Why have strip clubs become the norm on stag dos?

[Ponderings1]

I have always found it weird. In no normal situation would I be happy with my partner being around naked women so why would I be ok with it just because it’s a stag do?

I know some women say they’re ok with it but I wonder if a lot of that is being the ‘cool girl’ (see Gone Girl) or maybe just being resigned to the fact it will happen so no point kicking up a fuss about it.

I KNOW some men will go along and not enjoy it but going on the fallouts I see on here, I personally think some types of men use the excuse of ‘I was made to go along / it’s party of the stag do / I don’t enjoy it’ but then will use the fact they ‘had’ to go to cross the line and get private dances or whatever.

I find the ‘need’ to go to strip clubs on stag dos kind of gross. Why do you NEED to see other naked women when you’re about to get married - what an insult? And I find it gross the type of men who lie to their wives and girlfriends about what they did on stag dos or at strip coins seedy.

I have no issue with sex workers at all, all power to them. It’s the behaviour or attached men that is my issue. I won’t start the convo of it sex work is empowering to women or not.

So is it truly ‘normal’ and ok in your opinion or have we as women been told it’s ‘normal’ - boys will be boys!

To add to also don’t get the whole stripper thing for hen dos either or the games where you have to dance up on other men etc. 🤢

I don't like it and I think it speaks volumes about the man whose stag do it is.

I think it's exploitative and tacky. Don't like hen do's with strippers either. Just rank.

It's the same as male strippers on hen do's.

It’s absolutely not. Men don’t sit around being embarrassed and giggling at the naked women. They either sit there with the horn, take the women off to a side room where they can get titillated in private or if they’re trying to be cool they pretend to ignore them as if they’re part of the furniture. It’s a very different thing to the way women behave with a male stripper and the power dynamic between men and women will always make this a totally different scenario.

FWIW I would hate to see a male stripper and would hate any P of mine to watch a female one. It’s gross and exploitative, but the type of man who becomes a stripper is likely to be a very different type of person to those who become an female stripper.

And I think it's even worse - if that's possible - when the man being entertained is dad to daughters. Whilst getting an erection watching someone else's daughter.
Fucking grim

The power dynamic is in favour of whoever is paying in these situations.

It's been the 'norm' for decades.

You're asking the wrong people.

You need to ask the blokes.

How the fuck are we supposed to know?

I’ve known male friends and relatives who went to three separate stags this summer - none of them had strippers. One was an evening doing drinks and bar games. Another was a weekend in Dublin. Another was 3 days doing outdoorsy stuff somewhere hot (quad biking/canyoning etc).

Strippers is a bit low-brow quite frankly. Not to mention depraved and morally dubious.

My husband's friends have never been to a strip club for any of their stag dos / lads' holidays. They tagged along with a friend of a friend's stag do in our home city and all came home at the point a lapdance bar was mentioned.

I think DH been on about 12 stag dos, plus 6 or so lads' weekends, in the last 10 years? We're a big, mixed group of friends (around 60 of us now kids and partners have joined in!) who have known each other since we were teenagers, so it's a bit of a chicken / egg scenario - do they avoid strip clubs because they have lots of females in their lives that they respect, or vice versa?

To be fair none of the women have done Magic Mike / Butlers in the Buff either. I honestly feel sick at the idea of a whipped cream covered penis being thrust in my face while my mum, best mates from primary school and sisters laugh 😱

I’m anti sex industry but this is a weird take.

i’m my dad’s daughter. I can still be a sexual being. My DH isn’t a pervert for being aroused by me.

It depends on your social circle.

the blue collar men in my family would/do see it as ‘just a bit of fun’ as they believe feminism is for hairy lesbians, believe being a man is the worst thing ever, think strippers are consenting adults and all that

i also know awful city boys who are men from that background ‘done good’ who see it as a rite of passage and suitable entertainment. But it transcends classes as I know middle class blokes who hold the exact same views re: women’s issues and will still frequent these places.

I don’t hang out with any of the above men. My social circle right now reject lad culture, view porn as a sure way to fuck up your brain and give you a limp cock. The stag dos here involve cookery classes, whiskey tasting and wild camping. (Although last time, someone’s lowbrow brother in law to be once ordered a stripper as a ‘surprise’ and then flounced with her when the others said no thanks and asked him what the fuck he was thinking)

you don’t need to hang out with or lower your boundaries to accept men who support the sex industry. Sorry to be all ‘not all men’ but not all of them
do. Any man who goes to a strip club for fun or even due to peer pressure is classless scum. We don’t have to associate with them, let alone shag or marry them.

It's the norm in the sense that it's very common but not in the sense that every stag do involves strippers. Plenty do not.

I have no issue with sex workers at all, all power to them.

But one cannot exist without the other. Unless you expect a load of sex workers to sit (and get paid) in empty strip clubs.

I just strip them won’t need to 😂

I think that the normalisation of 'sex work' as some kind of empowering profession for young women is exactly why men feel able to talk openly about strip clubs, lap dances etc. They've always used them but before it was seedy and closeted whereas now it's celebrated as somehow supporting women in their 'career' choices.

Women in the sex industry are routinely abused, assaulted and coerced and for every Belle de Jour there's a thousand women subjected to misery in the name of men getting an orgasm when and how they want it.

You're correct, but there'll be some mental gymnastics on the way to say you're not.

Wow, sexism and classism all in one go. So the city boys who go to strip clubs are those that are from lowly backgrounds? Those better bred go to stag weekends of avocado sculpting and poetry appreciation? I've seen some nonsense on here but, gobsmacked at this snobbery.

Suprima actually I worded that oddly you are right.

I think what I meant to try to say / and I probably will fail to articulate myself properly still! / is I find it really sleazy in particular when men doing this have girls of their own. It's like "their" girls/women are princesses but the young woman dancing in front of them is lesser somehow.

As I say that still probably sounds odd

I don't think it's the norm. Tv and movies try to perpetuate that it is the norm but it's not IMO. My husband has been loads of stags over the last 20 years and only one involved a strip club. Mostly they are a mixture of outward bound stuff and drinking.

It is the normalisation of women being seen as standard entertainment on a lads night out. To be honest if DH had proposed this when we got married I would have cancelled the wedding. I don’t have respect for lap dancers, sex workers and women on Only Fans - their existence does all women harm and studies show that for the most part this “work” does harm to themselves too.

I agree. I have know DH for 25 years and he has had many nights out without me. One time, about 15 years ago he told me a friend of a friend, who DH didn't know, had joined them on the night out. Later on he suggested they go to strip club and tried to drag DH and his other friend along, but they made their excuses and went home, and this guy went to the strip club by himself.
I could tell DH's distaste with this guy as he was telling me the story, and he has told me this is the only time in thousands of night's out a trip to a strip club has been proposed.

I have actually refused to go on stag do's over this.

Strip clubs are gross, classless and honestly creepy. There is nothing sexy about a woman slutting it up to please a room full of men and honestly, whilst it's her choice I just hate it as I think it's degrading.

No mental gymnastics required to point out that the way women and men are treated by society vary in very significant ways which mean power dynamics in seemingly equivalent situations are not the same.

They aren't. Lots of my male friemds have recently got married. None of them did that.

I think it's pretty rare. Bit silly for people to be basing their assumptions on frat comedy films etc.

Strippers and strip clubs on stag nights are to embarrass the stag and generally humiliate him. As are so many of the other traditions on a stag do such as excessive drinking, wearing silly costumes, tying him naked to a lamp post etc. etc.

It has very little to do with objectifying women.

Hahaha to the report of women sitting embarrassed and quiet at hen do male strippers..I've worked behind the bar at hospital social clubs and it's the men who sit in embarrassed silence , the women go wild, hurling abuse and ribald laughter at the men and goading each other on ... terrifying.