Lots of Sizzle (But No Steak) at Vegan Strip Club

What might be the world's only vegan strip club opened last month in Portland. There are no leather or other animal products used in any of the on-stage costumes, and most of the strippers say they're vegan as well. Instead of the usual bar grub, the menu has vegan replicas of chicken nuggets and the like. As the owner has charmingly put it in interviews, "the only meat we have is up on stage."

A long-time vegan himself, Johnny Diablo, seems a little defensive about his enterprise -- or let's say he's gotten used to defending himself. As he said to a reporter from Maclean's, "Critics throw that word around a lot: exploitation. Let's look at it. How are we exploiting women? Are we hacking off their limbs? Peeling their skin away? Putting them on a barbecue? What we're doing to animals is not exploitation; we're murdering them. It's not apples to apples. Critics like to connect it and I wholeheartedly disagree with the people who are in that camp. I call them Feminazis, and I say, 'Hey, we're Femilibertarians: do whatever you want, as long as you don't step on somebody else's hooves.' " [Link]

And here's Good Day Oregon paying a call on the cruelty-free den of sin.