Friends who have been to stripclubs.

[academic]

Have any of you got friends who have visited stripclubs/hired 'dancers' or waitresses for stag nights etc?

If you found out that your friends had indulged in such behaviour would you see them in a different light? Would you perhaps even choose to end the friendship? Or would your opinion of them be unaffected?

There reason I ask is that a friend of mine is unhappy that her partner is attending a stag do abroad which will inevitably involve strippers and much debauchery in general. She was wondering whether she would be able to tell him that he couldn't go. I'm afraid I wasn't much help when she asked my opinion - these guys happen to have been very good friends for such a long time, and her partner is not the best man; he has no say over the itinerary. However I do understand her misgivings.

[MadBannersAndCopPorn]

Are the reasons that you find strip clubs abhorrent to do with exploitation?
Surely if you feel you need to avoid/ not tollerate exploitation, It would be exploitation in general.
I know in RL it's not easy to avoid paying in to industries that exploit people but to get on a soap box about strippers being exploited and then say you don't mind that people in other countries are being exploited to make your cheap clothes is a bit hypocritical.
If you find strip clubs physically disgusting/ seedy etc then its a whole different matter.

[BasilBabyEater]

It's irrelevant whether some of the individual women who strip for money, enjoy it. That's not what this thread is about. It's not about how we feel about the women who do it, it's about how we feel about the men who go and pay to watch them do it.

It would make no difference to me if the stripper was university-educated and found showing her arse to strangers for money so liberating and marvellous that she had multiple orgasms every time she did it; she's not the person I would focus on. I'm not sleeping with her, chatting with her, sharing parenting with her, sharing my closest thoughts and ideas and dreams with her, allowing her to influence and role-model for my children. The person in whose motives I am interested, is the man who pays to watch her. He's not a man I want to live with, irrespective of her motivations.

[Bowlersarm]

Yes my female friends hired waiters at a mums night to serve food, dressed in minute aprons and nothing else. Does that count? I don't think any the less of them for doing that.

[MadBannersAndCopPorn]

If we just focus on the man, then where is the line drawn? Strip clubs, pole dancers, underwear models, burlesque dancers, topless women on beaches, women wearing bum-scraper shorts, women the man finds ridiculously attractive....
Are people getting paranoid that their other half may look at someone and find them sexually attractive? You don't need to go to a strip club for that.
I'm genuinely interested in what makes it upsetting for women to know that their partner's at a strip club for a stag do. If it were once a week, whole different kettle of fish...

[BasilBabyEater]

Madbanners, it's not about finding another woman attractive.

It's about buying into the value system that says he has the right to go and pay for one to gyrate for money for his pleasure.

I just could never respect a man who felt that way. However charming he was, however sweet, kind, funny, good in bed etc., knowing that he sees nothing wrong with buying sexual titillation, would just mean I couldn't see him as a serious, grown up adult worthy of my proper attention.

[BasilBabyEater]

It might be to do with getting older. As I get older, I find that I just can't get sexually excited about a man I don't respect. The connection between respect and desire is really strong, which when I was young, it wasn't at all - in fact, I was perfectly capable of wanting to shag someone I didn't particularly even like, let alone respect. I just don't feel like that nowadays. I don't know whether that's old age or just changing tastes or perhaps changing values and much, much higher self-esteem than I had when I was young. I don't know what other people's experience of this is, would be interested to hear.

[scallopsrgreat]

Pretty much agree with Basil. The whole "you can't object to strip clubs if you don't object to cheap clothing" is just an MRE tactic to take the focus off the problem - men exploiting, objectifying and disrespecting women.

[SolidGoldBrass]

OK, so what about women who pay to go and see (for instance) Robbie Williams/The Wanted and get sexually excited by seeing them take their shirts off? This specifically for the people who say it's irrelevant whether or not the performers in a strip club are exploited but wrong for the customers to pay money to get their jollies. Is it just immoral when someone's genitals are on display?

Or, if it's wrong for a man to go to a strip club because men-as-a-class see women-as-a-class as subordinate sexually and there for their pleasure, what about the man who pays to have his meals cooked or his house cleaned by women? Given that men-as-a-class see women as there to service them domestically...

[BasilBabyEater]

Well, yeah, I don't like those blokes either SGB.

Can't think why I'm single.

[MadBannersAndCopPorn]

I see what you are saying joyful and I suppose if you can avoid something you don't agree with, then you will. Simple!
It seems as if you are making all these women who work in strip clubs out to be people that can't make their own decisions. Many of them choose the job and enjoy it. They like providing an experience that is a one off and sometimes a bit of an eye opener. Like I said, not any different to a dancer.
Yes, they are gyrating for men, and many women to please them, the whole point of any entertainment is to please their audience.
I would hope that a man who was going to something like this for a stag do would see it as a bit of fun, a chance to see something he's not experienced before and have fun with mates etc. Tongue in cheek.
It's almost like we don't like the idea of women being independent and it's easier to think that they're being exploited than making their own informed choices.
I'm aware that my view is in the minority and maybe I'll look back on the way thought and shake my head in disgust, who knows?

[MadBannersAndCopPorn]

Would you not date a man who had a female cleaner Basil?

[DonutForMyself]

Agree it's about objectification more than exploitation for me. I feel the same way about girls mags, I don't care if the women are b list slebs who are paid handsomely to strip for a magazine, if my DP wanted to look at them I'd think less of him.

If I knew he had looked at them in the past but didn't any more and wouldn't in future because a) he doesn't want to and b) he knows it would bother me, I'm not going to dump him because that makes him a 'certain kind' of person. I'm going to accept that we have all done things when we were young that we may not do now.

[DonutForMyself]

That was girly mags, stupid autocorrect!

[BasilBabyEater]

It would depend on his attitude to that and his values, MadBanners.

[MadBannersAndCopPorn]

There are so many layers to this discussion! It's difficult for me to remain completely open minded to all the views as these issues are not just black and white as someone said upthread.
Good discussion, but I'm out as I'm off to bed!

[TheDoctrineOfAllan]

MadBanners, regarding appreciating it as art...

If your DP bumped into a woman in the street and she said she had a business of photographing gardens, or painting pictures of houses and he said "great, come round and I'll pay you to do that at our house", I assume all would be well as that's art.

If he invited a woman round so he could pay to watch her take her clothes off and dance naked for him, I'm guessing you wouldn't see that as art.

[namechangeguy]

Some interesting viewpoints. I, as a man, am frowned upon if I exploit women by paying them to strip. You, as a woman, feel entitled to dress your children in clothes made by women exploited by multinational companies. It is possible to buy clothes and goods made by ethical companies, though obviously they cost more.

Whilst I appreciate that the OP was specifically about strippers, the wider subject of exploitation of women is relevant here. Am I the only one who sees the inconsistency?

[rosabud]

No, there are probably lots of other people who can't separate the two issues either. Plus, there will be some employing that argument to take the focus off of objectifying and disrespecting women, as scallops has already explained to you at 20:56

[garlicnutty]

I would hope that a man who was going to something like this for a stag do would see it as a bit of fun, a chance to see something he's not experienced before and have fun with mates etc. Tongue in cheek.

How many lapdancing clubs have you been to, Banners?

Could you please elaborate on what form you expect this tongue-in-cheek enjoyment of strange women's naked bodies to take? Will the lads - fully clothed, grouped and just a few inches away from their naked servant - laugh at her, tongue-in-cheek? Or what?

[SolidGoldBrass]

SO, Basil, do you mean you think it's wrong for anyone to have a cleaner, or eat at a restaurant? Or just wrong if the customer is male and the cleaner/waiter/chef female? Is it objectifying and disrespectful to hire anyone to do 'low-status' work like cooking and cleaning rather than doing whatever it is yourself? Even if you treat them with great courtesy and pay them a fair wage? Or is it only wrong when some form of sexual pleasure is experienced by the paying customer?

[namechangeguy]

I see the point at 20:56. As for taking the focus away from men exploiting women - not at all. Men should not buy clothes and goods that exploit third world workers either.

But I suppose that having to think about exploitation that ALL of us might be taking part in, sat here in our Matalan pants, typing on our Chinese keyboards - well, that's just too close to home, and too uncomfortable, so let's just call it derailing, shall we, and point the finger at the nasty menz.

[garlicnutty]

Chinese manufacturing and the British sex trades are different issues, NCG, unless you can demonstrate that one form of exploitative consumerism inevitably leads to all the others.

I have never purchased/rented a man's body for my sexual gratification or titillation. I think most British women can say the same. Most British men, however, have treated women's body as sexual consumer goods.

What's the reason?

[garlicnutty]

• women's bodies, obv

[namechangeguy]

So, is this just about sexual exploitation, as opposed to other forms of female exploitation, e.g. economic? In which case, I don't think there is much argument - men have far more opportunity to practice it.

I don't go to strip clubs myself, and I don't pay for prostitutes, so we are even. As for overall numbers, I know women who have been to see the Chippendales and similar acts. They used to be incredibly popular, so maybe the numbers of women who have paid for such acts are not that small. That is conjecture though, and I wouldn't equate it with the darker side of the sex industry. It is still titillation, though.

My reason for mentioning it was that this need to demonise men for exploitation, whilst ignoring other forms that many if not all of the posters on here will be currently taking part in, whiffs of hypocrisy. Someone said that she dressed her kids in cheap clothes because they were more affordable. Let's hope the factory supplying her doesn't collapse or catch fire.