Lap Dancing in the South West

For years campaigners, including Labour councillors, police and feminist groups, - have urged Bristol Council to ban strip clubs. The only problem for this miserable coalition was that the strippers themselves wanted to carry on stripping to earn a living.

Adult performers were celebrating on Thursday after persuading a majority of the city's council to reject the proposed ban on strip clubs and other sex entertainment venues.

One self-described exotic dancer told the council's licensing committee:

Stripping has allowed me to have a flexible enough schedule to pursue my dream career while simultaneously enabling me to live a comfortable life - not living in constant stress due to living from paycheck to paycheck.

Such was the strength of feeling among the female dancers and performers that Guy Poultney, a Green Party councillor, received a round of applause when he accused women's rights groups of arguing that we should discount the voices of some women in order to empower them and to restrict their choices in the name of equality and take away their jobs for their own good. He also said they were acting as if some women can't be trusted to make choices for themselves.

 

A Westbury night spot will be allowed to stage more strip shows after winning a sexual entertainment licence.

A director of Comus Leisure, which owns Venom, said it needed to run more events because it had been hit hard by the pandemic and months of lockdown. He told Wiltshire Council's licensing panel:

We just need to do these events more frequently because my venue was closed for 18 months and costs £20,000 per month to run. We've got to do more of everything to survive.

Under the licence the club on Quartermaster Road, West Wilts Trading Estate will be allowed to host events with lap dancing, stage strip teases and strip shows with full nudity.

No objections from the public were sent in to Wiltshire Council during the consultation period for the bid.

Strippers have accused Bristol City Council and feminist campaigners of sexist double standards for trying to ban women performing but allowing men to go ahead.

Dreamboys, an all-male collective that has spoken out in support of female strippers, is scheduled to appear at Pryzm nightclub in Bristol. The performance comes as local MPs seek to shut down all lap dancing clubs in Bristol by changing their licensing rules - with the council currently contemplating a ban on the venues.

Tuesday Laveau, who is based in Bristol and has been stripping for 16 years, told The Independent:

One of the fundamental arguments of anti-sex worker feminists is strippers and sex workers are tools of the patriarchy.

But they have no problem choosing what men do with their body. We are not mad at the Dream Boys. They are just working.

The point is the double standards of local MPs and Avon and Somerset's police commissioner. They have no issue with men behaving sexually provocatively for money.

Bristol City Council, Bristol's mayor and the Avon & Somerset police commissioner are all uniting in a proposal to ban lap dancing in Bristol.

Councillors will be asked to approve a new draft policy that would ban lap dancing venues from operating anywhere in Bristol. The proposed ban, which would go out to a 12-week public consultation, appears in an appendix of an item to be considered by the licensing committee on Monday, March 8.

It seems heartless to ban workers in a sector that has been forced to close during the last year due to coronavirus lock downs. Especially as surveys show most Bristolians are happy with them as long as they are away from certain areas, including schools , housing estates, parks, women's refuges and places of worship.

The prominent proponents of the mean minded proposal are Bristol mayor Marvin Rees, Avon & Somerset police and crime commissioner Sue Mountstevens and Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire .

If the policy is adopted by the council, both of the existing venues -- sister venues Urban Tiger and Central Chambers -- would be forced to close. At the two clubs' annual licence renewal hearings in 2019, pole-dancers said they were feminists also and had a right to choose how they earned a living.

The draft policy also includes the licensing of sex shops but no there no plans to change the current maximum of two each in both the city centre and Old Market/West Street and zero in other areas.

Update: Bristol Council takes the next step to banning lap dancing

10th March 2021. See article from thebristolcable.org

Passions ran high as councillors voted narrowly to send a proposed ban on lap-dancing clubs in Bristol out to public consultation.

Licensing committee members voted 7-6, with one abstention, on Monday (March 8) to ask residents and interest groups what they thought of a new draft policy setting the maximum number of sexual entertainment venues (SEVs) to zero.

But the decision, which could force the closure of the city's two city centre SEVs Urban Tiger and Central Chambers and put hundreds of mostly female jobs at risk, was described as monstrous and pandering to the views of women's rights activists on moral grounds.