Strip-club patrons taxed to fund rape investigations

Permabear

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Gurgle

Permabear wrote: »

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It's blatant pandering to republican christian fundamentalists in an election year.

Sleepy

A similar tax to fund services in the local area around the club (e.g. street cleaning, urban renewal etc.) I could understand an argument for as the clubs tend to be very profitable businesses in rundown areas of town.

The link to rape is ludicrous. Should a similar tax be imposed on flowers since most rapes occur in "date rape" scenarios and men only buy flowers when trying to woo a woman?

Permabear

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Gurgle

Permabear wrote: »

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Doh!

OK, its just blatantly stupid then.

Sleepy

Permabear wrote: »

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It's pandering to the Feminazi caucus so

jill_valentine

It's not. They may not be Republicans, but they're certainly not progressive and they're definitely not feminists. A woman has a right to make her own choices about her body, and that includes stripping.

One thing's for sure, it has f**k all to do with raising money and everything to do with propaganda.

This - and the link they're trying to draw in the public mind - will get infinitely more airtime than, for instance, the two teenage lesbians who were shot in the head and left to die elsewhere in Texas last week.

I don't believe for a moment this went through in the interest of women. Cheap politics.

Gurgle

Sleepy wrote: »

It's pandering to the Feminazi caucus so

I have no idea what that is but I'm against it and against anyone who wants to pander to it.

Permabear

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jill_valentine

Permabear wrote: »

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Ha, it's a clever question, but they would be statistically negligible in comparison to their female strip show counterparts. Houston is a port city full of contract oil workers and its love affair with the strip club goes back a ways.

That statistic about how many untested rape kits they're talking about here was pretty shocking though:

City Council member Ellen Cohen put forth the bill in order to raise $1 million to $3 million needed to make a dent in the approximately 4,000 to 6,000 untested kits.

It would seem that attitudes to women in Houston are pretty off, but going for the strip clubs seems like treating a harmless side effect rather than figuring out how to start tackling the root of the problem to begin with.

Permabear

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The Corinthian

Permabear wrote: »

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They're not; they're pandering to the American public.

Lest we forget, America is not Europe and we differ culturally in various ways, one of which is that Americans are significantly more puritanical where it comes to sex than Europeans. For example, do people remember what happened when Janet Jackson had her "wardrobe malfunction"?

On this side of the Atlantic, the whole thing would have gone largely unnoticed had it occurred during the Eurovision or Euro Cup final - a bit of a stir, maybe upset a few Anglophones, but for most of Europe (who will regularly have topless women visible during daytime adverts), no one would care. Instead the US almost had a meltdown over the incident.

So even Democrats need to periodically prove their credentials that they are in line with popular sentiments in areas such as sex and do things like this.

The tax in itself is essentially a Moral Tax; an easy target for taxation (like alcohol, smoking, gambling or being a white middle-class male) and no one is too bothered on whether the rational actually makes sense or not because of this.

Piste

It seems as if they're trying to draw a "consumeristic attitude towards women's bodies leads to rape culture" link here, but if they are then why not tax women's clothing, women's magazines, men's magazines, hell every media outlet for portraying women's bodies as consumable? Because that would be silly, that's why. Also because they haven't convincingly drawn a "consumeristic attitude towards women's bodies leads to rape culture" link.

dave2pvd

The Corinthian wrote: »

They're not; they're pandering to the American public.

Lest we forget, America is not Europe and we differ culturally in various ways, one of which is that Americans are significantly more puritanical where it comes to sex than Europeans.

You need to be more specific in your judgement, I'd think.

Texas is not Massachusetts, for example. So rather than pandering to the American public, these city councilors would be pandering to their Houston electorate.

There is probably a second dimension. You'll often see local administrations come up with creative ways that make it hard for strip clubs to do business. Pressure from nearby businesses and/or neighbors may come to bear on elected representatives. Said representatives may or may not renew liquor licenses, may deny building permits, could pressure the local PD to raid for 'illegals' frequently, health and sanitation inspectors might be suddenly more detail oriented, etc. If this is one of those tactics, it's one of the more original ones that I've seen. And it's why there are so many lawyers on retainers for the clubs.

The Corinthian

dave2pvd wrote: »

Texas is not Massachusetts, for example. So rather than pandering to the American public, these city councilors would be pandering to their Houston electorate.

Fair enough. However it is also fair to say that Americans are significantly more puritanical where it comes to sex than Europeans, regardless of what state they're from.

dave2pvd

The Corinthian wrote: »

Fair enough. However it is also fair to say that Americans are significantly more puritanical where it comes to sex than Europeans, regardless of what state they're from.

Again, I don't agree (sorry!).

Totally depends on where in the US you want to compare to. And to where in Europe, I dare say.

I am not just referring States (although TX vs MA is pretty stark), also urban vs rural, North vs South, CA vs everywhere else......not to mention views held amongst different cultures, incomes,...the list goes on.

Permabear

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maw368

The way I see it is like this; first of all as already mentioned, the link between strip club goers and rapists is disgusting, not even stereotypical discrimination that is totally baseless.

Then, if these people honestly believe that these two types are linked; which is what they must be suggested to have targeted them by making them responsible to foot the bill. Then surely their only moral action could be to make strip clubs illegal, to make attending a strip club of any kind punishable by imprisonment.

Instead they see an opportunity to make money, that is so disgusting to allow what they believe is an environment that leads to rape to continue as long as they can make money out of it. That makes their actions as bad as the rapist, in fact worse because as they are choosing to neglect safety for the sake of profit.

dave2pvd

maw368 wrote: »

Instead they see an opportunity to make money, that is so disgusting to allow what they believe is an environment that leads to rape to continue as long as they can make money out of it. That makes their actions as bad as the rapist, in fact worse because as they are choosing to neglect safety for the sake of profit.

I don't think so. As I pointed out earlier, they are trying to close them down. Most likely.

Second: 'they' never (allegedly) intended to make money. The money was earmarked for a community service expense.

The Corinthian

dave2pvd wrote: »

Again, I don't agree (sorry!).

Totally depends on where in the US you want to compare to. And to where in Europe, I dare say.

I am not just referring States (although TX vs MA is pretty stark), also urban vs rural, North vs South, CA vs everywhere else......not to mention views held amongst different cultures, incomes,...the list goes on.

I probably previously explained myself rather badly on this point.

Naturally you are going to find variations from region to region; attitudes towards sex in San Francisco are going to be wildly different to those in Savannah, for example.

You can say the same of most European countries too, even on a national level; Holland, for example, is oft cited as a bedrock of liberalism, and in the big cities, like Amsterdam, it is. Yet if you go out into the countryside, attitudes become significantly more conservative. Likewise countries like the UK, Ireland, Malta and Turkey will tend to be more conservative than countries like France, Germany or even Spain and Italy.

Nonetheless, on an aggregate level, the US is significantly more conservative than Europe. Grouped together, Europeans are twice as likely not to believe in God or any kind of divine presence than Americans. And with regards to attitudes towards sex and nudity the simple fact is that significantly higher levels of nudity are commonplace on European daytime public television than in the US and the fallout from Janet Jackson's Superbowl "wardrobe malfunction" incident would never have occurred in Europe.

This is not to say that there are not parts of the US that are far more liberal than parts of Europe, however on average American culture is not when compared with European culture.

All of which is really OT pedantry though, because this thread is predicated on one part of the US; Houston, Texas. And I doubt anyone is going to begin to argue that it is the poster-boy of sexual freedom in the US.

Standman

Have they just pulled this idea that strip clubs "can cultivate unhealthy attitudes toward women that can lead to sexual assaults" out of their arses or is there some kind of study that has been done on this?

The Corinthian

Standman wrote: »

Have they just pulled this idea that strip clubs "can cultivate unhealthy attitudes toward women that can lead to sexual assaults" out of their arses or is there some kind of study that has been done on this?

I'm sure there's plenty of studies out there that support this hypothesis. And plenty that contradict it.

The question is not so much if there is a study, but how such a study was put together and by whom.

Woodward

The Corinthian wrote: »

I'm sure there's plenty of studies out there that support this hypothesis. And plenty that contradict it.

The question is not so much if there is a study, but how such a study was put together and by whom.

You also need to take into account that studies that find negative outcomes tend not to be published a lot of the time unless the are disproving an important concept that was previously held true and even then its mostly in the sciences and medical sectors that negative data is seen as highly important. A lot of journal editors in sociology and soft sciences skip over studies that have negative findings regarding the hypothesis altogether