Moral dilemma - hen do

[CatttS]

I’ve been invited to a friends hen do - she’s a good friend but I’m not tasked with organising (thankfully!).

The itinerary has been shared and one of the proposed events is a male stripper show.

I’ve told DP in the past that I’d be upset if he was to attend a strip club, and whilst this isn’t strictly the same, I don’t think I’d be happy with him attending an equivalent event.

Everyone who has replied in the group chat has said how excited they are and are looking forward to it.

I could potentially not tell DP about it and attend. I don’t want to come across as awkward by declining to attend and it’s my friends hen so I want to be there to celebrate with her.

YABU - you need to decline
YANBU - Attend, don’t tell DP, it’s a white lie

So, you’d be fine with him going and not telling you, as long as you didn’t directly ask?

You are unreasonable and a hypocrite.

No you wouldn’t. You would be lying by omission and you know that. You certainly wouldn’t say he wasn’t lying if he concealed a strip club trip from you! 🤣

I wouldn't want DH going to a strip club, my DH knows that's a line in the sand for me. I don't view the male version as equivalent, as my issues with it are the exploitation and trafficking of women, and the power dynamic is different the other way round.

I've just asked him out of interest, and he wouldn't really care if I went to something equivalent. That said, it's never come up because it's not something I'd want to see and I wouldn't be interested in going.

I'd speak to your DP and ask him how he'd feel about it, however if he says he wouldn't like it you'd have to respect that.

I'd not lie to my DH about it, and whilst I make the distinction mentally between male and female strippers, if he felt it was the same and it would be a boundary for him I'd obviously understand that.

I've always personally been meh towards strippers - I'll go along to not be a party pooper, but not my thing. Equally if my partner said she was going to one, I'd barely raise an eyebrow and if she didn't tell me, i wouldn't care.

Succinctly put!

A male stripper 'show' is not the same thing as a lap dancing club. I suppose in theory it's double standards, except we all know that male strippers stripping for a female audience are unlikely to offer private 'dances' or straight up sex.

Lap dancing clubs where the dancers are all men and the punters are all women don't really exist as a thing, do they? At best it's a cheesefest along the lines of a Chippendales show, full of whooping and hollering drunken women and their aunties. More of a pantomime type atmosphere, scripted and choreographed, or a one-off visiting stripogram, than seedy sex club run by gangsters.

Not generally the type of 'entertainment' where anyone has been trafficked, or pimped, or where the dancers look pretty bored while they writhe up and down their poles waiting for someone to stick a wodge of cash in her g-string for a private 'dance' and then she's forced to hand most of it over to the owner of the most of the establishment.

I wouldn't fancy going because I find that whole Chippendale thing toe-curlingly awful, but I am quite happy to say that I don't think it's a genuine double standard or even remotely comparable to a lap dancing bar where there is often an expectation of sex or something approaching it.

The thing is though, at hen do’s the women are laughing and having a good time. At stag do’s the men are sitting in silence with a stiffy, eyes glazed over and wishing she was riding him.

Would it be a white lie if he went to a strip club and didn’t tell you? It’s not a white lie, you’re lying to yourself. The truth will come out, it’s bound to, it will be the talk of the wedding. And then your DP will dump you for your double standards and your betrayal of trust, and frankly who can blame him?

This is a better way of saying what I was trying to say!

I was part of a bridal party that had a stripper (I didn’t know) and it was beyond x rated. Totally naked thrusting the bride. So so uncomfortable. If I had known I would have nipped back to my room for an hour

Grim.

You are being a hypocrite.

If you wouldn't like your DP to attend a strip club but are also willing to go and then lie to him about it, you're being a dick.

My opinion is you either need to go and tell him, or go to the do but not attend this section, maybe meet them after for food/drinks.

I don't think you can say it's not the same thing, particularly as your post appears to just illustrate two hypothetical, made up descriptions of strip clubs. I doubt you have any experience in either male or female strip clubs and the context that allows you to justify one but not the other comes straight out of TV and your imagination.

I think for a man to go to something 'equivalent' it would probably be a burlesque show, but men and women tend to go to those together and in roughly equal proportion. I doubt you see many women in your average lap dancing club.

Again, Burlesque may not everyone's cup of tea, but it's undoubtedly a piece of theatre with genuine artistic value and merit. You pay for a ticket to watch the show then you leave. You don't touch, you don't pay for 'extras.' They are properly trained singers, dancers and actors of the caberet variety, not glorified prostitutes with poles between their legs.

You don't respect your partner one bit, do you? You're happy for him to be blissfully ignorant. You don't want him to know that you're a hypocrite doing the same things you've told him he can't.

He deserves better.

Do you know any actual male strip clubs that are designed with female punters in mind? I mean regular, permanent clubs, not travelling shows or troupes.

Not off the top of my head, and it's not what I'll be searching for while I'm in the office.

But my point stands - I haven't had to do any mental gymnastics to say that both male and female strip clubs are off limits to me because they both are environments where down on their luck, exploited and vulnerable people are likely to work. The idea put forward many times here, that women are sufficiently exploited as a group to permit this opportunity to exploit individual men is quite reprehensible to me.

And yes, I am delighted to admit that thankfully, my limited experience comes purely from the telly and film. But I've seen enough depictions of strip clubs and lap dancing bars in my life to think that there probably isn't much else to them beyond what is always portrayed. Happy for you to enlighten me though.

Gross. That sounds so fucking awful, honestly. Women at strip shows can get really handsy and grotty, as if they're all trying to act as poorly as men do, and it's really distasteful.

I would politely decline and say that the idea of watching a bunch of men strip gives you the ick, and besides as you wouldn't want your husband going to a strip club, then what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Whatever you do though, don't lie.

The problem here is that you are conducting a marriage, not some societal debate on power imbalance among strippers. People making that argument do have a point, but I can't see that appeasing her husband after she's banned him but up for a bit of willy waving herself.

The thing is, male strippers are almost more like comedy than sex. I wouldn't want to go to a show because I wouldn't enjoy it, I'd just find it awkward and silly and I don't tend to fancy those kind of beefcake guys anyway. s=So I agree with those who say go along ti the whole thing but don't go to the strippers if it makes you uncomfortable.

Well I've already googled it, and it seems they don't really exist as a thing, beyond your chippendales type 'show' or your strippogram, which is exactly as I expected. There might be a handful in existence I suppose, but they are certainly not commonplace.

This should be no great surprise to anyone, because male prostitutes servicing a solely female client base are very, very rare compared to the numbers of female prostitutes servicing men. There just isn't the demand. And red light districts with scantily clad men on heroin walking the streets while women prowl around in cars hoping for some cunnilingus for 20 quid? Also not much of a thing.

I also agree with this. Not saying you should go, but I think it is a bit different, not only due to the structural disparities around men and women but if this is a 'Magic Mike' style ticketed show, that's not really quite the same as a seedy strip club with options for lap/private dances etc... just discuss it with your husband I'd say, he might well agree.

I don’t think red light districts of women walking around are a thing at all now - certainly all the ones I knew of have all disappeared. Now everything has moved online, including sex work. So I’m not sure anything you have said is more than imagined or hypothetical again.

I am certain there are a lot of straight women paying for something like onlyfans, for example. I am sure the demand is actually there.

Super weird after all the comments that you still seem set on lying to your so called partner about it.

whether he’s likely to find out or not is irrelevant.