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.

[namechangeguy]

And what about the posters who agree with me? Are they to be ignored?

[rosabud]

Not at all, I think, if you read back. lots of posters have answered all of their points too. The thing is, with a debate, to answer the points rather than keep going off on a tangent each time. It's a skill than some take time to master.

[namechangeguy]

Well, I shall observe you and hope to absorb some of your wisdom.

[DonutForMyself]

No need to be patronising Rosa.

[libertarianj]

Garlic have you really been to a strip club or are you copy and pasting some crap from the Object web site? because what you have said thus far is quite frankly a load of rubbish. If the strip club experience is all about this flawed objectification theory (that always gets wheeled out on just about every thread that involves women getting their kit off). Then why on earth do people spend so much time chatting to the dancers? Yeah that's right peeps, 95% of the time spent in a strip clubs is chatting, not getting private dances. If you think i'm talking rubbish, then get down to your local strip club and see for yourself. I ain't making this up, i promise you.

Oh yeah and you do realise that you don't buy someone or rent them out in a strip club? , You pay to watch an erotic performance or some call it a striptease. It's entirely up to the dancer with regards to the performance, not the customer. As a customer you have zero input and are merely a passenger in the whole experience. If you are rude to a dancer, or come out with some sexist remarks, then you will be booted out of the club in no time. However generally people tend to behave themselves, even very drunk people on stag do's.

[garlicnutty]

I've been to loads of strip clubs. It was preferred client entertainment in my old job. After a while I figured out my clients were just as happy to be taken for a big dinner, so I did that instead. I posted this upthread.

I've been to the full range of them, too, from super plush & exclusive to sticky-floor grotty. This: If you are rude to a dancer, or come out with some sexist remarks, then you will be booted out of the club in no time, is a hundred percent shit, I've witnessed rudeness at all of the establishments. Not many bars boot out paying customers for being a bit mouthy or pushy. You sound like you think strip bars operate to different rules - more like a school than a licensed premises!

An erotic performance suggests something performed on a stage of some kind, not inches from an audience of one. The only other performance I can think of (off the top of my head, admittedly,) like this is a magician. The magician, however, wears clothes and performs to the gathering at large while addressing individual punters.

[garlicnutty]

• yeah, so your question back at you. I know whereof I speak and I know you're wrong when you rubbish my post. The one you bothered reading, that is. I'm not going to ask you about your experience, because I think you will lie. I'm telling you to query the motives of whoever painted your image of strip clubs; they did not tell you the truth.

[garlicnutty]

95% of the time spent in a strip clubs is chatting

Yes, I know. I wouldn't say 95%, but yes. You can imagine how pleased I was to find my ex was spending £2k down the Windmill two or three nights a week during our divorce, as he needed someone to talk to. I suggested it might be more effective to see a counsellor at £100 a pop, like I did, but for some reason he found it necessary to discuss the meaning of life with a 19-year-old wearing a glittery thong and charging by the minute. He saw prostitutes, too. He said they only talked. I believe him.

I'm interested in the psychology of men who can only talk openly when they are with a naked woman on the clock. To me, there are some clear starting points to consider when wondering why they don't just bloody see a counsellor. Perhaps you can't actually tell the difference; you do sound rather confused.

Would you like to talk to me about it? I'll take me kegs off for ya, get you half-cut on overpriced gutrot and charge you £500 an hour - drinks included. I'm a good listener :)

[BasilBabyEater]

It must be such a bore for the dancers to have to actually talk to these men who are paying to look at them titillating them. I'd rather gyrate for tossers like this than actually engage in conversation with them. What do they want to discuss? The impact of Bismark's social policies on the German working class? The development of the nation state in Europe and the growth of capitalism? How excruciating to actually have to talk to these weasels.

And still I wouldn't want to live with a man who was so pathetic as to go down to a club to try and strike up conversations with a young woman in between her shaking her stuff for him. For some reason, i find the idea of him talking to her even more creepy and maladjusted, than just sitting there getting a boner while she thrusts her fanny in his face. At least that's honest. The reason the talking takes place, is so that she can persuade him to spend more money on more dances, some of them private.

[arsenaltilidie]

I would hate it if DH went to a strip club. It would make me feel insecure in the same way DH would feel insecure if I started paying to see other men naked.

Best to be honest you are not comfortable instead of inventing lies saying strippers are being exploited blah blah.
Strippers enter into stripping because they will earn much more money as strippers than other jobs.
They are relatively in a safe environment because of security everywhere who will not tolerate drunk touchy men.

[arsenaltilidie]

That said all the men I know that regularly visit strip clubs are dicks.

[TheDoctrineOfAllan]

Hi arsenal

It is possible to be uncomfortable with something for more than one reason, or for different people to be uncomfortable with the same thing for different reasons.

What is it about those men who go regularly that you find dickish?

[libertarianj]

Apologies Garlic i did read about you taking clients to strip clubs but thought you were someone else. Surely that was a high risk strategy taking them to a strip club, as these places really polarize people. If they were happy with a big dinner instead, then they probably didn't want to be at the strip club, which could explain their negative behaviour maybe?

From my experience of stag do's these places always seem to chill people out. I have been out with groups of very rowdy lads in nightclubs, where their behaviour suddenly changed once inside the strip club to being polite and civilised.

Oh and strip clubs do operate to different rules, they require an SEV licence for starters and there are a whole host of terms and conditions they have to comply with when compared to a standard nightclub, like extra CCTV for example. Check your councils website, they normally have all the details of licences there.

Would you like to talk to me about it? I'll take me kegs off for ya, get you half-cut on overpriced gutrot and charge you £500 an hour - drinks included. I'm a good listener

ooh you sound too expensive for me, the last time i went to a strip club it was free entry, £3.50 a bottle of Peroni and the chat was free (i made it clear from the start i wasn't paying for any dances too).

[garlicnutty]

The chat was free???!!! Bloody hell, you must be charismatic!

My guests were NEVER rude to the dancers. Not in my hearing, anyway, I felt weirdly protective. I also refused to pay for private dances though sometimes the men would buy their own.

The strippers in the Griffin sometimes came over for a chat with me if it was quiet, but this was just a vague attempt on their part to break the monotony. Dancers at the upmarket venues wouldn't talk unless paid, except for the bit of inane chat that goes with a dance, on the pretext of 'being friendly'. I went to some incredibly nasty clubs, where the dancers looked like they would kill you if you said a wrong word (suspect they didn't speak English anyway,) and the minders looked like gangsters; they probably were.

That's all part of my colourful past, anyhow. I just get tremendously cheesed off with the persistent lies about strip clubs being believed by Mumsnetters; another variety of 'happy hooker' myths. The sex industries are pretty vile - I've been behind the scenes quite a bit, for various reasons - and, while the happy hookers & dancers do exist, they are vanishingly rare. Far fewer than 1%. Once I'd seen so many men - just normal blokes, who I'm sure are perfectly nice as a rule - with that fixed, predatory stare as they watch a dancer and come in their pants, I exceeded my tolerance level and cut it out of my life.

[DonDrapersAltrEgoBigglesDraper]

I'm a feminist, so obviously I have a fundamental problem with strip clubs and am never going to agree that they're OK, nor that they have anything other than a negative impact on womenkind (forget the cliched 'empowered' individual woman; as a feminist, my concern is with the bigger picture).

However, I do get the point that namechangeguy is trying to make.

Fine for us to feel strongly about our Thing. But at the end of the day is our cause any more or less worthy than, say, the sweatshop worker's?

There undeniably is something hypocritical about expecting everyone to care about your issue, whilst not getting on board with their equally important one.

I get that it's far easier to disengage with the exploitation of women - not going to strip clubs is an easy way to do just that.

But saying, 'well, the conversation isn't about sweatshops' seems massively point-missing to me...

[garlicnutty]

I must have missed the posters who said they don't care about sweatshop workers, Don. Perhaps you could point them out

There is nothing wrong with keeping a discussion on-topic, even if the participants in said discussion are feminists. Being feminists does not oblige us to consider lots of other topics as well as the one under discussion, although some people seem to think it should!

The title and OP of this discussion highlight strip clubs. The topic is strip clubs, and men who go to them.

Feel free to create your own thread highlighting sweat shops.

[Dackyduddles]

I've been to strip clubs myself so wouldn't stop a partner!

[Dackyduddles]

I'm also a feminist. I really don't see the two as mutually exclusive. People have to live. Whilst in an ideal world it might not happen, I live in this one. It's far from ideal. I just don't assume all clubs are trafficking etc.

[Thisisaeuphemism]

I can't disagree more strongly don!

To me, coming up with this argument is like going on a smoking thread and talking about car fumes - I know many do this - yup car fumes are a problem but its a different problem.

Or praps it's like going on a cheating husband thread and complaining about cheating in sport. What's interesting though is that men often use these arguments to derail woman's concerns; as though, hey, there are more important things than women's issues....

[garlicnutty]

Dacky: Every customer who goes to another entertainment, instead of a strip club, takes money away from a strip club and pays it to the other entertainment. The more people do this, the more other entertainments will thrive and the more clothes-on jobs for women there will be.

[BasilBabyEater]

And it can't be said too often: no-one ever tells donkey sanctuary money-raisers tht they should be raising money to prevent cruelty to cats.

Because in every other area of life, people accept that other people have the right to embrace a cause and raise money for it/ campaign about it/ talk about it without talking about every other cause in the world at the same time.

Only women talking about women's issues, are so regularly told to STFU and talk about something else.

[scallopsrgreat]

"I'm interested in the psychology of men who can only talk openly when they are with a naked woman on the clock." This.

Why do men want to go to strip clubs? The dancing, the conversation or the entitlement to ogle a naked woman? If they want dancing they can go to the ballet or a nightclub. If they want conversation well just about anywhere would be better, easier and cheaper than a strip club. So that leaves entitlement. Lovely. Unless of course I have missed some other deeper and meaningful reason

And what is wrong with the objectification argument libertarianj? Do you want to be considered "objects to be looked at, ogled, even touched, or used, anonymous things or commodities perhaps to be purchased, perhaps taken - and once tired of, even discarded, often to be replaced by a newer, younger edition; certainly not treated as full human beings with equal rights and needs" (quoting Phyllis B. Frank) Because that is what objectification is and I don't want to be objectified. It doesn't just stay within the strip club either, it spreads outside to how men view other women in their life and into the media so that men feel entitled to view women as objects for their pleasure.

And as for exploitation. I don't think any feminist on here thinks that anyone should be exploited, hence why we object to strip clubs Sweat shops are products of a capitalist patriarchal society just like strip clubs. Fight that and we'll get rid of both. Simples.

[DonDrapersAltrEgoBigglesDraper]

But the thing is, I don't think we necessarily object to, say, sweatshops - as just one example.

I know when I lived in the UK I did buy things from Primark.

There are plenty of things I do as a consumer that are not above reproach.

I see the flaw in the argument - don't get me wrong: if you can't care about everything, then you might as well care about nothing.

I just think that at the heart of a lot of these issues is other humans being treated unacceptably, and too many people utterly disengaging with the cause that doesn't resonate with them. Which, to my shame, I know I did/do when I buy cheap clothes. For instance. And, of course, we can't expect everyone to be motivated enough, political enough, whatever, to care about everything.

I realise NCG is probably trying to derail the thread and I can't believe I'm in any way supporting that. I'm absolutely happy to be convinced otherwise from this viewpoint I'm currently holding. At the moment, I guess I am just struggling a tiny bit with what I see as a small degree of hypocrisy (speaking completely personally - not aiming that at anyone else).

[AnyFucker]

Apparently, some men go to strip clubs just to have a late beer and talk to the girls

[BasilBabyEater]

But why is it hypocrisy to be so motivated and energetic about one thing but not so much about another?

I know someone who absolutely adores horses. She spends all her spare time with them and supports charities for their welfare. Is she hypocritical for not just donating to the RSPCA so that dogs, badgers, cats and newts can also get a look in?

It's not that she doesn't care about dogs - just that her focus is on horses. I personally find it a bit bizarre; I'm not in favour of cruelty to horses but I also can't find myself motivated enough to donate the £40 or so a month she does to horsey charity alone; but I don't think she should be berated for not donating to the cat's protection league as well. She's got the right to focus her concern where she wants to.