Last month, the Government proposed tougher licensing legislation for lap dancing clubs, which cross-party MPs voted overwhelmingly to support. As a result of the 2003 Licensing Act, lap dancing clubs are currently licensed in the same way as cafes and karaoke bars: with a Premises License. The Fawcett Society and Object have been leading a campaign over the past 9 months to license lap dancing clubs as ‘Sex Encounter Venues’, so that local authorities can control the number and location of such establishments in their area, and local people can have a greater say in licensing decisions.

However, they believe that the Government’s plans don’t go far enough, as the reforms are optional and do not apply to venues hosting lap dancing less than once a month. So local people will only have a say if their council chooses to adopt the measures. The growing number of lap dancing agencies that take bookings in a range of pubs, bars and hotel venues will be unaffected by this legislation as long as they restrict bookings in a particular venue to no more than once a month.

This is a no-brainer to me. Lap dancing is not glamourous or lucrative. Any move to recognise clubs where lap dancing is performed in exchange for money as part of the sex industry is completely necessary, because this is what they are. There is an underlying cultural normalisation of lap dancing, which I think is strongly related to recent legislative action, as well as media portrayal. Lap dancing is separated from more clear-cut forms of sexual exchange such as prostitution; in contrast to these other forms, working in it is portrayed as exciting and somehow empowering.

This is simply a lie. I’m not trying to make a larger judgement about the ethics of exchanging sex—in whatever form—for money. But I do believe that there is no ideal lap dancing club, in which women can exchange this specific form of sex for money in a fair, safe way, and because they have freely chosen to do so. The licensing of such clubs should reflect what they are—exploitative, poorly paid and unsafe—instead of reinforcing popular cultural misconceptions and glamorisations of them.

Legislative reform can change cultural conceptions, and the thoroughgoing changes that the Fawcett Society and Object are still calling for will change things for local communities adversely affected by the presence of a lap dancing club. They have created a petition to call on the Government to remove the loopholes in their proposals, which I’ve signed.

What this campaign fails to call for, however, is legislative changes to improve working conditions for the women who will still be working in the lap dancing industry in the (hopefully, fewer) clubs that will still exist. The article I linked to above exposes the illusory legitimacy provided by the so-called no touching rule—because women are encouraged to break the rules to make more money, and this is the first rule to go. But there are still important changes that can be made that are harder to circumvent. I’m thinking specifically of changing the payment system, by which women are paid according to how many dances they perform instead of how many hours they work, and restricting clubs’ abilities to charge and fine their dancers.

As usual, legislation protecting those of us outside the sex industry from the sex industry is debated, while that protecting those (and in this case, it is those women) within it from it, is circumvented. I agree with the Fawcett Society and Object that the Government is not going far enough. But their campaign, too, does not go far enough.