Hi Ticklish
I nearly didn't read your response as I am so used to getting abuse on this subject but glad I did.
I posted earlier on about why I disagree with lap dancing clubs.
I felt the same as you until about 3 years ago. Guys from work went along to them and I was curious about them but that was all. I did feel some discomfort when guys I knew, well paid, educated men, discussed the women they paid to strip, their body parts, etc, and all this happening behind their wives' backs but it didn't affect me personally so I didn't worry about it too much.
One guy in work told me about going to a strip club not long after his wife had had their longed for baby. She'd put on a bit of weight and was desperately trying to lose it. I asked him about the experience quite curiously and I was indifferent at the time but I do remember feeling very sorry for his wife, whom I knew was feeling vulnerable. I asked him if he'd told his wife that he'd been and he said, "do I look like I have stupid written on my forehead?"
Another guy I knew was going on a stag night. I asked him why guys liked them so much and asked why they don't just pay their wives to strip for them as they'd probably enjoy the compliment (I was being slightly provocative but I did this for an ex once and it was an enjoyable experience - but in the privacy of our own home and I was in a relationship with him). Anyway...this guy said, "you don't get it. Most guys wouldn't want their wives to be treated like that."
I was pretty shocked to hear this. He was meaning to be nice but, from this, I took that men can separate women into 2 groups - one group that they can respect and one group of women that they don't have to respect at all because they're paying them.
I find this hypocrisy very upsetting. My 2 brothers went to a strip club on my older brother's stag night (I mentioned this in my earlier post). I know that if they'd walked in to a strip club that night and seen me, their own sister, on the podium, they'd have pulled me off the stage and punched all their friends in the face for looking at me (probably). Yet it's ok to degrade someone else's sister/girlfriend/wife. I was devastated by their trip to a strip club. To know that my brothers could behave like that was very depressing. They fell off their pedestals for me that night.
And after, I had to listen to my younger brother comparing the girls' p-ssies. My mum stuck up for them both saying, "it's just what men do" and telling me to shut up when I tried to talk about it.
My ex was there on the stag night and went along too. I can't tell you how painful that whole experience was. Yet I didn't understand it myself. Women are told to shut up and even laugh about it. I felt devastated and yet everyone was telling me there was nothing to be upset about. (At this point, I should add that my ex had a personality disorder and, far from reassuring me, delighted in seeing me upset and threw in painful details just to increase his pleasure at seeing me upset.)
I did a lot of soul searching in the following few months, trying to understand and quash my feelings of upset. No one seemed to understand and the culture of today demands that women just accept these trips to lap dancing clubs and even tag along too for an erotic experience. I lost weight thinking I wasn't good enough (from 8.5 stone down to 8 stone), considered cosmetic surgery, took up pole dancing lessons. I reasoned that, if I'd been good enough, why would have wanted to even go in the club in the first place?
The reactions I met with from my brothers, my ex, my mum, friends had my questioning myself but in the end I came across Object and realised that my feelings were perfectly valid. I jacked in the pole dancing classes and came to my senses about the cosmetic surgery.
Places like lap dancing give men a sense of entitlement over the women in the clubs and they teach them that it's ok to disrespect an entire group of women. Men laugh at them - the men I know anyway, and a lot of them are highly paid managers in the NHS; men visit their places behind their wives' backs; they don't just go for a lap dance.
If this was in any other context, it would be unacceptable. My brothers wouldn't dream of getting a 19 year (shaved) girl to dance completely naked for them in their front room in front of them and 4 of their friends on a Saturday night, yet it's ok in a club.
Most men would know that to get a woman to grind naked on their laps in their front room on a Saturday night would be unacceptable in the boundaries of a normal relationship yet somehow it's ok in a club where he's paying her.
And it's ok because there are no emotions involved according to a lot of men I know. Anyway, lapdancing - passe, now! I know of 4 groups of men (all married) in my last NHS organisation who weren't bothering with lap dancing on stag nights anymore but who went abroad to use prostitutes because there's no emotion involved, and it's abroad, and she's choosing to do it, so what's the problem?
Another (ex) friend (married) of mine (PhD from Cambridge) told me that he loves lap dancing clubs because men don't go into clubs and get chatted up by women ever so it's nice to go into a lapdancing club and have women approach you. I mention the PhD from Cambridge because this guy isn't stupid yet has managed to convince himself that the girls in the club actually want to talk to him. I find it all a bit sad.
And all these men would absolutely hate it if their wife/girlfriend were to do as they had done. Clubs now promote themselves to couples but no man I know would ever want to go along to a club in which he would sit there whilst a hot naked guy was paid to grind naked on his wife's lap.
I object to the acceptability of these places now which made it very hard for me, as the partner of someone who went in, to have a voice. I was silenced and ended up suffering hugely. I think there are a lot of women out there who have convinced themselves that they are ok with it, who perhaps don't know what actually goes on in the clubs (I mentioned the Dispatches documentary above), or who not happy but are silenced (see numerous wedding forums online on which women post their worries about their future husbands visiting strip clubs on his stag night). There's no equality here - men would hate it if their partners were to do the equivalent (choosing from over 300 clubs on the high street full of hot guys) whilst they sat at home with their beer bellies playing on their x-boxes!
And I object to having the advertising everywhere which normalises lap dancing clubs to people, I object to the fact that the women in the clubs can be treated like dirt (see the testimonies from ex strippers that Object have published on their website and the Dispatches documentary), I object to the fact that men carry these feelings of entitlement and disrespect with them when they walk out of the clubs. Most of these men would not want their daughters doing this kind of job yet are perfectly happy to degrade someone else's daughter.
I am probably not being very coherent here but the whole episode was a very painful one for me. It affected my relationships with my brothers, my ex, and my mother. When I started campaigning and appeared on the BBC regional news about it, my mum was horrified. She was prouder of her two sons for paying women half their age to strip off for them in a club than of her own daughter for speaking to the BBC one day (without any warning or media training!) about the proliferation of strip clubs.
It was then that I started calling myself a feminist. I realised that the equality that I'd assumed was now inherent in our culture was absolutely not there at all.
Of course, if some people don't want to believe that these places are harmful, my experiences and opinions above will be dismissed, I know.