While prostitution is not banned in Israel, if the legislation passes it would prohibit possession of a club where prostitution or stripping takes place and advertising for stripping will also be banned.
Some strippers plan to go out on the streets in Tel Aviv on Thursday to protest the new bill which they see as condescending.
These women claim that they chose to be strippers and that there are no interested parties behind them. “Let us dance in peace” and “The stigma kills” say the slogans on the signs they’ve prepared, the publication Haaretz reported.
“No one sent us to protest or be interviewed. The very question is infuriating: Why is it necessary to think that I’m being exploited by someone? I like my work and I’m proud of it,” a stripper named Eden told the publication.
The other strippers who share Eden’s opinion said that they don’t do drugs or drink as is sometimes assumed by others. They all have bachelor degrees from universities and most of them live a double life as they hide their dancing from their families due to the stigma attached to strippers.
“I choose the customer and I can get a customer thrown out if he tries to touch me or do something I don’t want him to do. It’s the stigma about stripping that hurts me, not the customers,” Eden added.
However, not all the women who work or worked as strippers share Eden’s viewpoint. For many stripping created an “emotional void” as they could not admit it to their families. Many women were forced into it because they needed the money.
“I lied to the people close to me about what I was doing. And each time it hurt. And every time I was hoping that somebody would see through my blank expression and realize that I was trying to break free of the iron chains I’d shackled myself with,” a stripper named Lucy told Haaretz.
According to the director, the women also explain the fast track between stripping and prostitution. Then there is violence, sexual assaults and rape that are very common in these places.
Twenty-nine MKs, from both the opposition and coalition, have signed the bill and it will probably be brought to a vote soon.
Member of the Knesset Michal Rozin said that the reason behind her decision to pass the new bill is because she is thinking of women in society as a whole. She doesn’t deny that some strippers don’t agree with her but in her opinion stripping is a form of exploitation.
“I’m still going to work to reduce prostitution in all its forms. Just as we as a society don’t agree that people should be able to sell themselves into slavery, even if someone were to come and say that he wishes to be a slave. Or like we don’t let people sell their kidneys for money. As a society, we say no to that, we don’t think it’s moral for a person to sell their organs. I think it’s not moral for women and men to sell their sexuality and their body for money,” Rozin was reported as saying.