Strip club

[amioverreactng]

If your husband/partner told you they were going to go to the strip club during a stag do that's planned for the next couple of months, how would you feel?

He has said he won't be buying a dance but to me still ogling over half naked women isn't nice.

He said he can't just sit outside while 15 of his friends are inside enjoying themselves.

Also, if you've been to a strip club/know what they're like please give some insight. I've told him how it will make me feel and he's done the whole "oh so I can't go to the stag do at all now" and is trying to make me feel guilty. I have no problem with the stag do, but I do with the strip club. He's also told me that he's been to strip clubs before, which is news to me, but never since we've been together so he must enjoy them to want to keep going back?

Please give me some advice. My confidence is an all time low anyway, not through any of his other actions, just within myself so the thought of how much better looking these women are makes me want to be sick.

@amioverreactng

Or even examples of jobs, a really nice bar was hiring near us and I said I would have liked to give bar work a go for a while, just because it's something completely different to what I do now and it was very similar pay and hours. He completely looked down on it and then later admitted that he wouldn't like it because of the attention from men? It's just not fair

Then your partner is a sexist misogynistic twat and need to have a word with himself op.

Which is what these threads always reveal

Wives and girlfriends who don't immediately say "yeah that's cool" are branded 'controlling' yet when the boot is on the other foot, they expect to be able to dictate their female partners behaviour. ("Do you like tattoos?" "No" "ok then, I won't get one" vs "I really struggle with the idea of you going to a strip club. Can we talk about that?" "nooooo stop being so controlling"

And do you know the worst thing? we do it! We actually stop in our tracks and toe the line because they don't like it.
Without question!

Go the patriarchy!

Op. He's a hypocrite.

I wouldn't like it one bit.

[quote Aria999]@yomommasmomma

😳 No totally true I promise!

And yes a little inappropriate but it was an interesting life experience.

He was the MD, he wasn't gonna sack himself [/quote]
I am sorry you had to work for someone like that. It shows why there is still so much work to do to get even close to equality for women in the workplace.

I wish I was like some of you who are okay with it but I'm just not

No. You don't ever have to be 'okay' with it just to appease your 'd'h

The usual trope has been spun out 'my mate done it and she wasn't exploited and made a tonne of money and paid her way through uni and now has a nice home and no debts

For every 1 woman that happens to, the are 1000's who are exploited and damaged.

And also the old trope 'well men do it and women don't complain. I would never be friends with anyone who hired a butler in the buff or went to see the chippendales. Because we would have absolutely nothing in common.

Women are allowed to have boundaries and mine is women being used as nothing but wank fodder, or objects to be leered at. Gross.

@MarshmallowAra

You aren't the boss of me, telling me when I can post. Damned cheek.

I personally disliked the entire spectacle, and felt like an observer of a kind of mania.

But my point still stands.

@yomommasmomma

Yes it wasn't ideal.

The strange thing was the MD was basically a good guy, I think he genuinely just didn't realize. (It was a nightclub company so he probably saw it as vaguely work adjacent). He was recently divorced from his wife but he didn't have any dances, was clearly uninterested in the view, and other than keeping the unwanted solicitations away from the rest of us a bit he didn't engage with it much.

My married line manager on the other hand immediately went off with a dancer. I lost all respect for him. Luckily he was fired soon after (unrelated reasons) so I didn't have to keep working for him.

I didn’t realise Strip Clubs still existed. I thought they went out with the Ford Cortina ! .

It's horrid and exploitative on women and sleazy bonding against you for the men.

And if anyone on here think the men going to these aren't doing more than looking, you're so so wrong.

The men back each other up with the 'it's boring and not sexy' line as cover. The vast majority (if not all) are fully FULLY participating.

If having the lads bonding over wanking on women, deeply touching them up or paying for sex is seen as the best launch into a marriage, you're screwed.

Raise your bar higher. This is not ok. It is not innocent.

Id just think they were gross. My lovely Uncle (by marriage) went on a cricket tour/ stag do, about four years ago, he was just mortified. He's a 52 year old farmer, invited out for a young lad on the teams stag. He waited outside with the father of the bride

@ComtesseDeSpair

I’m told by all the men I know who’ve ended up in strip clubs on lads’ nights and stag dos that they’re pretty unsexy, really expensive, and generally very few of the group especially want to be there but get herded in by the two or three who do and mostly just sit there drinking and chatting as they would in another bar and not really being all that interested in the dancers.

It doesn’t matter particularly how any else feels or if they think it’s fine. If your DP going is a dealbreaker for you and he’s determined that’s he’s going to, then you have a conversation to have about the future of your relationship.

I also agree with this. If he just goes in and nurses a drink while the others partake, I wouldn't hold it against him.

What's with the "half-naked"? Strip clubs in the UK do full nudity. I think it's Ireland where they are prohibited from doing that.

A college friend of mine worked as a stripper. She ended up hating men, had real problems with them for years afterward.

And male strip shows are different to female ones. It's a different power dynamic. If the female strippers are shagging the punters after work it will be as a further financial transaction, not for fun.

Disrespectful to women and honestly repulsive. I wouldn't want my partner to go, nor want to go.

It's not naive to believe your husband or partner when they say they haven't been to one. I am 100% sure my dp has never been in one, he would tell me, he has no reason to lie to me. All our friends are joint, we have been together over 10 years and worked together for most of those. If he had gone, I would know.

Also not naive. My ex told me about the stag nights where the men all have sex with the stripper the one he was invited to was full of senior legal professionals.

Or the golf weekend his mates went to (he stayed back in Hong Kong with the wives and girlfriends). Only they had gone to a brothel not a golf hotel. None of the women had a clue. All “nice” youngish middle class professional men. I am very cynical now but not of dh not his thing. Why I married him after dumping my ex!

I wouldn't really be bothered. He's not interested in strip clubs, finds them a bit seedy and cringe really, but in a stag group it's part and parcel a lot of the time. I've found he's become a lot more opposed to them over time.

But that doesn't make your feelings any less valid as we each have a line in the sand, but all in different places, and my partner is not yours.

I don't think male strip shows/Chippendale's stuff is alright either. It's not about whether he or I are going to fall in love with a stripper and run off with them. In my book, it's just wrong no matter who's doing it. I'm glad I managed to marry a man who shares my moral values as I'd hate to have to have this conversation with him.

OP, whatever else you choose to do, don't choose to feel differently about strip clubs yourself.

“And you believed all of that“

Some men don’t enjoy sleaze and exploitation any more than some women.

I am not comfortable with strippers, and I would not personally go to such a place. However, quite a few of my female friends have been to see male strippers, I think Magic Mike, Dreamboys etc. I am equally uncomfortable with this personally, but I would not say that for men or women this is an awful thing to do/have done and it certainly would not be a reason to break a relationship for.

My advice... be really clear about what your boundaries are. Specifically and explicitly articulate them, in particular what is a deal breaker to you and what you think your reaction would be. Don't leave anything unsaid. He then can make an informed choice about what he does, knowing how you feel, and will know what it means to you if he does/ doesn't. It's not controlling, it's being clear about your boundaries.
I wish I had. I am now in a shitty situation where I know some of what went on, private dances and ££££. We nearly broke up, talked through it etc etc, but now with the passing of time and complications of life means it feels like I can't keep bringing it up. But it also means I'm stuck. It has impacted me massively, in terms of how I view him, and how I feel. I can't get that back and I wish I had not been so naive to think 'he's not like that, that won't happen'

On a stag do I think it is more about having a laugh out with the lads and not about the semi naked girls perse! Personally, I do think it is controlling to tell him not to go. It's not like he is asking to sleep with her. Its just a few expensive drinks with the lads. To be fair, I went to one and me and my DH was amazed at how skilful working on a pole is!!

Ohtobezen - thank you for that! I have set it straight on how it would make me feel. I've apologised this morning, just because I don't like to drag things on and maybe I spoke in a way I shouldn't as he did upset me. He apologised also for how he was saying things but it's still hurting that he'd even want to go. But I did reiterate the fact of how it would make me feel and how upset I'd be. If he choose to go regardless, I know how he views me and our relationship and I have told him there wouldn't be a relationship after that so let's see.

Ohh that's so sad to hear, I hope you recover from that. It's really hard when someone completely breaks your trust. An ex of mine broke my trust repeatedly and I couldn't get over it. I don't want it to be the same with my partner and this has been a boundary I've set from day one so I don't know why he'd even think about going.

For me, strip clubs are right up there with nude calendars as men’s way of openly disrespecting women. (Someone will be along in a moment to tell me women also like strip clubs and nude calendars; I’m not sure I believe it). It is not so much the “cheating” aspect that bothers me as the open contempt for women’s dignity.

Why are you apologising for reminding him of your perfectly valid boundary op?

Think about working on your self esteem, you don't need to apologise and shouldn't have done. You have done absolutely nothing wrong.

Just for some balance, I have a lot of male friends and pretty much all my colleagues are men. Plenty of them don't entertain strip clubs on stag dos for a variety of reasons including finding them seedy and the expense of it. Plenty of them have just gone to another bar and there's pretty much always more than 1 of them who doesn't want to go, so they just buddy up and go to a bar.

My DH used to work in a horrible company where going to strip clubs was part of the culture for xmas do's etc. He always opted out and had no interest whatsoever in participating in something that objectified and degraded women. He didn't feel the need to explain or discuss. It just didn't fit with his values. He would go to the pub element of the do earlier in the evening. He would do the same if it was a stag do - go for the earlier part and then drop out if there was something horrendous like a strip club - by that stage everyone would probably be horribly drunk anyway and hardly notice.

Tbh OP it wouldn't cross my mind that the women being better looking would be an issue at all. If my DH had been so shallow then I don't think he would have been good enough for me! I'd want someone to be with me for my mind as much as my looks, if not more.