When I was in high school, I tended to rock the boat a little bit. I had art projects censored because of their sexual nature (in my defense, my two year art project was an exploration of sex, for Christ's sake!). I caused a furor when I used a collage of actual porn as part of a sculpture. I may, possibly, have gone to a strip club on a school outing to go see a play, and spent the first night of a drama festival getting drunk on a Turkish rooftop. I swear that the vodka on the Russian trip was something between medicinal and a cultural experience. I will also stand firmly by my social studies debate subject arguing for not just the acceptability, but the necessity of sex before marriage. Although I do apologize to a couple of Christian parents whose children found my arguments a little too persuasive.
At the time, I firmly believed that I was "the future" - part of a vanguard of sexually progressive and socially permissive teenagers who would eventually become the norm, and beat out (or maybe beat off..) the repressed and brainwashed masses. Ten years later, I'm pretty sure I was just horny, and couldn't figure out why that was such a terrible thing. To be honest, I'm STILL just horny, and I STILL can't figure out why that is such a terrible thing.
Apparently, I should ask the students of a high school in Coquitlam, BC. As part of a "social justice" class, a small group of teenagers are attempting to "protest" a local strip club, and are hoping to have it shut down. In various news articles, the students are quoted as saying that "The class as a whole feel we don’t need (strip clubs) in society, that we should have outgrown that by now" and that they are protesting the fact that strip clubs objectify women. Another phrase mentioned is that "these women (strippers) should have better careers". The most offensive and patently untrue quote HAS to be this one: "We don't believe it is [their choice], we believe it is a desperate
attempt to get money or a lot of them have been forced into it." Kid, seriously? What on earth are you basing THAT load of crap on?
If Captain Save-a-Ho wants a young sidekick, a la Batman and Robin, these guys are most definitely up for the job.
To be fair, I don't blame the students. They are young, they are constantly bombarded with negative messages about the sex industry, they aren't old enough to have gained any real experience with it first hand. In fact, given the general apathy and laziness of teenagers (and, well, humanity) the concept of a class about social justice, and people actually attempting to be part of the political process is pretty great.
The problem is that they are going about it in entirely the wrong way, and for that, I blame the teacher. From all that I can read about the situation, it appears that the students came up with a concept (strip clubs are bad) and tried to justify that concept using only their assumptions and ingrained opinions (strip clubs are bad because we all think that strip clubs are bad). But at no point did they attempt to VERIFY their assumptions, or challenge their preconceived notions about the sex industry.
They did not contact the club to ask for a response, or even to ask questions about the working conditions, rules, payouts, average earnings, protection offered, contractual obligations or average career length of any dancer.
They did not contact any dancer, or any current sex worker to ask for an opinion - or if they did, they aren't talking about it.
They did not, apparently, look into any studies or reports about non-subsistence sex workers - for example, the recent studies that have shown that sex workers are, in general, happier than the average woman. Admittedly, this one is difficult, because there AREN'T many - most studies are about helping the street workers, the real down-and-outs, the trafficked women, the hard cases - not about chatting to women just going about their business.And for the record, very, very few strippers are subsistence sex workers.
If they DID do any research into their assumptions, they would have found out that there are at least some flaws there. If they have even attempted to validate the premise of their "protest", they are not talking about it.
The teacher of this class, therefore, needs a slap upside the head. If you are going to encourage children to take on a local issue, for the love of god, teach them how to do it right. Teach them to challenge their preconceptions, and do the research before starting petitions and attempting to shut down a legitimate business. Teach them to learn enough about the law and the political process to know that they cannot simply request that a business be destroyed because they don't like it - but that they need to come at it from a legal angle, and use their moral objection to back up their legal objection. That if you want something to change, you do not stamp your feet, you research precedent, find those cases where the judgement has been leaning toward your belief, and start to slowly shift the legal standard, case by case.
That "teacher" also needs to consider giving the kids a heads up about how to manipulate social media, the internet, and how to speak to the local media in a way that furthers your cause. Having done some searching, I can find on facebook a lot of response, quoted newsletters, the school page, and an open letter to the students. I cannot find a page dedicated to the protest, or the petition itself. The school's webpage makes no mention of it. A google search finds multiple news articles, NOT ONE OF WHICH actually links to the actual petition. In the entire first page of a google search for combinations of the words "paramount" "strip club" "dr charles best" "petition" "shut down" and "social justice" there is not one link to the actual petition. Ironically enough, there IS a link to a different petition, asking for the students to leave the strip club alone. In the pages and pages of news articles, no student is quoted as mentioning a study, statistic, research, or any form of quantifiable data whatsoever.
One of the students is quoted as saying that they want to "increase knowledge" and "raise awareness", two phrases so hypocritical that I just about spat my coffee all over the dildo army that lives on my desk. The concept of kids bandying about buzzwords like "awareness" when they are so phenomenally unaware of the ins and outs of the industry they are protesting is so ridiculous it is almost funny. Almost.
Of course, the plus side of this is that they are actually opening an unintended dialogue as sex workers and industry people lash out against this ridiculous, uninformed (and apparently unfindable) petition. The silver lining to their ill-conceived and under-researched campaign is that no politician has the power to change the law without cause, and no court in BC is about to repeal legislation allowing any strip club to exist for no better reason than 60 people don't like it.
The thing that really bothers me? The thing that would have me hopping mad if I were a parent or a student at that school? Apparently the teacher is encouraging students to get passionate about something, do no research, not challenge their own beliefs, go off riled up and create a half-assed protest which will inevitably do nothing, thus souring them on the political process and making them less likely to attempt to affect change in future.
Dr Charles Best: Teaching Incompetence, Narrow Mindedness, and Apathy.
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