After Peter Stringfellow, there's a way to overhaul the sex club industry without getting rid of it entirely

The club owner took the stigma away from sex and made it seem aspirational, yet available. He changed the world. But he only changed it for men

Every obituary that I have read about Peter Stringfellow mentions the Beatles. Stringfellow, before his name became synonymous with stripping, was a concert promoter, and he scored his first big success when the Fab Four appeared at one of his gigs in Sheffield.

Reports of his life focus on his celebrity friendships and connections, the value of his business empire and his relationship with his family. It seems distasteful to talk about the fact that he became well known and wealthy for his work within the sex industry.

However, during the late Nineties and early Noughties, Stringfellow popped up regularly on TV and was presented to us as a pleasure loving naughty grandpa. He was married three times and claimed to have had sex with over 2,000 women. When he was 68, he married a ballet dancer, Bella Wright, who was 41 years his junior.

Yet his well known hedonistic streak has barely been mentioned, even though it seemed to be the defining characteristic of his public persona. It’s almost as if we have found ourselves in the middle of #MeToo, staring down the barrel of a pussy grabber’s presidency, and we’ve suddenly realised there was something a little off about his love of naked ladies.

On its website, Stringfellows’, the club bearing its founder’s name, promotes itself by promising: “unashamedly upmarket, stylish luxury, the most seductive girls”. It is described as a gentleman’s club, and although women are permitted to come in as paying customers, the dynamic is gendered. Almost every guest is a man, and they pay for the attentions of a staff that is entirely made up of beautiful women, wearing only underwear.

In 2006, Stringfellow was the first club owner to gain a fully nude license from Westminster City council, and in 2008, he criticised the attempt to impose greater regulation on strip clubs, saying “Mine are not sexual encounter clubs. They are gentlemen’s clubs… of course it’s sexually stimulating, but so is a disco, so is a pretty girl.”

Up to a point, he sanitised the sex industry, making it seem normal for celebrities like Rod Stewart and Stephen Hawking to come in for a lap dance. But perhaps this was at the expense of the women who grew up in a world in which they were suddenly expected to be sexually available, with a premium placed on their attractiveness.

For many men and women, Stringfellow represented a libertine freedom. When he was born, in 1940, sex wasn’t a subject for public discussion, contraception wasn’t readily available and sex outside of marriage was associated with shame. It was almost impossible to have a conversation about sexual satisfaction, let alone about how it might be achieved.

Stringfellow, like his contemporary, Hugh Hefner, responded to the changing mood and fostered it. He took the stigma away from sex and made it seem aspirational, yet available. He changed the world. But he only changed it for men.

Stringfellow didn’t invent lapdancing clubs, or objectification. He made money because he responded to an existing demand, and it was in his interests to grow that demand as much as possible. In some ways, his work furthered the sexual revolution. However, his death represents the end of an era, and I hope it prompts us to think about sex and the way it is sold to us. Like Hugh Hefner, Stringfellow didn’t simply sell sex – he promoted a lifestyle that seemed as seductive as the women who were employed to shill it. However, that lifestyle has become anachronistic.

Lapdancing clubs with “seductive girls” belong to a different time, in which men-only spaces are everywhere, women are restricted to their homes and getting sexual and intellectual fulfilment from your romantic partner is a subject rarely discussed.

Times have changed. When we’ve accepted that love is love, gender is fluid, and we’re encouraged to celebrate our sexual connection with our romantic partners, strip clubs as we know them seem bizarre, like smoking on the bus or having every television channel cease broadcast at 9pm.

Most of us want to live in a place in which everything is for everyone, and we’re suspicious of people who wish to defend a world in which “men are men” and women are nearly naked.

There’s nothing wrong with selling or paying for sexual stimulation as long as all parties are safe, willing and comfortable. However, it’s impossible to guarantee those conditions when only women are for sale, because it becomes a buyers’ market. Of course, there are women who pay for sex, and men who pay for sex that isn’t with women. The success of Magic Mike, a film about a troupe of male strippers (made for $7m, grossing $167.2m worldwide) is a clear indication that the sex industry can attract a huge volume of customers that doesn’t fit the typical Stringfellows client profile.

If the sex industry is going to become a useful and positive one, we need to look at what Stringfellow did for straight men, and make it happen for everyone else. Many of us still struggle with issues around sex, because we feel anxious, guilty or ashamed. Some of us are processing the trauma that was caused by another person’s sense of sexual entitlement – because when we tell men that women exist only for their gratification, there’s bound to be much collateral damage.

It’s time to stop telling men that being surrounded by semi-naked women is aspirational. Strip clubs can’t work if they are spaces in which women are being presented and sold alongside champagne and cigars.

We can’t morally regulate the sex industry, or solve any of the problems it causes by shaming the buyers and sellers. Yet we can make sure that it’s an industry that doesn’t polarise genders. Stringfellow once said his clubs “broke down the fear a lot of people have about sex”. I hope that this is the legacy he leaves – not just for the men who were welcomed into his world, but for everyone.