...to think that off-duty police shouldn't go to a strip club?

[TheIckFactor]

Name change here.

My STBXH has admitted that when we were still very much together, he and his police buddies (only the blokes) went to a strip club in another city on their Christmas get-together...

Now it makes sense why they'd travel 100 miles - not for the Christmas markets...

I got the bullshit 'didn't want to be left out/I was drunk'. Yep, a married man, a copper, in his 40s can succumb to peer pressure apparently, poor thing. Yeah, right.

Oh yeah, and it was two Christmases! So that bullshit excuse is stretched real thin the second time. Lovely. Happy Christmas, darling.

So, the rights and wrongs of strip clubs in general - and I'm very much of the view that they're exploitative of women; and of husbands/partners doing this on the sly aside,
what do you all think of off-duty police officers going as a group (probably 10+, I'd guess) to strip clubs?

I feel it speaks to a culture of misogyny within the police, that they would think this is ok, but AIBU?

Sorry, Tutu, I didn't see this:
Quote: "Perhaps I did jump to a conclusion. Can you explain then why you think women in strip clubs would then automatically have less confidence in police if off duty police were occasionally in their strip club? I think you can only have this conclusion if you think only a “bad” cop would be in a strip club. So if it’s not that then, why?"

No, I don't think only a bad cop would be in strip club. My husband isn't bent or bad by any stretch. But his shame in telling me is because he knows that the women are being objectified. That regardless of how much people will say these women are in control or well-paid (surely a generalisation - there's undoubtedly a scale), the men are there to objectify them.

He knows too, that I've known several women who've been raped, all in 'date rape' situations, where they were objectified by the perpetrators. He knows that I would have less confidence in the police, knowing this, if I had to report another rape. That's where I'm coming from. If I'm wrong to think other women, strippers included, would feel less confident, then I'm wrong.

The cherry on top: He knows that I know that a former colleague of his (trained together, then joined different forces) was up on rape and coercive control charges in recent years.

I really am going to bow out now.

At least it sounds as though your ex-husband has grown/matured. That's cheered me up on an otherwise bleak thread.

I get what you mean. Its grim and no YANBU.

Strip clubs are gross anyway, as are men who frequent them.
But for a police officer to choose to go on a works do no less, is just even more grim somehow.

I mean he is in a profession which is supposed to protect people. Including women and vulnerable people.

Yet how can he do that when he has a view of women as objects to get his sexual kicks from?
The two just don't match up.

If you choose a profession which holds such high responsibility, then you need to hold yourself to that responsibility!

If you view 50% of society as objects there for your entertainment and missing out on strip clubs is an issue - change your fucking profession to something which isn't going to hold you morally accountable and isn't about protecting the general public (including women!).

Wow, gina, thanks for this.
I hope people do read it. I hadn't seen it and am grateful to you for flagging it. 🙏

Totally agree. We should be holding police officers to higher moral standards than other people imo.

@TheIckFactor

Yes, the report makes for uncomfortable reading and I think every woman in the UK should take a look. The murder of poor, poor Sarah Everard was a watershed moment and that's why we are seeing so many officers now being sacked or suspended. It isn't because this is a new phenomenon, it has always been this way. But without women's voices very little will change.

But when did it happen?

OP said her STBEH disclosed it 'a long way down the line' during their divorce and is now ashamed of it.

Last year, 5 years 10, 20 or more years ago make huge differences in societies views on strip clubs and the morality of them that should or should not be imposed on public sector workers.

Just because something's legal does not make it moral. However I don't think that people who enter professions which serve the public and therefore have some intrinsic moral value to society, should be excessively penalised and held to higher (arbitrary) standards than the rest of the population. Why can't we raise the moral standards in society across the board?

I think this case just highlights the illogic in strip clubs being legal, because it means as a country we condone abject misogyny at the very least (at worst glossing over abuse, trafficking, exploitation etc) and yet police are meant to take women's complaints of these nature seriously? It doesn't make sense: the "right's and wrong's of strip clubs" are not a matter of subjective opinion separate to the issue of misogyny within the police but a core feature of how misogyny is propagated through society and fails to be addressed precisely because they are not illegal.

Personal life subject to scrutiny and restrictions in excess of most professions.

Restrictions on what you can do off duty

Expectation that you are without prejudice or personal opinion regardless if that opinion effects the discharge of your duties or not

No employee rights - Annual leave can be cancelled, you can be compelled to go/stay on duty, rest days can be cancelled with no notice. No right to a union. No working time directive.

Pay - top whack PC/DC about 40k

People wonder why you get the caliber of officer you do. The Met is a special case but it's an issue I the county forces too.

I left a good 14+ years ago within five years of leaving I was on 70k chopping spreadsheets about, 9-5, employee rights, weekends off, no confrontation.

Why would anyone with half a brain stay? The pension - was good, now you get it at 65 having paid in 15% with a shortened life expectancy due to constant shift work.

I can see the progressive guardian reading males lining up already!!

For my part, although I am sure many on here find my paying for massages repugnant I also managed to convict several rapists without my surely held latent women hating views coming through.

Not every officer is a couzens, nearly all officers (who aren't in these little toxic cliques) are too lazy/overworked/uninterested to make any level of social interaction with anyone beyond immediate colleagues. I went to maybe 2 does in my years, hated them. Never went out with other officers, I liked having the job as just job and a real life outside.

I know a police offiicer who does cocaine on a night out. My teacher sister smokes weed occasionally. I don't like drugs personally but love a drink. If they were off duty I don't see the problem. You wouldn't look at me at work (I don't think) at my community job and think I love alcohol and occassionally dancing on tables but I do 🤣

I believe it was two of the last few Christmases we were together. 2021 and I'm guessing 2019 as 2020 was the lockdown Christmas, wasn't it?
So post the deaths of Sarah Everard, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman and the resulting media coverage.

I should say that I probably phrased that poorly! By 'the rights and wrongs of strip clubs aside', I was trying to say I wasn't canvassing people's opinions on strip clubs in general (no doubt it's been discussed on many a MN thread) just trying to hone in specifically on a group of police going to one for a Christmas work do.
Totally take your point.

Can a police officer watch porn or subscribe to Only Fans?

The old trope of "one bad apple" is bullshit.

No it isn't, the full phrase is, "One bad apple will spoil the whole barrel" which is why you don't put up with a single bad apple.

Can we please stop with the idea that all women working in strip clubs are abused and forced? I worked at one when I was younger, not as a stripper but worked along side them for years. Nobody forced me. I was young, hot, and wanted to make enough money for college. Pretty much everyone else was there for the same reasons. Legitimate strip clubs go through great lengths to insure that nobody is forced, because that would shut them down fast. Lot of strippers are mothers, wives and girlfriends. Does abuse happen, of course, but not as much as you think.

It doesn't sit well with me OP.

But then I've seen the third series of Underbelly.

Imagine being a female officer working with them. 😕

Not surprised in the slightest, considering the number of police officers being investigated for sexual crimes against women.

I would have more faith in a potato helping in a sexual abuse case than a police officer.

The expectation that people in public office maintain certain moral standards has really only slipped in the last half century - still well within living memory.

Yes-the moral standards held by Catholic Church leaders over the last centuries were very high.
Politicians have always been bribable and still are.
People are people all over not angels.

I've never met a policeman that wasn't a bigoted dumb idiot so I'm not surprised! I certainly would never marry one!

Why on earth not?

Up to now the police haven't worried too much whether any of their staff were in fact criminals, let alone worried about what they get up to in their spare time.

People with professional, responsible, public facing jobs and particularly those upholding the law should be scrutinised to a high degree.

It's not something that has "slipped in the last half century" FFS, it's something that has always happened, largely because it's nearly always men in charge, because of the partiarchy, and we didn't even used to be able to challenge them or even find out about this shit.

We need to continue to challenge them (society, not just women) and hold them to account. God, it's exhausting, people seem to expect so little!

This was exactly my train of thought when I read your OP. I realise that it’s not illegal but I still find it particularly disappointing and yet another example of the misogyny that seems to be rampant within the police.

I used to work for n a bar and occasionally they have a stripper (male and female at different times)in the function room

I can honestly say as stupid as it sounds it wasn’t particularly sexual it was a laugh
and men respected the strip’s boundaries and behaved themselves far better than the women did at there events

I lived with a senior copper for years.

He removed himself from social situations where people were openly breaking the law (smoking pot etc) because he could not risk being found in those circumstances and to have done nothing about it. Even off duty. The standards in public office thing is taken very seriously.

I'd say they were taking a huge risk because if the club had been raided that night and even one underage girl found on the premises, they risked being demoted.

I don't believe the peer pressure excuse for one second. It's more likely they went 100 miles to be off their patch, and not likely to be recognised.

Oh the women are the worst behaved by far. At the club I worked at would have ladies nights every few months but had to stop because the customers were to out of control. Imagine a bunch of drunk, middle age women with zero boundaries.