The shrugs which greeted the arrival of lap-dancing in Ireland a few years ago marked some kind of watershed in Irish culture. What once would have caused torrents of denunciation and controversy generated instead a few soft, slightly bemused feature articles, mostly by female journalists.
A talented film-maker, Alan Gilsenan, made a documentary, earnestly explaining that it was to let us get to know the lap-dancers as people. The RTÉ Guide admitted that those in the office preferred to skip the getting-to-know process and hit the fast-forward button to get to the undressed talent, but what the heck? The consensus seemed to be that there's no problem with the empress having no clothes. After all, it's her choice, no-one is forced to frequent the clubs, and it was so 1950s to suggest that lap-dancing might be exploitative or degrading. Only those stalwarts in Milltown, Co Kildare did not seem to get the message that it was terminally uncool to object. They have protested vigorously against their local lap-dancing club.
A Swedish woman named Louise Eek came to Dublin during the week and suggested that we might question our ideas that lap-dancing is just entertainment. She is better placed than most to speak, because she used to be a lap-dancer. It is her blunt contention that lap-dancing and prostitution are part of the same globalised sex industry, and that lap-dancing is a gateway to prostitution.
It was for her, even though she entered it with the idea of working for just a week to earn some money. "Just a week" stretched into years, into self-loathing and despair.
She said, quietly, that if you ask women involved in lap-dancing how long they intend to do it for, the answer is almost always, "just a year". The reality is far different. Most of the women she worked with during the 1970s are no longer alive. The two major causes of death were suicide and murder.
She told one truly horrific story of a friend of hers, whose husband had lived off her earnings as a prostitute for years. When his wife had sex with her brother-in-law, but not for money, her husband felt utterly betrayed and flew into a rage. He beat her friend unconscious, broke a leg off a table and thrust it between her legs, dumped her in the bath, then heated oil to boiling point and poured it over her. Mercifully, she was already dead.
Louise witnessed lap-dancing in three countries in Europe, and she has heard all the rationalisations. In the 1970s, a woman would say that she was earning more than her doctor, but without the responsibility. But, she asked, do we want a society where people can be bought? Is that a human society? In the 1980s, the slogan was: "It's my choice." Fine, but Louise asked, "Is it her first choice or her 10th? Is it a positive or negative choice? What other choices does she have?"
In the 1990s, a woman would say, "I'm doing this because I love it, because it allows me to express my sexuality." What kind of expression of sexuality is it, Louise wondered, when you have 15 to 30 seconds to guage your client's fantasy, to guess whether he wants you to act the wide-eyed innocent or the dominatrix, with the knowledge that he will move on down the line if you don't fulfil his requirements?
For a moment, this intelligent, casually dressed woman with glasses began to play with her hair, to imitate the little girl movements which turn some men on.
For a moment, you could glimpse how she had earned her living, the humiliation to which it had led her, and the courage which it must take to tell her story. Louise asked us to be sensitive about how we wrote about women involved in prostitution, not to reduce them to the term prostitute, not to define a woman entirely by the fact that she "sells entrance to her body". She came to Dublin at the request of Ruhama, a non-governmental organisation which works with and for women in prostitution and who share that ethos. Representatives of Ruhama were careful to point out that there is no evidence that women in Ireland in lap-dancing are involved in prostitution, but they suggested some questions.
For example, where do the many foreign women who lap-dance here come from? Who brings them in? What happens to them after they leave Ireland? Louise was asked what she would say to men who visit the clubs. Her reply was blunt. "Get a life." Make love with someone you care about, instead of getting off on the power of the money in your hand.
Lap-dancer club owners responded with the usual bluster afterwards, saying that lap-dancing is legal and prostitution is illegal, and that they know and respect the difference. That is to miss the point. No one is suggesting that lap-dancing clubs are covert brothels. However, for many, it marks the beginning of a spiral into prostitution. Not a nice thought to think that the sweet-scented, seductive creature slithering sinuously over you may be part of a continuum with the middle-aged women selling themselves for a tenner off the quays in Dublin. Perhaps Alan Gilsenan might decide to make a follow-up documentary in 10 years' time to see how the lap-dancers whom he interviewed fared. As a subject, it might cause less stress on the video fast-forward and pause button, but I'm sure Alan wouldn't mind.
Later, I checked out an Internet message-board for lap-dancers where offers of work are posted. There are messages from girls warning each other of broken contracts, bullying, and beatings. One woman advises others not to work in Dublin, where there are loads of work offers, because all you get are requests for sex and "the city is dirty and poor".
Not exactly consonant with our new societal self-image of sophistication. Nor with the idea that lap-dancing represents some kind of cultural advance, so acceptable a way of empowering women that you might not be too surprised to hear it being offered as a module on a Transition year course. But a useful reminder that the people in Milltown might not be the ones who are out of touch.
bobrien@irish-times.ie