to not want DP to go in a lapdancing club on his mates stag do?

[mummee09v]

my dp is off on a stag night in a couple of months. its just a load of mates going out in town but there has been talk about them going in lapdancing bars.

i have laughed it off to my dp and tried to be the cool girlfriend about it and made out i couldnt care less as i dont want to seem controlling or jealous. i have even said i dont care if he has a private dance! because i want to come across as cool, as i know his ex used to stop him doing things and i dont want to be like that as he really resented her for it.

but i HATE the idea of it and know i will be furious if he does end up in one. the thought of him ogling some naked girl/s who will probably be a)younger then me b)prettier than me and c)have a better body than me (i have had 2 kids, say no more) kills me....i know that it would only be a laugh for them and nothing would happen other than them looking at the girls but i would be so jealous, coz how could he not compare their young fit bodies to my 30 year old, had-2-kids body?

so i am kind of testing him in a way by saying i dont care, and "allowing" him to go in one, but surely if he loved and fancied me as much as he says he does he wouldnt need to go look at sexy young girls?

also the stag's bride is my best friend (in fact i will be on her hen do the same night) and i know for a fact she would go nuts if she found out her husband to be had been in one as we have already spoken about it and she has the same insecurities as me.

I'm mystified by the idea put forward by some posters on this thread that lapdancing clubs are 'just a bit of harmless fun'. Lapdancing clubs are part of an increasingly mainstreamed sex industry which by its very nature commodifies and objectifies women's bodies. It's all part of this wider 'raunch culture' which includes marketing playboy merchandise to young girls etc etc. Women and girls are encouraged to go along with all this and if they don't like it they are often accused of being 'uncool', 'insecure', 'uptight' or 'frigid' (or worse).

I don't get how this isn't obvious - to women at least - and how any woman can say they don't give a shit about it.

In need of a DESPAIR emoticon here.

Anyfucker- gawd no, it is not just you

This whole discussion is profoundly depressing for those of us with sons as well as daughters. I don't want my kids to grow up believing that it's ever OK to pay to see another person humiliated (and I feel no need to apologise for suggesting that a person stripped for clothed others to stare at is humiliated). Have so many of you really so uncritically swallowed the commercially-motivated idea that the sex industry is compatible with equal rights? I've read the whole thread and it makes me feel ill. And for the record, I'm living in 'Europe', actually in Scandinavia, and believe me, the Nordic understanding of human rights does not include the sale of anyone's body. I am secure about my mind as well as my body...

Molesworth, yup- that is kinda my take on it too

Ffs! No touching allowed in these clubs so he wouldn't have groped anyone.

If he did the doorman would remove him pronto.

Agreed AF.

"fluffed up" just means he's had all the fun getting turned on elsewhere and has come home to relieve himself with his personal orifice. Sorry to be so blunt, but there you go. It's almost as degrading to the poor woman stuck at home as it is to the woman who has been pressurised into performing in the first place.

And before Jelly comes back (yes, I have read the whole thread - I try not to comment unless that's the case), since when did gyrating to arouse other men become an acceptable career choice? Oh, wait, since women have been objects that exist for the pleasure of men .

If the sex industry didn't pressure women into selling themselves, lap-dancing clubs wouldn't exist and nor would this thread. You can't claim you're not connected just because you personally haven't gone further than 'dancing' (on the basis that you are in fact a lap-dancer and not, as some suspect, a punter in disguise).

Just for the record, the objections many of us have to lap dancing clubs have nothing to do with:

insecurity
jealousy
fear of DPs' actions

In fact they are to do with:

the link between sexual assault and the proliferation of these clubs (see BOF post earlier about stats in Camden)

the damaging effects on our daughters at many levels

the exploitation of women who may have very few alternative life choices

That is not always the case, by any means, Alouiseg.

"The fact is that if you break the rules, you make more money. If one dancer starts breaking the rules then the pressure is on others to do the same. Otherwise a bloke would think, Well, that dancer charged me £20 and stayed three feet away, but that one charged me just the same and she put her breasts in my mouth and sat on my crotch. Once you've been there a while, you learn that certain things are profitable, and no contact is the first rule you learn to break."

From a forner lapdancer, in an article I linked earlier.

ok

i DONT think DP would cheat on me, particularly not with some random lap dancer who has to be paid for it!!

my problem is, while i accept that we all find other people attractive other than our partners, ie randoms in the street or people on TV, magazines etc, i dont really like the thought of him being around NAKED (or at least half naked) girls who are more attractive than me.

yes - i am insecure. but it isnt because of anything my DP has done or said, he adores me and finds me really sexy, we have great sex, he is an amazing dad to our kids and he is my best friend. i am insecure because of ME. no one has made me insecure. i could go back years to blame the fact i was bullied badly throughout school and treated badly by ex boyfriends, the fact that my mum always subtly put me down as a teenager, and my mum was obsessed with dieting and how people look, and my dad constantly let me down all the time and would do disappearing acts. if i have "issues" then they are NOT because of my dp.

Whenwillifeelnormal - you seem to regularly turn up on posts i have made and bleat on about how me and dp got together, as if that has anything to do with the fact i dont want him in a LD club! i would feel the same whether it was him or any of my previous partners.

and FWIW - i dont agree with LD clubs from a moral POV either, its a hideous degradation of women and shouldnt be allowed, but as other posters have said, while there is a market for it, they will be around.

lequeen - in all seriousness i would love some tips on self esteem from you, i honestly would i know that i need it. i could never tell my friends how i feel because they all see me as this loud, brassy, confident person...i am like it on the outside but not on the inside.

x post with several of above

well, thank gawd for that dandy

because I would hope every woman had more self-respect than that

OP, if you do think the clubs are a 'hideous degradation of women' (hear, hear), then why do you think your 'decent' partner who makes a 'great dad' should want to go to one? Either he's a moral person, in which case he has no business setting foot over the threshold of such a place, or he likes degrading women, in which case why are you worrying about what he thinks (and what is he doing around your kids)? If this is what you think, tell him - much 'cooler' to know your mind and speak it than to creep about in the shadow of all the other sheep.

I don't see why this has anything to do with how you might feel about your own body.

dandy...obviously that isn't the case, sadly

sorry...if I appeared to jump on you

that third glass of wine is blurring the edges between posts

Mummeee - re-educate your DP, your feelings about this matter and are important.

You're interpreting your feelings about this as a failure of your self esteem - why?
Feeling uncomfortable about one's DP going to a LD club is a sign of normal self esteem IMO. You could boost your self esteem further by standing up for yourself and telling him exactly how you feel.

ohhh, yuk

urgh feeling a bit sick and wrong at the women on here who are happy to let their DP/Hs get hard thinking about a lapdancer and then come home to 'unload' in them.
Really not nice ladies, both lapdancer and wife/partner getting well and truly screwed over there

These type of threads always seem to degenerate into an arguement about morality, the objectificaton of women and complicated debates about femnist issues.

None of that matters because the bottom line is the OP does not like her DP visiting lap dancing clubs. She should tell her DP that and he should not go.

No one should delibrately do something that hurts and upsets a person they love. For me the arguement really is that simple.

Personally, I have always struggled to understand why men go to lap dancing clubs. More especially men who are in a real relationship. The staff (i.e the female dancers) despise the men and see them as nothing more than a walking wallet. It just seems a really unpleasant way to spend an evening - even setting aside all the morality issues.

Thanks for the mansplanation, ABD- but if some of us want to raise wider issues, it does not constitute a degeneration. These things are worth thinking about. We do not live in a vacuum and all that...

BOF

yay for abd

you sound like my DH

he fails to see how I feel so strongly

but backs me up, just the same

'degenerate' hmmmmm, interesting choice of word ABD