Defining Empowerment

Well I suppose my opening blog should be about Empowerment!

Definition: To enable, to allow, to permit.

Basically it's about the freedom of choice.

So why is it that self-proclaimed feminists insist on taking away our empowerment by telling us that we cannot possibly choose to enjoy sensual based dance forms without being exploited?

Whether we choose to enjoy our sensuality (through any means or form) for personal gratification or for the gratification we receive by pleasing someone else - it IS our choice!

A few months back a columnist for the Sun Times wrote a rather nasty article after I had sent a press release to her about a pole dance fund-raising event I was hosting in Chicago. In this article she associated pole dancing with child porn and insisted that modern day women could not possibly be doing this by choice but for the pure enjoyment of men who give nothing in return. This article made us sound like mindless creatures unable to choose for ourselves, and furthermore made the men we must associate with sound like uncaring creatures incapable of reciprocating in the bedroom.

My response...which naturally went unanswered was...If women choosing to pole dance compares us to strippers then women choosing to make love must make us prostitutes?

The difference here is intent: am I pole dancing because I have to or because I want to?

Am I doing this because it is the ONLY way I can make some money or am I doing it to feel sexy? Am I doing this to (gasp!) arouse and excite my partner? What difference is there between putting on some sexy lingerie, striking a sexy pose, or any other bedroom play and pole dancing?

For that matter...why do (some) feminists believe that we can't possibly be enjoying ourselves or that we can't possibly just do this in a room full of other women or alone at home but we MUST be doing this for some salivating dog of man?

Pole dancing is often compared to cirq de soleil. There isn't one form of dance that ISN'T about displaying how the body moves. Many forms of dance dress provocatively - even figure skating. That isn't to draw the audience's attention to the dancer's great eyes!

As I tell my students - it's all about intent. Are you doing this because you have low self esteem and you believe this is the only way to keep and excite your partner because you have nothing else to offer? Or are you doing this because you enjoy it, you're having fun, perhaps you even believe you are HOT and you want to share some excitement with someone you love and care for.

Quite often, students and even other instructors I know NEVER dance for their partners. Many enjoy the dance strictly for the energy, fitness and thrill of doing something challenging as many of the moves take strength and endurance. And just like with any goal we accomplish, just like the way endorphins are released when we work out, just like when we look in the mirror and feel good about ourselves, we walk a little taller and feel a little better about ourselves without needing to actually share it with someone else.

Let me tell you what I feel is empowering...knowing I am sexy and being confident enough to show it in any way I choose to!

In closing, I'll let you know how I wound up here - during a random google search I found a blog that impressed and inspired me: http://betterthanieverexpected.blogspot.com/

Joan Price is the author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty

The blog I ran across was one entitled: Pole Dancing: Exploitative or Empowering. Naturally this one caught my interest so I read on. I was especially impressed by a quote by her in a NY Times article as stating: “If we were to limit what we do in the realm of affirming our sexuality because it has been used against us in the past, we would then be buying into the idea that we don’t own it.”

Brilliant!

So...after browsing her other blogs and finding several of great interest, though I've never been really tempted to write a blog I decided to give it a try and felt I owed it to this woman to give her credit for inspiring me.