The eyeball experiences pleasure on its own looking at these colours.

It seems to be more visceral than aesthetic. We see prostitutes here but we also just take in the red colours. The green just acts as a frame above and the blue below.

I wonder how many monogamous couples have red bedrooms?

The pleasures of dissent: Not?

The Local, 28 October 2009

At a drinks reception not long ago I referred nonchalantly to the fact that Sweden is supposedly the world’s most gender-equal state. A shiver was felt; eyes rolled. Had I said supposedly? Was I actually questioning Sweden’s version of Gender Equality – jämställdhet? That, it seems, is practically taboo in Sweden.

A spate of articles on ‘the Swedish model’ appeared during the recent US debate about health care. The term usually refers to a generous welfare state funded by high taxes that is not ’socialist’ but free-market: tricky. But another aspect of Swedish government and culture captures the imagination of many round the world: contemporary gender policy, ideas about sex and equality. According to several important statistical indicators, Sweden leads the way in promoting equal rights between women and men – important achievements. But in other ways that can’t be captured by statistics the picture is not so clear. There are doubts and disputes, and those happen right here inside Sweden – not to mention between Swedes wherever they live, as Anna Anka bizarrely showed.

The word consensus is often used to describe how issues like gender equality are understood in Sweden. This has bothered me because the word seems to imply that all Swedes have participated in marxian study groups to discuss social questions in depth and come to reasoned general positions. This is not the case: Gender policy is government policy, no more and no less, even if it was the cornerstone of Social Democratic government at its shiningest hour. There are Swedes who feel that this policy has become a rigid ideology that goes too far, but their opinions are rarely seen in the more highly respected mainstream media. This means that most people in Sweden don’t know there are disputes and may frown heavily when hearing them. This is too bad, because the issues are thorny, interesting and worthy of public debate.

By saying that, I clearly reveal my own bias towards interesting disagreement that can push us forward to new ideas. In the many countries and cultures I’ve lived in, differences of opinion are viewed as potentially productive. Even outright dictatorships believe that, which is why they forbid free speech. In Sweden, however, I am told again and again, conflict is considered negative; the goal is to coexist together agreeably. Vara sams: to be on good terms. Osams is bad: being at loggerheads, falling out. ”We just want to exchange the same ideas and tastes,’ said Åke Daun, author of Svensk Mentalitet. Swedes are said to suffer from konflikträdsla, fear of conflict, and therefore feel uncomfortable when dissenting views are aired.

I have no interest in setting up a cultural hierarchy in which Sweden loses status in favour of some other, supposedly better culture. I’ve never lived anywhere that didn’t have very good points and very bad ones simultaneously. No, I’m  interested in ideas about gender and sex and how Sweden got where it is – a sort of anthropological point of view.

For those who wish each nation to be left to itself by outsiders, it’s important to note that the Swedish government itself doesn’t do that on this topic. In contrast to 1969, when Susan Sontag wrote that ‘Swedes were not disposed by temperament to export aggressively what they practice,’ today’s government speaks of the Swedish ‘mission’ to enlighten the world’s policy, for example in the Swedish Institute’s project, Equal Opportunities – Sweden Paves the Way, an exhibition available for use in international conferences and seminars. Projects to export ideology always bear watching.

I’ve lived here for a year and meet Swedes all the time who don’t agree with some aspects of national gender policy. They would like to see much more diversity in mainstream media discussions, including arguments, with the possibility of changes to policy. They  feel marginalised by the mainstream exclusion and disapproval of their views. I live in Malmö ( the subversive south to some) but the disgruntled Swedes I know live all over the country. 

I’ll link when I can to Swedish writers’ work, in books and articles and blogs, and take a historical view when possible. Policies and values that made wonderful sense at one time can seem oddly outdated only a decade later, rather like hairstyles. Zeitgeists are funny things; cultural contexts shift; a word that once seemed self-evident now rings untrue. Originally, jämställdhet referred to equality in general (jämn numbers are even numbers), particularly the goal of abolishing social class. Now when the word is used it is understood to mean, overarchingly, gender equality.

My own first ideas on Swedish gender policy appeared in The Local earlier this year as Is rape rampant in gender-equal Sweden? I’ve been writing on the subject of irregular migration (unauthorised, undocumented) for many years. The other night I gave a talk as part of Malmö’s Latinamerika i Fokus Film och Kulturfestival . The topic was undocumented migration: how it works on the ground, how people travel and work outside formal structures. If the connexion with gender policy seems unclear, wait for further posts.

Some people think swinging and polyamory have nothing to do with the sex industry and are offended to be associated with it. In my conception, swinging parties and sex clubs do form part of the industry, because money is exchanged for opportunities to have, watch, smell and listen to sex - one’s own and others. The managers of venues often provide possible partners for your pleasure - sex workers. And, on the other hand, many customers in sex-industry bars and clubs spend time and money without ever buying ’sex’ itself. The lines supposedly dividing these different entertainment enterprises are very blurred.

When people are offended by this inclusion, it means they think the sex industry is something negative. Since I don’t see it as negative, I’m not insulting anyone who’s associated with it. Rather, I’m engaged in figuring out how and why people think they can differentiate between commercial and non-commercial sex. As far as I can see, after studying it for many years, there’s no way to clearly separate them. Which is a result! It’s a result to find out that the separate categories they teach us about aren’t true, or are, at least, questionable. If you’re more interested in this, consider the cultural study of commercial sex, in its original conception and then later.

Morrissey’s original article moves from Ireland to Berlin and includes many entertaining details. Here I’ve excerpted only the bits most relevant to the sex industry.

More sex with strangers, The Independent (Ireland)

By Deirdre Morrissey, 30 August 2009

. . .  I asked Dominique how she came to open a sex club that hosts parties with titles such as Angel in Bondage, Saturday Night Fuck and Circus Bizarre. “Sex is one of the most interesting aspects of my life. I study it, I talk about it, I do it and I teach it,” said Dominique, in a very matter-of-fact tone. “In 1984, when I was 17,” she continued,

“I started working as a table dancer. Then later I began working as a dominatrix, and shortly afterwards I found out that my mother also worked as a dominatrix. So, the sex industry is in my blood. When I was 20, my mother wanted to retire. . . But she reluctantly agreed to manage my S&M studio and leave punishing the slaves up to me. It was hugely successful: 10 years later we had a thriving family business with 20 girls working full-time.

“Then, four years ago,” she says, “myself and my partner were . . .  at the most notorious sex resort in the world, Hedonism, in Jamaica. While lying in a hammock one day, we looked at each other and decided to open our own fantastic sex club back home in Berlin. . . where the primary focus would be on creating an environment where visitors, all driven by the same longings and desires, could meet to enact erotic fantasies and sexual dreams.”

. . . From the exterior, the club could be mistaken for somebody’s home except for the name Insomnia over the door. . . . Rory paid a cute brunette kitted out in provocative lingerie and high heels a cover charge of €20 for the two of us — very reasonable, given the nature of the club. . . . We went up a few steps and into this huge, red-lit ballroom with a ceiling that reached for the sky. A huge dance floor, with a bar down one side, was littered with deviants. Hardcore porn was being projected onto a massive, 40ft cinema screen overlooking the dance floor. Topless bartenders were shaking cocktails and above the bar was a mural of a giant, cartoonised, glammed-up orgy. . . .

The dance floor is where the foreplay takes place, but little adjoining rooms are where the real action is. A couple of scary girls had a big henchman stripped down to a red thong. The muscles on his arm bulged out either side of a thick metal armband and he wore a studded metal collar around his neck. He was bound in chains and while one of the girls was whipping him, the other tightened his leash each time he howled. . . . In the jacuzzi a couple were having fun while their respective partners watched.

A crowd was gathered around some action in a little side room. . . Some kind of operation was being performed on a girl who lay completely exposed and bound to a medical contraption of some sort. . . . a mezzanine level overlooking the dance floor. The entire area was taken up by several enormous tented beds occupied by couples, threesomes, foursomes and, in some cases, whole teams. . . .

Parties last days, fun is had by some, money is paid to some, and sometimes these groups overlap. A lot of it is about drink, drugs, food and music. Most people who board ships to share leave with sailors do not call themselves prostitutes or sex workers. They are party girls who like long hedonistic sieges and who accept gifts when it’s time to go home, and they are known the world over.

To meet seafarers who do have permission to disembark, sex workers and folks with no such identity make their way to port bars when ships come in, sometimes migrating from the interior.

As with the pictures of brothels in European countries where they are legal, these sites sit inconspicuously in ordinary neighbourhoods. 

Many sites called brothels by outsiders are simply houses or flats with no commercial signage. The following two typical terrace houses have been pointed out in the UK, but of course by now the commercial sex may have moved on.

The next two are in Spain and Sicily, buildings where somewhere, in some flat, clients know they can find prostitutes.

Again, the collection can be viewed here.

Susukino by Daisuke Morita

The keyword here is demand, as in how much money are customers prepared to pay to have sex? Which businesses thrive because they are popular?

The Bank of Japan commissioned a report entitled Susukino, Recent Trends and Changes to a Pleasure District, hoping that, by counting brothels, it would be able to gauge the demand for services, a sector of the economy becoming more important as exports fail. The Pleasure District investigated is Susukino, in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, Japan’s second largest island.

The report says Susukino is currently home to 264 sex businesses (soaplands and others), along with normal hotels, love hotels, restaurants, cafes, fast-food shops, discos, nightclubs, karaoke, cinemas and many kinds of bars. The creative and practical aspect of the bank’s report was its focus on services in general, in the form of entertainment, whether sex, food, drink or music.

Bloomberg.com , 6 August 2009

The number of sex parlors in the Susukino red-light district in Sapporo more than quadrupled in the past 20 years.

“Any study into services is most welcome,” said Martin Schulz, senior economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo. “We’ve got hundreds of studies on exports and manufacturing. What’s needed is creative thinking on services and if that includes brothels, so be it.”

Businesses and entertainment conceived as sexual (because of the parts of the body that get exposed) must be declared and submit to regulation: sex shops, peep shows, stripping, lap-dancing, pole-dancing, table dancing. Places that have these licences are referred to as Sex (Encounter) Establishments. Gentlemen’s clubs, strip pubs and other venues are included. Regulated activities may allow near nudity but prohibit dancers from standing closer than a metre/3 feet from customers. Regulations always prohibit touching.

Each local authority grants its own licences, which is what the following note from Camden, another borough of London, is about. When I was doing research, Camden had a large number of licensed premises offering sex entertainment. The current issue is whether the Council will include burlesque in the conception of entertainment that must be regulated as sexual.

Camden Council Statement on burlesque
Date: 29/7/09

Camden Council is not preventing burlesque performances in any premises in the borough, it embraces the diverse entertainment on offer in Camden.

Our concern is to ensure proper regulation of the premises proposing to offer licensable activity. Our focus is on the premises - not the performers. It is the responsibility of the venue’s licence holder to ensure they have the correct permission for the event they are hosting.

Burlesque performance in its widest form can include various art forms and this alone would not require a licence. The Council’s concern is with any performance which may involve nudity. The Council looks at each application on an individual basis to assess what type of licence is required.

The Council has met with the burlesque community in response to their concerns and agreed to seek a clearer understanding of what constitutes adult entertainment. This will help define what reasonable measures premises should put in place prior to adult entertainment being performed.

A further meeting between the Council and the Institute is scheduled to take place in September 2009.

More discussion at Save Burlesque in Camden

Recently I wrote about the New York School of Burlesque.

In Japan these places are called love hotels (ラブホテル, rabu hoteru). The one below has multiple doors rather than an attention-getting central entrance. 

The next one has no windows.

Checking in via video screens assures anonymity.

In a well-known middle-American motel from the 1940s, the Coral Court’s rooms had private garages for customers’ cars near St Louis, Missouri.

A lot of commentary stigmatises these hotels as immoral or sleazy, but some of them are quite grand and used by people who only desire privacy, without having anything dramatic to hide. They are also another example of how commercial-sex relations overlap with other social relations.

Japanese Cosplay and the Sex Industry 

M. Kiromi

Japanese Cosplay is about the person becoming a chosen character or idea. The person looks and acts exactly like the character they are portraying. You become a specified character in order to become a cosplayer. The sky is the limit, if you can dream it you can become it. Cosplaying is about having fun.

Japan and most other countries have participated in cross dressing as well as cosplay in the sex industry. This is an age old practice where costumes have been used for sexual practices, and dressing up is used for sexual play which is commonly known as a sexual fetishism.

In Japan as well as other countries there are special facilities where you can rent costumes for a night of ecstasy and passion. Specialized facilities like hotels or inns cater only for the sex industry. The costumes you can hire for the occasion range from school uniforms, nursing outfits, or whatever suits your fetish they will accommodate you with the outfit you request.

The Japanese cosplay industry has long been the home to professional cosplayers since the rise of Comiket the Tokyo Game Show, as well as other conventions, there is a misconception that cosplay is specific only to Japan. The term Cosplay is from Japanese origin but this flamboyant occupation is now supported by practicing fans globally.

Terms and conditions have been set by cosplay groups, that whatever character you have chosen to dress up as, you have to become the character, in words, action and nature. Japanese cosplay is not only dressing up and acting out, there are also a rich culture as well as tradition behind the character they have chosen to portray.

However there are costumes worn without any conviction by Japanese cosplayers that westerners would not consider wearing as it would be culturally not correct like a Nazi uniform or any other uniforms worn by dictators in the past. Japanese cosplay does not only cover specified role playing but covers all kinds of obsessive fandom.

If you live in New York, you’ve got the opportunity to attend Jo’s School of Burlesque and learn, among other things:

• the sexy shimmy
• the tantalizing glove peel
• the devastating bump n grind
• the dazzling tassel-twirl 

Burlesque has never stopped being popular, but for some reason commentators are always saying it’s ‘new’ or ‘under revival’. I often think that the ‘newness’ story is about our being able to know more about everything now that we’ve got the internet, youtube, facebook and so on. Anyway, here’s a CBS report from last year about Jo’s school:

Another ever-contentious element of talks about burlesque involve whether doing it is sex work or not; whether burlesque dancers and strippers are sex workers; whether there is a hierarchy in which some kinds of dance are lower and more sexual (lap dancing is named) while others are more artistic. Jo always says she loves them all.

By the way, when I left the Exotic World contest I was hoarse from cheering so much.