Prostitution, pornotainment and Denver politicians

Victory Theater in Denver circa 1969 by John Whitworth. From the DPL Western History Collection.

This post is about Troy Lowrie, the Denver strip-club and pornotainment baron, political donor and philanthropist who was busted in a prostitution sting on Colfax Avenue in July.

I know — I went from writing about rosaries and Mother Cabrini on this blog to chronicling prostitution as it intersects with Denver politics. City hall wishes the issue of prostitution would go away. For this reason alone, the topic is worth exploring. Also, misogyny bothers me — normalized, “acceptable” misogyny bothers me even more — and when people say, “Misogyny? What misogyny?” my head explodes.

Plus, I’ve been reading Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines. It’s an eye-opening, infuriating analysis of the cruelty, degradation, and ubiquity of modern pornography. I admit that I have a risqué sensibility, but I had no clue about current trends in porn prior to reading this book. Dines dissects how our culture has been “well groomed to accept pornography as a part of everyday life rather than as an industry that produces a system of images that debases and dehumanizes women and men.”

Back to Troy Lowrie. 5280 profiled him in September 2005 as a strip-club king with a heart of gold. Lowrie expanded the lucrative skin empire he inherited, and gained legitimacy by investing “a small fortune” in strategic charitable gifts. According to the article, Lowrie often puts his young daughter on stage “to present the oversize cardboard checks at charity events.” One such check went to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. From the 5280 article:

“Daddy,” [Lowrie] recalls [his daughter Gabrielle] saying, “if people say it’s wrong for you to do this, well, is it wrong?” Lowrie told her no, it wasn’t wrong. “And it means we can do things like give $100,000 to find a cure for cancer.” What Lowrie didn’t tell Gabrielle was that in each of the strippers, he saw a bit of his mother.

Grab your hankie.

“My mom tried to raise me,” [Lowrie] says. “But she didn’t have any help. She couldn’t do it alone.” Matter-of-factly, he adds, “The day a woman comes in to fill out an application here [at the Diamond Cabaret] is usually a low point. No one says, ‘I’m at the top of my game, now I’ll be a stripper.’” Lowrie knows many of the young entertainers work his tabletop stages only to feed their own kids. He stages “Dreamgirls Workshops,” seminars that provide tips for boosting income but also teach life skills like balancing a checkbook. “They should leave us better than the day they came here,” Lowrie says. “That’s the way this business should work.”

Isn’t that beautiful? How can anyone accuse Lowrie of misogyny or exploitation of women? He’s trying to help. He loves women. Never mind that several women working at one of Lowrie’s clubs said they were fired when they became pregnant, as Westword reported in 1999.

There are a couple of creepy messages conveyed by Lowrie’s “philanthropy,” aside from the overall message that money buys social esteem, regardless of the source of one’s income.

First, there’s the whole madonna-whore dichotomy thing. Money earned from the skin of strippers becomes righteous when it’s given to “madonnas,” women battling breast cancer. Lowrie sets up his own daughter as a madonna — a virginal girl who presents gifts in a kind of psychological money laundering. Presto. Dirty profits from dirty women are made clean by association with clean women for clean purposes.

After all, Lowrie could insist that his strippers present the checks to charity. They have more to do with making the gifts possible than Lowrie’s daughter. But no.

Second, there’s the way Lowrie resolves the fundamental cognitive dissonance of his industry: Profiting from the bodies of women who are at a low point in their lives is exploitive; but trying to make the women “better” and giving money to charity is good. Therefore, exploiting women is good as long as you “teach life skills” and give some of the profits to charity. Apparently, members of Denver’s philanthropic community have bought into this rationalization, too.

Lowrie profits from gender rules and norms that disadvantage women. His “philanthropic” efforts do nothing to challenge this system. It’s disingenuous at best to portray Lowrie as a friend of women.

In the 2011 municipal election, Lowrie contributed at least $45,000 to failed mayoral candidate Chris Romer. Opponent James Mejia cited this as one of Romer’s demerits, but the issue didn’t gain traction. Lowrie also contributed at least $3,000 to the campaign of now-Mayor Michael Hancock. But again: Ho hum. The spoils of misogyny grease the wheels of Denver politics and no one bats an eye.

The Denver Post’s account of Lowrie’s July prostitution bust didn’t bother to mention his role as a high-profile donor in the municipal election. A month earlier, the paper had strategically delayed publishing allegations that Mayor Hancock was linked to the Denver Players prostitution ring. The paper’s failure to mention Lowrie’s ties to local politicians is perhaps another example of selective nonreporting to protect Denver’s power elite from embarrassment.

When a Denver Public Works crew was caught on camera during work hours taking off their shirts and posing for pictures with strippers at Lowrie’s Diamond Cabaret recently, news reports didn’t mention Lowrie or the new mayor’s connection to Lowrie. One TV station pointed out that Diamond Cabaret is a block from city hall. Either it was brazen of the crew to park their truck at a strip club just across Colfax from the mayor’s office, or they had no worries about being reprimanded. Like, maybe, they thought their behavior was totally acceptable.

From philanthropists to politicians to public workers, it seems that Denverites have been “well groomed to accept pornography as a part of everyday life .”

I do have to give The Denver Post credit for publishing details about Lowrie’s arrest:

At 2:15 p.m. July 13, Lowrie allegedly approached a female undercover Denver police officer who was working in a prostitution sting and engaged the officer multiple times, according to the complaint against him. Driving a black Hummer, Lowrie allegedly circled the block, whistled, waved and honked to get the officer’s attention….Lowrie allegedly told the officer he owned PT’s and asked her to “work for him.”

What a prince.