It is obvious that my points are not being understood correctly, or I'm not stating them clear enough...or simply that I guess that I'm not hearing the same thing that kerwynk's hearing out of my comments...so I will try one last time to make my points before I move on.

 I will follow the form of responding point for point to kerwynk's comments First:

Anthony, for example, writes about dancers who wish to organize against lap dancing or against outright sex within strip clubs, asking:

Is this really about taking away "the collective rights" of workers who organize to retain the old standards...or is this more about mere moral opposition to loosening those standards out of fear of losing their livelihoods, and using the collective barginning process as a wedge for their personal moral objections to loosening the rules of contact??

How is that any different from, say, a majority of parishioners at a local Catholic church getting together as a "majority" to oppose the ordination of a priest at their church because they don't like the priest's more open stance on abortion rights or homosexuality?? Sure, they have that right as members of that church to do so, but, is their stance of maintaining a conservative (if not, arguably, reactionary) position justified merely because it represents a "majority" view??

 I have no doubt that dancers had a wide variety of reasons for not wanting to have outright sex in the clubs, ranging from a preference for the artistry of dance to something of a moral revulsion to prostitution (and a complete distancing of erotic dance from that). Nevertheless, I would side with worker self-control over and against "anything goes," despite the fact that I would undoubtedly disagree with many things that the collective would decide. I'd also say that any sort of community - including a conservative church group - should have a right to select its own leaders (recalling them if necessary); the fact that this process will not automatically result in a perfect system doesn't negate the things that are valuable about this approach.

 But my point is exactly that the process still involves enforcing the dominant conservative traditions and mores....similar to a church that enforces bans against interracial marriage or homosexuality...and I seriously doubt that anyone progressive would even attempt to defend any organization that used its "majority status" to defend such things as aparthied, even if that was the will of the "majority". Let's remember that in the South, bans against interracial marriage and lynchings were also justified as the "will of the majority" and federal court rulings against segregation were attacked as the imposition of a "minority" against the will of the "majority" of White citizens using the organizations available to them to defend their "rights". It was that against very institutionalization of the "tyranny of the majority" for which the philosophy of protecting individual rights was developed.  

And you still only attempt to dance around my main point that your insistence that the organization of the dancers against "anything goes" (which is actually a fallacy, since my point was to defend the right of the dancers who wanted to go further to exercise their right of choice without in any way threatening the majority's right not to go further; not to defend management's right of "anything goes") effectively assumes a sexually conservative beleif that such dancers should simply not do so and succumb to the "majority" position that allowing sexual contact must not be allowed for whatever reason. Even the language you use ("self-control") has an implied notion that those dancers who wanted to go further somehow have no "self-control" and obviously cannot be allowed to pass their risk of supposed lack of "self-control" to others...a pretty clear bias against sexual self-expression, if I say so.

And kerwynk's response also avoids the basic fact that most activism against lap dancing or other sexual contact comes mostly not from dancers or clients, but from the more traditional conservative political and social groups who also tend to oppose consensual sexual acts in more private places on the same fears and folkways (fear of diease; threat to "marriage" and "family"; simple disgust at sex unredeemed by "commitment" and "intimacy") that they use against homosexuals, feminists, and other supposed threats to their social/sexual order. Just because he apporpriates such a belief within a putatively progressive context of protecting "labor rights" doesn't make the social context here any less conservative and reactionary.

To continue:

 Anthony also writes that:

 I think that it is a legitimate argument to say that you really do think that it is right to regulate what dancers can and should do....and that any attempt to loosen the rules is simply a plot by management to break the unions. That is pretty dangerously close to the antiporn "liberal elitist" argument, in my personal view

Well, I support the ability of sex workers to collectively regulate themselves, and to me that is quite a different stance than "liberal elitism" (which I identify with the efforts of outside do-gooders to impose standards from the outside. To me, the ability of people to have as much control as possible over their local working lives is not the same as having politicians who operate within a so-called "democracy" introduce a standard via the law.

 Now this is interesting....you talk about extending "worker control over their local working lives"; yet you would deny the same right of control to those who do not succomb to the "will of the majority" and basically subjugate their personal sexual beliefs to the concept of "the majority"...which just so happens to be at one with your personal sexually conservative view of "self control". But what about those workers who don't share that view...will they be basically shut out of your ideal labor organization merely because they might have a more expansive view of sexuality than you do??? Even though they might even respect the other's right to disagree with their beliefs??  

And you talk about "liberal do-gooders" imposing their will from outside...as far as I see it; the only ones that are imposing any views whatsoever are the sexual conservatives, whether they come in the form of antiporn feminists, antifeminist religionists, or pseudo-sexual elitists imposing their notions of "superior sexuality". Those who fight for more open and safe sexual expression are the ones who are usually reveiled and repressed everywhere. Last I heard, it wasn't "liberal do-gooders' who held the reigns of political and social power; otherwise, Joycelyn Elders would still be Suegeon General today.

 In an earlier post, Anthony also writes that:

[Having a majority decide against sexual contact] still places a huge disadvantage on that minority who does want sexual contact, and they would probably be motivated to either (1) leave the union and go on their own and find employment in a non-union shop that would allow for more open expression; (2) forming their own counter-organization and competing directly with the majority orgianization for bargining rights; or (3) go along with the majority and suffer quietly (or not so quietly, possibly risking undermining the union from within). 

I have no doubt that these three scenarios could all happen in the scenario we're talking about, but just to be clear, the example given still posits a world in which a minority is sexually persecuted by the "moralism" of a majority. In fact, people not wishing to do prostitution were forced to go to the few remaining clubs that did not have prostitution, or to remain within the clubs with prostitution and to do the best they could (a situation that put them at an extreme disadvantage). The people who felt compelled to remain (for a variety of reasons) but who did not want to do sex were the ones who were "forced to go along with the will"...not even of the majority, but of management. People indeed got screwed over by this situation, but not the people identified in the above theoretical example. We need to be able to see both how people can get oppressed by the logic of individual sexual rights as well as vice versa.

 But to return to the three dangers that are identified above, all three basically seem perfectly fine to me. And in terms of finding employment elsewhere, I'd be much happier with a system that enabled strip clubs and brothels to compete against each other than a system that placed erotic dancers and those doing sex into such direct competition within the same club. Having multiple clubs of various sorts does not resolve the difficulties of competition vs. collective decision making - competition is merely removed from the individual level and replaced by competition between institutions - but this solution generally seems to me to strike a fair balance between the rights of various parties. To address a theoretical (but completely unrealistic) possibility, a fully collectivized system might enable the entire commercial sex industry to control (and possibly restrict) the actions at all clubs, but in general I support the ability of people to control their own lives, so the personal right of individuals to engage in whatever sort of sex work they choose seems inviolable. That'd be one limit I place on collective management over these things, and ideally there would certainly be more freedom involved than just that.

Anthony, I'm wondering if your rejection of this line of reasoning stems from the fact that you believe there are no circumstances whatsoever in which a majority has a right to place some sort of restriction on sexual behavior. I also reject the suggestion that any and all attempts to regulate sex derive solely from sexual puritanism. Is that really what you are saying? If not, what would be appropriate limitations based on your line of reasoning, and why do you reject what happened in the case under discussion here? 

 Where, oh where do I begin??  With the complete twisting and distorting of my defense of the dancers as supporting "prostitution"??? (I am for decriminalization and legalization of sex work; and I would assume that kerwynk does also; but with using such rhetoric as calling lap dances and mere body contact "prostitution"; it certainly begs to wonder.)

The assumption that those in the majority who would be so offended by such opening of sexual behavior would have no choices in the matter?? (Like, for example, boycott or strike or actually use their resources to buy out the club and run it on their own terms??? The Lusty Lady club in San Francisco was able to do just that...and it remains the prototype of worker-run collective that would allow workers the maximum of protection and autonomy; whether or not they allowed lap dances. ) 

Or...the implied assumption that the  most desirable means of worker controlled regulation would be where collectives could regulate sexual behavior in clubs...presumably to remove such threats as direct sexual contact as a means of protecting the "collective rights" of the majority of workers, who are assumed to be against such behavior. I ask you again, kerwynk: is your motive really based on protecting worker rights in general; or is it really to impose your personal ideas of sexual restriction??

And this nonsense accusing me of wanting no sexual regulation at all (in effect, calling me out as a "libertarian" who wants NO limits on sexual regulation whatsoever); only says more about your thinly-veiled agenda than it does about my statements. I have made abundantly clear that I am no right-wing libertarian of the "anything and everything goes"/"do it, and damn the consequenses" philosophy; my principle of sex radacalism rests upon the belief that sexual behavior must be conditioned on three basic elements: mutual respect; mutual consent; and mutual pleasure. That in itself places a great deal of condition on how people should interact sexually. And no. attempts to regulate sex often do not arise from sexual puritanism; but most attempts in this dominant culture can't help but be influenced by such puritanism. It's one thing to say that dancers deserve protection from unruly clients or shifty club owners who impose against their will orders to perform acts they may not want; it's quite another thing all together to dismiss and distort dancers who may not agree with such restrictions as "tools of the establishment" and scabs....and, ultimately, "mindless sluts" and disease carriers and "liberal elitists".  My goal is to protect the rights of BOTH sides and of ALL sex workers, not merely pit one side against the other.

 In terms of the specific case of San Francisco, Anthony also writes:

If San Francisco is like any other jursdiction I know of (though, to its credit, it is a tad more liberal than most), the prospect of loosening up sexual contact between client and worker certainly has its benefits to management (more money for them and those workers willing to do such behavior); but it also carries with it much risk...particularly, the wrath of the media and the State, which would, since they are still controlled for the most part by conservative, sex-negative forces who care less about dancers' rights and their economic livelihoods, see such openings as an invitation to the same old "licentiousness" and call upon the full power of the authorities to crack down on such "illicit" and "filthy" behavior. 

Indeed, I'd say that if any group would be given the benefit of the doubt by the media and the dominant forces, it would be exactly those dancers whom you so kindly praise for their "collective activism" in resisting the call of their management to, as they would probably put it, "further degrade themselves". 

 Anthony certainly has a point here, though the situation is much more complicated than he suggests. Indeed, workers who were resisting the introduction of sex in the dance clubs implicitly utilized anti-prostitution stereotypes in fighting what was going on. I initially got involved in this story when writing a piece for the SF Bay Guardian; the title for the piece (which I did not choose and would not have chosen), was "Peep Show Pimps," thus utilizing a moralistic term that often undercuts sex workers' ability to rely upon management of their own choosing or to even have lovers. At the same time, "the State" was fully complicit with the shift toward sex - although the private booths that facilitated sex were already illegal, and although the protesting dancers' central demand was to have these booths removed, the City never took action against the booths, deciding instead to effectively decriminalize prostitution within the clubs. "The State" in this case was completely in league with the clubs, with the mayor having acted as a lawyer for club management a number of years earlier. Furthermore, the strip clubs/brothels represent a significant component of the tourist industry, whereas the protesting dancers represent no one politically important (and indeed, they lost this political struggle, badly). The haphazard decriminalization that resulted required that certain basic facts could not be openly acknowledged, and, most specifically, management never made condoms readily available on the premises. While moralism remains an important theme in US politics, obviously, it's not the only dynamic governing various branches of the government.

 No one doubts that San Francisco's more tolerant attitude towards sexual behavior in general (fueled in large part by its large gay/lesbian/bisexual population and its legacy as a haven for sexual nonconformists everywhere) allowed it to be more hostile to the kind of sexual regulation that dominated elsewhere. But, even San Francisco had its limits....let us not forget the Stonewall Riots; the occasional raids on strip clubs in the 80s for performing public sex acts on stage which attracted some opposition from a few local neighborhood moral organizations; the rise of antipornography/antiprostitution feminism in the 80s, of which a pretty strong base of such activism was San Francisco and Berkeley; the war on gay bathhouses which only intensified with the HIV-AIDS pandemic; and the influence of residential gentrification where whole communities were basically ripped asunder for "urban renewal" to attract a wealthier and presumably more conservative clientele. 

I would also say that your point does exemplify what I wrote about sexual elitism; it was no surprise that those workers who opposed the relaxation of sexual contact rules often resorted to the "anti-prostitution"  rhetoric and language of antiporn feminists, of which the title "Peep Show Pimps" was a typical example.  But there was also an elitist asthetic opposition as well; most of the opponents often saw themselves as more "erotic artitsts" who used their particular art form to express more "artistic" means of expression that were more "erotic"; distinguishing themselves from those lowdown, nasty, "filthy" women who were only "putting out" for men and "selling their bodies" and "selling sex". This is the very same "erotic" ve. "pornographic" paradigm that has been classically used by those who want to justify their own sexual choices against a conservative sexual context by throwing other, less "artistic" forms of sexual expression under the bus. Not only does this type of elitism do much harm to a unified philosophy of defending collective rights by openly reinforcing the dominant sexual conservatism (in the same way the Democratic Leadership Council acts as a conduit reenforcing the Republican Right even as they invoke against it through endless attacks on liberals and Leftists as beyond the pale...and mainstream liberal groups like MoveOn.org do the same for Democrats against independent Leftists); but in the long run, it simply allows the Right to play the usual game of divide and conquer by giving sexual conservatism a bipartasian cover...and implicitly making sexual fascism appear merely "conservative". (No, kerwynk, I am not and have NEVER accused you of being a sexual fascist or even being a sexual conservative; I'm simply making a point that many of your points do, in my view, quite a bit in justifying sexual conservatism under a label of "labor protectionism" and distorting ses-positive radicalism under the label of "individualism" and "libertariansim".)

And while you may say that the protesting dancers ultimately lost their battle because they were "no one important" as compared to the power of management and the dependence of San Francisco tourism on the sex industry (as if the Golden Gate Bridge and the Mission District and the other major attractions of business and industry were mere tokens as compared to the attraction of "free sex"); I'd say that probably the main motivation for their loss was simply that they did represent, in the ultimate, a minority of the workers; and that there were, ultimately, many who became sex workers who, influenced by more generous sex radicals and pro-sex femiinists as well as other sexual liberationists, simply rejected outright the more restrictive belief system of the protestors. It also may be that technical reforms such as the rise of the Internet and the development of in-house escort services where clients could much more directly interact with their clients rather than use the private booths of strip clubs, undermined the position of those opposed to direct sexual contact.  An, of course, there was the HIV-AIDS pandemic, which ultimately dealth a grave blow to all forms of sexual expression by fueling the "sex=death" backlash against all forme of "free" sex.  So yes, it is a complicated mix, but that does not necessarily disprove or devolve my original point that sexual conservatism had a lot to do with the opposition to looser sexual behavior in the clubs. 

As to the safety factor, towith the condom issue: that management refused to offer the option of condoms to those clubs that did open up sexual conduct is a failing of their own; I don't argue that at  all as a supporter of condom usage. But...was that necessarily the fault of those who defended their right to freer sexual expression...many of whom did in fact favor and insist on "safer sex" practices incorporated into their behavior?? Let's remember that "sexual contact" in this context can mean anything from a fully-clothed lap dance where the client remains fully clothed and merely gets rubbed against to orgasm, to a handjob, to oral sex (usually fellatio), to full on intercourse. Or, it can basically consist of a client watching a performer do solo masturbation or performing sex with another girl performer (usually while masturbating him/herself). While the safety issues involving such behaviors are certainly legitimate and the principle that ALL performers should have theri personal boundaries and limits respected must be fully upheld, that is fundamentally different from the arguments that many who opposed this behavior raised. Since such acts are already being done in a consenting and freely sought environment, the notion that they should not be encouraged in a private venue under conditions of compensation of the performers involved ultimately becomes one of moral disagreement over the acts themselves; rather than any concerns about safety that can be easily mitigated through mutually considered compromises and practices. It is possible to negotiate such differences and respect individual workers' personal sexual boundaries while simultaneously reaching for collective goals such as better compensation, safer workplace conditions, and protection from abuse of power or coercion by client or by management. To insist on imposing a single restrictive sexual standard on such a diverse group of performers is an invitation for discord, disaster, and ultimately, a wedge in which management can exploit to destroy all workers' rights and privilege a few at the expense of the many. And besides, it simply won't work anyway, since those who are adult enough to make their own decisions will probably go ahiead and follow their hormones anyway and pursue such behavior in more devious ways. 

Kerwynk concludes:

But in returning to the main theme here of unionization and majority rule of the workers, I don't believe that this principle of collective self-management offers a utopic possibility that would signify the end of politics. I merely hold open this possibility as a critique of the way things are done in contemporary capitalist society, and also as a critique showing the limitations of "individual rights" as a rhetoric for understanding social justice. Of course I support individual rights, generally speaking, but I do not think this approach is sufficient in and of itself, and there are definitely cases - such as the instance under discussion here - in which I believe an absolutist belief in individual rights will lead us astray from a more just approach.  

Here is one point that I will agree with Kerwynk:  "individual rights" activism alone cannot by itself liberate groups of people who have suffered from institutional discrimination, nor is it the be-all and end-all to progressive political activism. But, collective rights that does not fully respect the diversity of the individuals called upon to make the sacrifices neccessary for activism, and which attempts to impose a single, non-bending, and restrictive standard on all, is simply a recipe for failure.  And a collective movement that does not respect the diversity of consensual sexual choice and sexual diversity, even as it brings individuals together in the name of collective action, only becomes yet another means for dissension that will only harm the overall movement as a whole.

My point in all this is NOT that those dancers have no right to protest the managers of the San Francisco strip clubs that wanted to impose rules on them that they opposed...or that people do not have the right to be sexually conservative and have those rights respected. I never said that, and never will. My point is only that they at the very least give the same respect to those workers who may not agree with their stance.....and that "collective rights" not become an wedge for allowing the larger forces of sexual conservatism to roll them under the bus.

I know that my view is probably not the most popular or the majority view, but it is my view, and I will stand by it, as much as I will respect those who will disagree with it. It may not even answer all (or even some) of Kerwynk's questions..but it expresses my opinion and mine alone. 

And with that, the gentleman yields the floor, and asks the previous question be ordered.

:-)

 Anthony