Am i being unreasonable to not be ok with my husband going to a strip club?

[cocktail82]

Next weekend my husband is going on a stag do, and one of the nights the activity is going to a strip club. I hate the idea of him going there and oogling all these half naked woman and putting his hand in his pocket and paying for a dance. It just feels like some sort of legalised cheating to me, but he said its just how stag dos are these days, and do I expect him to wait outside whilst the others go in?!

Of course I dont, but would like to think all of the married men on the stag do would have a bit more respect for their wives and say they will go somewhere else and meet them later or something, am I being unreasonable to be upset about this?

Next time you're chatting to your best friend the ex stripper, ask her about trafficked women, pimps, the death rate among workers in the sex industry...............I could go on but that'll do for a start.

ApocalypseThen. Again no. I am not telling you what to think. I am sharing what I think.
I am astonished to hear that most of the respondents on mumsnet are women though. I mean, that comes as a complete surprise to me.

Anyway, shared my view. Your choice whether to just put me down as an unthinking male apologist or whatever.

I should really know better than to try reductio ad absurdum in polite arguement.

Ohdp, I too have refused to go to stripclubs in similar circumstances as your partner for what appear to be similar reasons. I do not deny the inconsistency.

OP it is your right to think and feel as you wish. If your reaction is as visceral as all that then maybe "reassess[ing] your relationship" is appropriate. My view (not widely shared within this group, clearly) is that yabu and that splitting up over it would be extremely sad. I wish you the best of luck and hope that you reach an understanding with your partner that allows you to both go forward in harmony.

Anyway, shared my view. Your choice whether to just put me down as an unthinking male apologist or whatever.

Mansplainer, really, is what I'm thinking.

Wouldn't have a problem with my dp going into one of these places, but i would mind him having a dance. Iv told him this.
He has no interest in these places at all though, doesn't see the point of them.

"I should really know better than to try reductio ad absurdum in polite arguement."

Yes you should. Because most intelligent people know that it is patronising at best, or ridiculous at worst.

ApocalypseThen yes I expected that, just picked a different word.
I don't claim authority except over my own opinion. I don't say or imply "all", I explicitly did the opposite.

I don't claim authority except over my own opinion. I don't say or imply "all", I explicitly did the opposite.

You assume some authority to judge what demeans me and other women, though, which is claiming authority in an area which, it's safe to assume, we have a right to judge for ourselves. Of course you can have an opinion, and I couldn't prevent you expressing it even if I wanted to, but in this case, it's not really for you to say.

ApocalypseThen, sorry, the "authority" thing was directed at JohnFarleyRuskin, who seems to think I claim some. The name had slipped onto previous page so I couldn't see it.
I take your point however and reiterate the upthread post that I'm only expressing my opinion not trying to prescribe yours.
Anyway, this starting to feel a bit self-indulgent and surely won't be helping the op, so that's my last attempt to mansplain my point of view

YANBU

It makes me feel 'orrible just thinking about it. I'd let my husband go. You know what I mean as in I wouldnt stop him but I wouldn't hide how bummed out it would make me.

I just find strip clubs, porn, prostitution and the like just make me really sad. But that's just me.

PiperRose

My best friend had a wealth of choices, she chose to go to university, she chose to take a well-paid, well-respected job to do during the week and then chose to dance semi-naked around a pole for an awful lot more money during the weekend. She wasn't exploited in any way. Again, I know there is horrendous exploitation in this industry but would like to reiterate that it's not all about exploitation.

Your friend wasn't exploited. Do you think though she helped to legitimise the industry though so other people could be exploited? Stories like this minimise the harm that is done to vulnerable and exploited women bceause there is always one to pop up Belle Du Jour style to say how empowering it was for them. It's why I despise men like Wayne Rooney - ok he pays his hooker 500 a time but the message that is given out is "well if a multimillionaire with a hot wife can buy women then there is no shame in me doing it" even though this will likely involve a woman statistically more likely to have been abused earlier in life.

I've been giving this more thought than my earlier comment way up thread. I remembered working in one of those "work hard play hard" type offices and the "lads" would often go to a lap dancing bar on payday - in their lunch time. The "lads" included everyone from the married department boss in his 40s to the school leaver. I don't think any of them felt good about it - anyone who'd had a dance (usually paid for by ervyone else) was mocked mercilessly - it seemed to be some kind of weird tool to just up that "lad banter" rubbish and the women were almost irrelevant.

YANBU

It's even a deal breaker here. Thankfully, he has never been in one and hates the whole industry.

It would change my opinion of him greatly if he ever decided to go against everything he believes in and went to one. A man who happily treat women as commodities is not one I could respect.

And paying for a dance is cheating imo.

If a half naked women came onto your partner in a nightclub and straddled him and danced seductively in his lap then that would be cheating by most peoples standards right? I don't understand how some people would find that cheating but they don't find a lap dance cheating. Having a naked women grinding my husband is cheating to me full stop, money being exchanged would make it even worse for me I think.

His sexual frustration will rise (because whatever your sex drive his is going to be greater)

You should probably also ensure your partner has no access to the internet (most men masturbate and if you think strip clubs are bad you ain't seen nothing).

Am I misunderstanding something, Mitna? The first statement couldn't be clearer: you are telling us that men want sex more than women do.
In the second statement you make masturbation and masturbation to porn equivalent - most of us can see a difference - and suggest that women who are against strip clubs are anti-masturbation - I don't know where you get that from.

Some strange attitudes on this thread - looking at you Mitna.

PiperRose - I wonder how many years it is since your friend worked in that industry, and how she feels about it now.

Oh and it has nothing to do with jealousy with me either.

You can't dictate what another person does no, but I would hope that most people would put their partners feelings above their friends and desire to see naked women dance.

If there was a history of controlling behaviour then that is an entirely different matter, but the op's husband has decided that he would rather go to the strip club and doesn't care how it hurts the op.

Some have asked why OP's wishes trumps his. Well, I would weigh it up.. his desire to see naked women or saving his wife some hurt. I know what would be more important to me. If my husband was a control freak who wanted to stop me seeing my friends etc then that is a different issue, but the OP only wants her husband to not go to the strip club and he has decided that he would rather hurt her and go and that has to hurt OP. I wouldn't want to be married to a man who would put a stag do over his wife when her feelings are perfectly valid and she presumably has no history of controlling behaviour.

I know it's the done thing here to say how cool you are and how you would never ask your husband to not to do something even if it deeply hurts you but in my marriage, he matters more to me than a night out. I don't think it is controlling or bossy for the OP to ask her husband not to go to a strip club. It isn't like she is trying to stop him having a social life and friends.

Does calling us condescending bitches offer a clue?

PiperRose please do thank your friend for proving my point so eloquently.

The exploitation/trafficking issue is a huge one for me. But so is the general way in which the sex industry portrays women- as commodities to be bought and sold. Commodities whose main (or only) value lies in their physical appearance.

This message doesn't just come from strip clubs, it comes from thousands of other places as well. But that doesn't make it right.

Despite intending to keep quiet... Johnfarleysruskin, I believe that many men wish to engage in sexual activity more frequently than many women, and an ad hoc internet search "differences between men and women's sex drive" implies a proportion of "experts" agree with me. I also believe that many men, possibly a majority, have used pornography as a sexual stimulus material. The existence of a multi billion pound Internet porn industry tends to support that belief.

Perhaps my veiwpoint on this was primed by another thread I was reading immediately prior to this one. The op said both she and her partner had high sex drives having intercourse multiple times per day but that whilst that had changed for her (after kids) he was continuing his sexual demands. The thread finished with her leaving him (quite right too based on the detail)

My personal experience is that of all the couples I know, in only one case does the female partner complain of a lack of sex, whereas it is a more prevalent complaint among the male partners.

None of this is universal, we are all thankfully different. I made reference to that only once in my post because repetition becomes intrusive in the flow of the text and because it's self evident anyway.

Personally I find the online porn industry in particular to be more unpleasant than the sex dance industry. You are free to hold your own view. I have already apologised elsewhere for the extended reductio arguement, which I agree was poorly chosen.
I was not suggesting that there is an equivalence between anti strip club and anti masturbation. I was trying to imply that masturbation frequently involves materials more detrimental than the strip club.

Mitna, since you have been so kind as to "mansplain" to us, allow me to "scientist-splain" something to you. There is this thing called sample bias. You are a man (at least, that is what you tell us - I'm reminded of the famous cartoon with the caption "on the internet, no-one knows you're a dog"). A man living in a gendered society. A society where, on the whole, men are socialised to have "locker room conversations" with other men, and women are socialised to have "women's toilets" (for want of a better phrase) conversations with other women. And, surprise, surprise, only one woman of your acquaintance has moaned about her husband's low sex drive. Does that tell us something significant about women as a whole, or does it tell us about sample bias? Pretty obviously the latter, I'd have said.

Mitna the male executives and owners at the top ARE responsible for the conduct of what goes into the magazines and newspapers too.

If that wasn't true Rupert Murdoch wouldn't have felt the need to apologise to the Dowlers for the NOTW despicable behaviour.

And your insistence that men ALWAYS have a higher sex drive than women....is absolute rubbish. Take a read of the Relationships board someday.

Therapist Andrew Marshall also says that the couples/ or one half of a couple seeking therapy over this issue.....he says its a pretty even split between the genders.

Ah Mitna, what you argued in your last post was quite different from your earlier posts.

Perhaps it would have been clearer if, instead of trying to explain men, women and the universe to us, (silly innocents with our low sex drives), you just said: "As a father of two daughters, I believe it is far superior to pay an 18yr old to rub her fanny in my face live (she might be training to be a doctor!) than to watch an 18 year old getting fisted by ugly men on the internet."

Mitna the thread to which you allude is not in the least bit relevant to this thread, or to any discussion about the differences about male or female sex drives. That thread was about a man sexually abusing his wife, in front of his children. It provided no demonstration at all about male vs female sex drives. Sexual abuse is about power, not sex.

Agatha I agree. There is no link. I was however thinking about how sex drive changes over time differently between the sexes ... as a result of reading that thread.

This io9.com/5977668/do-men-really-have-higher-sex-drives-than-women seems to be a reasonable roundup of the sparse evidence. Prudishness and sample bias do make it difficult to study. I found this with the search phrase "comparing men and women sex drive" although it was not top of the results returned I did not select it because it agrees with me but because it seemed well written. I haven't read the entire article yet and I haven't checked who io9 are, so if they're a well known "men's rights" lobby, feel free to castigate me.

Whatever the certainty others feel that the reverse of my opinion is true, that looks like a live debate to me.

JFR, take out the emotive language and that would sum it up, yes. But that was very much a sub sub point. I still think that the most damage to young girls is done by the pervasive imagery of mainstream media rather than any aspect of the sex industry. At least the sex industry is clearly purposed ... when my daughters ask me if they are too fat; the clothes they wear, their beliefs about gender appropriate jobs behaviour and attitudes ... that's not a result of porn or strip clubs.

Women are not trafficked or murdered in the cosmetics industry, of course. But there are links with bulimia and suicide.

Lurcio thanks so much for the explanation of sample bias. I wonder if anything like that influences the responses one gets when asking a question on mumsnet? Naah, probably not.

I get the impression that some people think stripping is ok if the stripper is paying for Uni with the money. I find it an odd thing to comment on.