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.

It is so not about whether the physical appearance of the employees is to one's taste.

I'm sure there are lots and lots of expensive LD clubs in NY (I would quibble about your use of the word 'smart') although the ones out at Islip near the airport are probably not very smart or all that expensive. Feeling very sorry for your friend who has been to one and also wonder since she was there on business, did she feel she had a choice about whether to go or not.

Le Q ' I think a lot of men would find a bored looking dancer with cellulite and silicon boobs, who looks like she works at Greegs for her day job'

Your really unpleasant coments about the appearance of other women (and/or the legitimisation of your husband's comments) speak volumes about you. Do you think it makes you more powerful or attractive to talk
about other women in such a disgusting way?

What makes you so complacent that you can make these comments? You seem more mmisogynist than many men I've met.

Thank goodness for AF, Dittany, Molesworth, Hullygully, MillyR and a few others on this thread - it's extremely depressing on the whole.

I agree with mathanxiety re the corporate entertainment thing - are there no female clients around these days? I'd take my business elsewhere sharpish for sure.

FWIW I've never been to a LD club, nor will I. DH has, however, the day after we got married as it happens Again it was stag do, again he was adamant he wasn't going to go but again 'peer pressure' meant he did go in as otherwise the 'stag' wouldn't have got his free 'stag dance'.

Said 'stag dance' invloved the the groom to be sat on a chair on the dancefloor whilst 3 girls rubbed themselves all over him. This isn't in private, it's the middle of the club! He wasn't allowed to touch them, but there were no such restrictions on the girls touching him. The club in question was (if such a thing exists ) a respectable establishment.

The stag and best man also paid for a private dance, which took place in some private room. God only knows what went on in there, DH didn't ask.

He and his BIL did leave promptly, they were both horribly uncomfortable with the whole experience. The thing is they are both lovely men, not pushovers yet they ended up going against their principles in order to facilitate a free stag dance for a relative they don't even particularly like? It baffles me.

I have almost forgiven DH some 3 years later.

Why do men 'go along and get' along so much?

There's a power dynamic at play in situations like these.

I don't understand it either math. I hope it would be different now that they've been and seen for themselves what it was all about. Perhaps their curiosity outweighted their principles? I can't understand why they would compromise their beliefs for someone neither of them like or would choose to spend time with ordinarily.

MillyR "Advertising and film do not necessarily objectify women. There is a difference between finding a person sexually attractive and objectifying them."

Oh please.
Go read Mulvey's The Male Gaze, or take a look at the Wonderbra advert.
Then think again.

Gay40;

Are you a man or a woman...?

YYY, and I especially wonder who makes the 'corporate' decisions that this is where a large group of hostages people will spend their evening. What values are operating here?

Is it considered unmanly to decline to go? I mean if a man really wants a curry, why not just go and get a curry, dammit?

gay40, it's an odd argument you're making there. Are you really saying that lapdancing clubs are fine (as per your earlier posts in this thread), but media representations aren't because they always necessarily objectify women through employing the male gaze?

Or are you saying that yes, both objectify women, but you don't give a toss about objectification?

I don't think that all media representations of women employ the male gaze, although many (maybe most) do.

Nevertheless, it doesn't make lapdancing clubs OK.

mathanxiety - you raise an important issue that DW often came up against in her work where men in her dept would organise lap dancing trips for clients or quite frequently a client would request it. She of course hated it and never went but was thereby excluded from socialising with clients. That is how the glass celing works as you rightly point out.

I also experienced it in my career. The dynamic was that ony a very few men actively wanted to go to lapdancing clubs. However, in a work or stag party situation the other men to varying degrees feel pressured to go along wth it. The vast majority of men really are not bothered at all but feel for reasons of pleasing the boss, not wanting to be left out of meeting clients, not wanting to tarnish a relationship with their male colleagues that they have to go along.

It is a power dynamic. It is hard to say no. I knew a few blokes who just refused to go and I know for sure that most of the other men that did go along really would have prefered to go for a curry and a beer.

I mean all this bullshit about women liking lapdancing because it gives her power over the men

How can you tell if the woman or girl grinding on your crotch has chosen to do this for a living or is a young woman illegally traded in the sex industry? Do they wear badges to explain how they came to be dancing half naked for a bunch of leering boozed up men?

Even the women who are supposedly choosing to do this, I think if you could gain their life story you would find a whole catalogue of life circumstances over which she was powerless - that she ended up being objectified in such a cruel and damaging way

I am a woman. A woman who likes other women. A woman who is in a ltr with another woman.

No, I'm saying that if you believe lapdancing clubs objectify and degrade women (because men are goggling at them) then the same argument follows for looking at any woman in any sort of way. According to the Bible, if a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (I'm an atheist, but not because of that quote, which I believe to be bollocks)

My friend's niece is a lapdancer, putting herself through university - as are most of the girls there. They could work as waitresses, but it doesn't pay well and they can dance a few hours for the same money as a full time waitress. And leaving college with a degree and no debts.

You do the maths.

I don't agree with sex trafficking and the like because that is an enforced situation akin to slavery.

I'm not attacking the women who work in lapdancing clubs, gay40.

I'm afraid I don't agree that "if you believe lapdancing clubs objectify and degrade women (because men are goggling at them) then the same argument follows for looking at any woman in any sort of way". In a lapdancing club the woman's body is a commodity. This isn't the case when a person looks at another person walking down the street or whatever. The two situations aren't the same at all imo. I don't care what the bible has to say about it tbh: there's all sorts of misogynist nonsense in the bible!

I find it hard to believe that all the skanks from sink estates referred to earlier are putting themselves through uni by working at LD clubs.

In a LD club, the customer essentially pays for a sexual experience, Gay40. So not the same as free ogling while walking down the street. One is maybe human nature, the other is a transaction.

I believe there's a case to be made against the 'hostile work environment' that being pressured to go to a LD club to 'entertain' clients constitutes.

Oh...so it's the financial arrangement that offends. The body as a commodity.

Bearing in mind all the stay at home mummies on here, they sell themselves evey day for their nice house, well-dressed kids and partner whop funds the bloody lot in return for a shag of an evening (and look how many complaints there are about that !!!!!)

Nor is my friend's niece a skank from a sink estate - she's a bright educated girl who knows she can make more for 3 or 4 hours lapdancing than 40 hours as a waitress. In their club, there's no contact allowed between the dancers and the paying public. And the paying public are both men and women. I once asked her if she ever got asked about "extras" and she got quite offended.

This thread is so depressing. Gay40,your comment about SAHM mums is really offensive. Lapdancing clubs are just horrible and no-one should feel that they can't say that to their DP without being made to feel that they are "uncool".
I think that if you really feel that they are OK, you have to consider how you would feel if your daughter wanted to work in one.

Gay40;

You are seriously weird...

YANBU- I do not think lapdancing clubs are a "bit of fun". I think they are part of the sex trade which at its worse comprises underaged and trafficked women. By frequenting these clubs I think men are perpetuating this trade.

I think it is disgraceful that it cna be considered " a bit of fun". If yuo do not want him to go tell him and tell him why. What he does will tell yuo about the kind of man he is.

"Bearing in mind all the stay at home mummies on here, they sell themselves evey day for their nice house, well-dressed kids and partner whop funds the bloody lot in return for a shag of an evening (and look how many complaints there are about that !!!!!)"

This thread IS so depressing.

And just makes me think more than ever that LD clubs and literally everything about them is utterly depressing.

Half the men there (supposedly) don't even want to be there.

The other half are leering, boorish oafs, leaching over the girls.

The girls are all out to take the blokes for whatever they can get and probably laugh at exactly how easy it is.

And then you've got the whole 'corporate entertainment' aspect of it, which goes to show exactly how sexist our society still is. The assumption is that the vast majority of people being entertained are men (which is almost certainly true), and then any women who have a problem with it, either go along under duress, or miss out on developing their client relationships.

And I haven't even touched on the whole issue of how and why many of the girls get into and stay in the business in the first place, let alone the wider issues of female objectification and the setting back of the cause my decades...

I really don't understand the people who refuse the see the bigger picture and how damaging it is.