Lap dance

History and legal issues

Lap dancing clubs are a later development of earlier strip clubs, where strippers danced on stage and were paid a wage. In the 1970s, New York's Melody Theater introduced audience participation and called it "Mardi Gras". The Melody Theater became the Harmony Theater and operated in two locations in Manhattan for over 20 years until it was closed down in 1998.

In 1977, San Francisco's Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theatre changed its policy so that customers could have dancers come to sit naked on their laps for a $1 tip. The practice quickly spread. It suited club owners, because it brought in more customers, and it meant that the club could pay the dancers less. This then evolved into lap dancing. A San Francisco District Attorney's 2004 decision to drop prostitution charges against lap dancers in the city changed the sexual culture of San Francisco and "has the potential to influence the policies of other cities".

In some areas of the U.S. and Canada, local authorities began cracking down on lap dancing after reports that some clubs allowed customers to engage in sexual intercourse or other sexual activity with dancers during lap dance sessions. Various strip clubs have wide-ranging rules on how customers should interact with strippers.

Canada

In 1973, an upmarket Vancouver bar called "Gary Taylor's Show Lounge" employed showgirls and strippers as waitresses who gave a free dance with every drink. The club was raided by the police under the guise of obscenity legislation, but, in 1974, Judge Jack McGivern ruled that dancer nudity was not obscene, which started a trend of nude dancing in bars. No contact between dancers and patrons was allowed at the club, but Gary Taylor's had a boxing ring where the girls performed revealing acrobatics after stripping off and then earned tips. Americans from Washington State made the trip to the club from the United States, which at the time had stricter laws.

In a landmark ruling regarding the 1994 case of Pat Mara and Allan East (the owner and manager of Cheaters Tavern), Judge E. Gordon Hachborn legally defined lap dancing and ruled that it did not contravene Canadian public decency statutes. A number of conflicting judgements were issued in the years that followed, including decisions to close certain bars in which sex acts took place on the floor of the club and other rulings in which patrons were allowed to touch the dancers, as long as an actual sex act did not take place.

In 1999, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a typical lap dance did not constitute an "obscene" act within the meaning of the Criminal Code. The Crown did not argue that lap dances constituted "prostitution", and therefore the court did not address the possible issue that the typical lap dance may contravene one or more anti-prostitution laws. This led to the displacement of strip clubs and table dancing clubs in Canada by lap dancing clubs.

In 2005, two Supreme Court of Canada rulings (R. v. Labaye and R. v. Kouri) decriminalized private sex clubs in Canada.

On 20 December 2013, (in Bedford v. Canada) the Supreme Court of Canada found the laws prohibiting brothels, public communication for the purpose of prostitution, and living on the profits of prostitution to be unconstitutional. The ruling gave the Canadian parliament twelve months to rewrite Canada's prostitution laws; in the meantime, existing anti-prostitution laws continued to be enforced. Current laws on prostitution in Canada, introduced in 2014, make it illegal to purchase sexual services (including lap dancing) but legal to sell them.

United States

Some jurisdictions in the United States outlaw lap dances and enforce a minimum distance between dancer and patron. In Seattle, one such minimum distance ordinance was overturned by public referendum in November 2006.

Also in 2006, concerned about reports of sexual assault and illegal stage fees, San Francisco's Commission on the Status of Women recommended a ban on private rooms and booths at adult clubs in the city. However, a majority of dancers at the Commission's meetings and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' meetings protested against these efforts, fearing for their income and claiming that these rooms were safer than other venues. As a result, the Commission's proposed ban was not adopted by the city.

In February 2010, the Detroit City Council voted to ban lap dances in VIP rooms. However, across from Detroit in Windsor, Ontario in Canada, lap dancing remained legal, even where alcohol was served, and Sex clubs were also legal in Windsor. Current laws on prostitution in Canada, introduced in 2014, make it illegal to purchase sexual services (including lap dancing) but legal to sell them.

In 2012, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that lap dances were not an art form and are subject to sales tax.

United Kingdom

The first lap dancing club in the UK was opened in 1995, and, during the 2000s, the lap-dancing industry grew quickly. In 2008, clubs were being opened at a rate of about one per week. By 2009, the total number of clubs had reached its peak of 310 (approximately twice the number in 2003), and the number of lap-dancers was estimated at 10,000. There are now lap-dancing clubs in big cities, small towns, and out-of-town business parks. The figures plateaued during the subsequent weaker economic climate and had hardly changed by 2012. At that point, the amount of money a lap-dancer earned in an average shift was £230 (down from around £280 in 2011), and the industry was valued at around £300 million. However, some clubs, particularly in London, charged a house fee for the dancers to perform and had an increased number of dancers, which reduced an individual dancer's earnings. The industry body in the UK representing club owners is the Lap Dancing Association.

The Policing and Crime Act 2009 reclassified lap-dancing clubs in England and Wales as "sexual entertainment venues" instead of "entertainment venues" and, since April 2010, lap-dancing clubs have been required to apply for licences. Local authorities now have the power to decide on the number and location of lap-dancing clubs in their area. Between 2010 and 2015, there were approximately forty-five refusals of licences for sexual entertainment venues in England and Wales, mainly on the grounds that the locality was unsuitable. There is no right of appeal against such refusals, except on the grounds that committees have not followed correct procedure. The number of refusals, together with the costs of licence application, means that there have been few new businesses opened since 2010, with the overall number of clubs declining over time as a number of local authorities implemented a "nil limit" for new clubs. Until 2016, lap dancing clubs in Scotland continued to be licensed under Section 41 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, which covers general entertainment licenses, and licences in Scotland could not be refused on the basis of the nature of the entertainment in itself. The Scottish Government set up an Adult Entertainment Working Group in 2005 and carried out a consultation on the regulation of sexual entertainment venues in 2013. The Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015 comes into effect in 2016, requiring local authorities in Scotland to set out individual policies with regard to the licensing of “sexual entertainment venues” such as lap dancing clubs.

In February 2014, Fiona Mactaggart (MP for Slough) asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, if he would "make it his policy not to offer job subsidies for employing teenagers as auxiliary workers in adult entertainment establishments". Her question related to employers in the adult entertainment industry being offered an incentive of over £2,000 from the Department for Work and Pensions for every unemployed young person (aged 18–24) that they hired. Esther McVey, the Minister of State for Employment, stated that: "The Welfare Reform Act 2012 ensured that vacancies which involve performing sexual activities were banned from being advertised on Government websites and a distinction was made in law to differentiate between performers and ancillary workers."

Labor issues and job conditions

The economic position of lap dancers, as employees of the clubs, has also changed. Over time, most strip clubs have stopped paying the dancers. Stage dancing became a showcase to advertise the bodies of the dancers, whose money came from the tips or standard charges, depending on the club, that the patrons gave them for lap dancing. In the majority of clubs, dancers are simply charged a percentage of their nightly takings. However, the latest development in many countries, including Great Britain, the United States and Canada, is that many clubs charge dancers a "stage fee" or "tip-out", which is an amount that a dancer needs to pay a club (usually in advance) in order to work on a given night, per shift. Given that dancers are basically paying for the privilege to be at a club, some clubs allow as many dancers as possible to appear on any given night, increasing competition among the dancers. Also, the vast majority of clubs will not waive this charge if a night happens to be slow. Consequently, the dancer either leaves her shift without any profit or builds a debt to the club.

In the U.S., most clubs treat dancers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding the need to pay minimum wages, overtime pay, income taxes and other benefits required by law. This status has repeatedly been challenged by some dancers. While labor commissions and the courts have, for the most part, ruled that exotic dancers are employees and deserving of reimbursement for back pay and stage fees, some court decisions have decided that an exotic dancer can be classified as an independent contractor. In June 2006, in Tracy Buel v. Chowder House (dba The Hungry I) an appellate court of California's first district ruled that dancer Tracy Buel, also known as "Daisy Anarchy", was correctly classified as an independent contractor and that "Buel shall pay defendants’ costs on appeal". A publication called the California Employment Law Letter described the case as follows: "The dancer based her suit on the fact that she was an employee of the nightclub rather than an independent contractor. The appellate court, however, after applying a 10-factor test, upheld the jury's verdict in favor of the nightclub and its owners and found that the evidence weighed in favor of classifying the dancer as an independent contractor rather than an employee."

A UK study on lap dancing found that the overwhelming majority of those surveyed were satisfied with their work, because they got to choose their own hours, got paid instantly, got more money than in other available jobs, and had the opportunity to combine "fun and work" (e.g., socializing with other dancers and patrons). At the same time, the same study revealed various disadvantages to lap dancing work, such as: the women never knew how much they would earn each week; the women had to try to keep their job secret from friends and family; the women had to face some rude and abusive customers. As well, while most felt safe, almost half of the dancers had faced frequent verbal harassment and unwanted touching from patrons. Another issue raised by the dancers was their lack of labour rights in the workplace and the high overhead costs – house fees (or stage fees), commissions, fines (whether paid directly to the club's management or not), and tipping out (or paying a portion of their income) to DJs and bouncers.

The UK paper The Guardian gave a darker portrait of lap dancing in an article partly based on an interview with a former stripper. It stated that "[r]esearch shows that the majority of women become lap-dancers through poverty and lack of choice," and that "academic research has linked lap-dancing to trafficking, prostitution and an increase in male sexual violence against both the women who work in the clubs and those who live and work in their vicinity." For example, a "recent conference in Ireland highlighted the use of lap-dance clubs by human traffickers as a tool for grooming women into prostitution; the clubs also normalise the idea of paying for sexual services." "[R]esearch on strip clubs in the US found that all dancers had suffered verbal harassment and physical and sexual abuse while at work; all had been propositioned for prostitution; and three-quarters had been stalked by men associated with the club."

Opponents of lap dancing often categorize it as a form of sex work, arguing that the line between erotic dance performance and prostitution is blurred. Conversely, some argue that labeling lap dancers as sex workers is inaccurate, as no sexual acts are physically performed during a standard lap dance. Club proprietors in the UK maintain that lap dancing should not be classified as sex work.

In 2007, based on statistics from eighteen dancers over a period of 60 days, it was noted that female lap dancers earned the highest tips around the time of ovulation, during the most fertile period of their menstrual cycle and the lowest tips during menstruation; the average difference in earning between those two times amounted to about $30 per hour. Women on the pill earned overall less than those not on the pill. The results were interpreted as evidence of estrus in humans: females apparently advertise their fertility status to males in some manner. This finding earned its authors the 2008 Ig Nobel Prize (a parody of the Nobel Prize given for unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research) in Economics.

Mileage

Establishments that offer lap dancing, and the lap dancers themselves, are sometimes rated regarding "mileage." It refers to the amount of contact between dancer and patron during the performance. Every jurisdiction has its own laws regarding such contact, but enforcement of these laws is sporadic. Ultimately, it comes down to what the club and the dancer will allow.

Nevada, and especially Las Vegas, have established very lenient laws regarding what contact is allowed during a lap dance. Patrons may legally touch the dancer anywhere she will permit, excluding the genitals. This has led to a pricing strategy in some all-nude strip clubs, in which a standard lap dance is considered to be just topless with no contact, but can be upgraded to include full nudity and/or touching.

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