What would you say if your dh went to a lap dancing club?

My first reaction would be astonishment because of his values in life and his attitude to any exploitation or discrimination of any person.
My second would be to tell him to leave and not come back.
He is a blokey bloke in lots of ways- football, sport, night at the pub. But he is so not in lots of ways and never afraid to be himself and speak his mind. I can not think of a single occasion where I have seen him treat anyone rudely. without consideration.
However, for a man who is very sensitive and emotionally astute in so many ways, he has an amazing capacity to drive me mad with trivial things

I would put good money on the fact there are a lot of OHs who have been to clubs without telling their partners. And if you can kid yourself that you would detect the behaviour and sexism you may be fooling yourself. But hey I might be wrong. My DH is very for women's rights in general and can talk about lack of child care and other issues and I Know some of my friends believe him to be the perfect feminist supporter. I am not sure if he could fool me but know that certainly friends would not know that he/we have been to clubs.

askbasil - woman have a sort of antenna? we see through you? really... what a lot of nonsense.

I agree Basil. I wouldn't be friends with a man like this. And a man that goes to a lap dancing club will always betray his sexism. But when it comes to partners of women I really like, or colleagues or relatives, I will do the surface politeness, even when I think you are a shit.

Actually it depresses me how many lovely women I know, who I think are married to men who seem nice on the surface, but are really shits. There are exceptions, but depressingly few. Sometimes I want to say to them, I see who you are really.

"if you met them and didn't know they like lap dancing you'd think they were nice, kind and generous"

Hmm. Interesting. You see, what lots of men don't understand, is that women actually do have a sort of antenna for this sort of thing. We all smooth over social interactions and relationships and adopt a "hear no evil, see no evil" attitude to some of our friends, but deep down we know that some of them who formally we quite like and get on with, are actually at core, sexist creeps who we wouldn't tolerate in our lives if they weren't neighbours work colleagues or husbands of the female friends we do actually rate whose cognitive dissonance we know we have to bear with.

Don't kid yourself we respect you or like you or rate you in any way. We see through you. We'll never tell you we do because the net of social /professional relationships we have is too fragile to disrupt it by making a fuss about what a sexist shit you are in front of our other friends/ colleagues etc. and we resign ourselves to the fact that for the foreseeable future you are going to be in our lives so we have to have a constructive, friendly relationship with you and we may as well enjoy the nice bits of you, like the wit, the interesting conversations etc. So of course you assume that we think you're nice, kind, generous people, because we don't ever let on that that might not be quite the way we see you. But we do see you. And er, we despise you.

Just needed to get that off my chest.

A male friend of mine went. When the women came over to their table to dance, the men had to sit on their own hands. Tell him this. Just this. And leave that statement hanging..,

buffy im a believer in people being allowed to live how they want to live and believe in what they want to believe - no one should have to bow to someone elses standards/beliefs no matter what. As you say a lot of people have their own beliefs about various things but that doesnt mean they dont treat them courteously.

Well I'm friends with these people because their positive traits far outweigh their negatives! Surely it's better to challenge their beliefs rather than just de-friend them - what does that solve? I also know a very racist guy (not a friend thankfully) and when I occasionally see him we get onto the subject - I'd much rather debate it with him and make him understand that his arguments are stupid rather than just not speak to him at all if that makes sense? Maybe each time I chip away at his beliefs just a little.

Relatives are different - you can't choose your relatives (though you can avoid the offensive ones at family gatherings, I find!)

Like I said, your line is up to you.

sorry my post was meant to say i would not stop being friends with them.

the doctrine if someone made some racist comments i would stop being friends with them - and tbh a lot of people on here dont either. you just have to read the political threads speak about UKIP where the majority of people posting have older relatives who do make racist comments and none of them stop being friends with their relatives...

Where you draw the line is up to you, Peggy. Obviously.

If you knew someone who made racist or homophobic comments, would you stay friends with them?

some of these arguments seem to leave behind the fact that some woman want to lap dance and do it of their own free will, they arent bullied into it - they arent coerced into it - they like making money, my friend takes home about 1000 a week...

why are other woman bullying them to stop what they want to do?

jeanseberg captchaos if we stopped being friends with people who did things we didnt like we wouldnt be friends with anyone - where do you draw the line?

So, serious question - how can I start to change my friends' attitudes on this without going on the attack?

Have nothing more to do with them. Why on earth would you want to be friends with people who see others as nothing more than a set of body parts to be ogled?

More importantly - why are you friends with these people in the first place?

It genuinely wouldn't bother me.

By the same token, if I decided I wanted to go see a stripper to mark some kind of event, such as a hen do, I wouldn't expect any man I was with to be bothered by it. And if he was, tough shit. I'm not hanging about to be told what I can or cannot do or instructed on what he deems to be 'acceptable' behaviour on my part.

A man visiting a strip club on a stag do does not make him a misogynist. Just as my cheering on a stripper at a hen do does not make me a misandrist.

If you have strong opinions either way, surely the simplest solution is to be with somebody like-minded to avoid any future issues? Personally, I don't think there's a right or a wrong way to think about this. Think how you will

So, serious question - how can I start to change my friends' attitudes on this without going on the attack?

I don't think it is okay to create a class of women who get sexually exploited and abused, so that other women are not raped.

Grennie fact is the figures were obtained by a freedom of Information request from the Met Police. It is something anyone who wants to can check (not that I would). And also the figures from Newquay obtained by the press also show that rape dropped when a club opened. So close a club rape goes up and open one rape goes down. If anyone claims clubs are linked to rape, for me, they will need so pretty good statistics to back it.

As for exploitation, as people here know, my neighbour dances and she exercises free choice. She has worked in the industry for over 5 years and yes the club make money but then so do the dancers. The choose to exploit the men and see them as walking cash points. So a bit of who is exploiting whom? Would suggest you speak to current dancers if you want to truly understand. Otherwise your just exercising a subjective view.

And sorry for the tiny NC the password reset was linked to an old e-mail account and decided to start anew.

It's actually quite sad how many people I know think like this. However do be reassured that we're not all like that!

bigdig then I pity you. You know some vile misogynists who lie to their partners. I find it strange to think that anyone would wish to continue a friendship with people like that, but then, there's nowt so queer as folk.