retired dancer. I now make and sell jewelry and custom artwork. I am college educated, and by all reports I have excellent hygiene, and decidedly non-floppy labia *wink*. I danced off and on for 15 years. I am the mother of 2 little girls, I have a wonderful husband, and friends and neighbors who respect and care for me. I’m active in my community, I recycle, and I help little old ladies across the street. Yet because of my former profession, I have oftentimes run into the exact attitude exhibited by FF. I hope for her sake she never has to make choices to survive that would result in her doing things she has taken such a harsh tack toward. She may look back and find herself chagrined about her superior attitude toward exotic dancers. Crow can be a tough tidbit to swallow.

I don’t expect this post to clear moderation either, so I just want to add this: Bacchus, if you think the things that I’m saying are mean, then you must get your feelings hurt on a daily basis. I have seen some truly evil flaming online, and I don’t consider anything I’ve said to be in that category. I don’t sugarcoat many things, this much is true. My grandfather always said “Plain spoken is easiest understood.”, and I have found it to be true during my 37 years on this planet. But neither do I deliberately set out to be mean. I merely call ‘em as I see ‘em, and in this case flowery language would not have adequately expressed my opinions or feelings on the subject.

When people post things on a public medium, not every comment is going to consist of kudos. This is the caveat involved in freedom of expression. Sometimes people are not going to agree with or like the things they read and hear, and they will express that dissatisfaction. Words are powerful and meaningful, and there are bound to be repercussions when someone makes a negative generalization about any group of people.

Regards,
Flame

I thought FF was smart, at her young age, to recognize her girlfriend insecurity, correctly diagnose the way to *fix* it and ensure she has nothing to worry about, and then put that plan into (very erotic) motion.

Alas, it doesn’t look like we’ll be hearing more from Flame in this thread; she’s replied, but she got meaner rather than nicer, so her comment didn’t make it through moderation. I’ve emailed her with an explanation, though, so possibly she’ll scrape up some reserves of niceness in order to join the discussion.

So I find it amusing how women worry about their husbands/boyfriends when they are off at the strip club. Nothing is going to be going on there that does not simply involve separating the men from their money legally. Ok, so some strippers will push that legal boundry. Not to steal the man, however, but to get paid.

So as in the example you have found for us Bacchus, this woman has created an imaginary, slightly cartoonish Dragon to slay out of a stripper, in order to fortify her own self-confidence in wanting to bring something new to the bedroom for her and her man. Then the stripper is forgotten.

I don’t know why Flame lashed out so hard. Could have been a nasty incident in the past; could have been that she has seen the world from the POV of the mislabeled “skank”; could be that she has enough empathy to imagine what that POV would feel like, but it is just that… imagination. It is not a FEMALE thing though. It is currently a HUMAN thing to trash one person to put another on a higher pedestal. It really is. From Armchair Quarterbacks, to “Pshaw! I can do better than that”, people often size up the potential competition for any particular situation, then expend a certain amount of energy on discrediting that competition. It might just be a mental thing for added confidence. It might be a full blown Reality TV show of Average Joes against Pros.

I don’t think this was all about making strippers into horrible evil things that should haunt our nightmares. As you said Bacchus, she was entitled to a bit of insecurity. It isn’t like FF went out and slashed some stripper’s tires and threw acid on the girl too. FF asked herself a question, then answered it in a voice she enjoyed. She was just honest enough to let us ALL know what she was thinking. Femme Fatale let us all know she wasn’t a sex goddess, but rather an imaginative woman.

As for the substance, I didn’t see Femme trashing exotic dancers in general, or making categorical value judgments about them. Honesty time: some strippers are skanky, others not — just like any other category of people. And the stripper she’s worried about in the night-time, the boogy-woman who might soon be shoving floppy labia in her boyfriend’s face, is gonna strike her (rightly or wrongly) as skanky.

I hear Femme merely echoing the commonest complaint women make to their men who enjoy going to strip clubs: “What’s she got that I don’t?”

The girl says she’s eighteen years old. For the love of Jove, I think she’s entitled to a bit of girlfriend insecurity. And calling her worries a “stench” is just meanness. Catty, even.

Flame, be nice if you want to post in the ErosBlog comments. That wasn’t nice. I almost deleted it, but it was (barely) civil, at least the part I could hear above the meowing.

Well it must be working. I know that I personally am now thoroughly convinced that Femme is a much better cocksucker than some skanky ol’ stripper.

Over 4 decades of modern-era women’s liberation/female empowerment, and the end result of it is that we still have far too many women who deal with their own fears and insecurities by trashing other women. That kind of mess gives me a headache.

Sheesh.