What's wrong with strip clubs?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was on vacation last week, and I thought I’d better try forcing myself to have some fun before I got back to the pointless, soul-crushing routine that is my working life. So I went to a bar. I went alone, because that’s how I do everything. I had friends once, people I hung out with, now they’re all gone. So if I want to go to a bar, I have to go alone.

As you might imagine, it was pretty depressing. I sat on an uncomfortable stool nursing my Harp Lager while people all around me sang, danced, and had a good time with their friends and significant others. And nobody wants to talk to a loser alone in a bar. Since I was not contributing to the festive mood of the place, I felt it would have been unfair to the other patrons for me to stay, so I left.

Down the block was a different kind of bar - one with “exotic dancers”. I fiddled with the idea of going in. On one hand, I was really bored and depressed. On the other hand, I was brought up to believe that such things are too morally repugnant to even contemplate. And I’m not even religious, but politically, there’s still the whole “exploiting women” thing. Not that I’ve never been in a place like that before, I’ve just always felt uncomfortable and vaguely guilty about it. In the end, curiosity got the better of me and I went in, thinking “I’ll try not to exploit the women too much”.

Well, my eyes were opened. Nearly as soon as I took a seat, women started walking up to me and striking up conversations. I met lovely young women from Belarus, Lithuania, Russia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic who were easily as friendly and interesting as any women I met during four years of college. We talked about America, Europe, language, culture, dancing, hopes and dreams… it was almost like a little five-minute date with each one.

Now before you start laughing at me, I’m well aware that they have to be nice to you, it’s how they make their money. I’m not an idiot. But just for the sake of comparison:

Regular bar - A roomful of women avoiding eye contact with me as if I’m a magical djinn and they’d burst into flames if they accidentally looked me in the eye.

“Exotic Dancer” bar - Beautiful, fun women smiling and paying attention to me.

Regular bar - Watching other people have fun while drinking a beer in wretched solitude.

“Exotic Dancer” bar - Actively involved in something resembling social interaction.

What sounds like a better deal to you? Looks like no contest to me. And yet these places are frowned upon. There’s a pervasive attitude that only bums and lowlifes patronize such establishments. Any politician caught in one would face shame and scandal. Nobody wants them in their neighborhood. Yet you can find a regular bar in some of the nicest neighborhoods in America.

Some of you might describe this position as a rather sad and pathetic one to hold. I say, if being tired of drinking alone on a barstool is pathetic, if recognizing the hypocrisy of some of modern society’s moral standards is pathetic, if paying women to talk to you in bars is pathetic, then yes, I’m pathetic. Who’s with me? Fellas? Or for that matter, who’s against me? Anybody think this is a crock, and that strip clubs/go-go bars are morally wrong and that I should go live in a cave somewhere? Tell me what you think.

2

I with ya, man, although my only significant experience with a strip club involved a rather poor-quality one where most of the girls were, as far as I could tell, dumb as dirt. I went there with a friend of mine who knew several of them personally and he confirmed my suspicions. I actually had to explain to one of these girls what a “wang” was. No, I’m not kidding. And no, I’m not referring to a computer manufacturer.

What I’d like to know (and this seems as good a thread as any to ask) is where I can see some of these studies that are often cited that proport to show a connection between strip clubs and other sexually-oriented businesses and an increase in crime. These are usually mentioned at local government meetings where decisions are being made about “adult by-laws” and the like. I really want to know who does these studies, how biased they may be, and whether any of them actually show a cause/effect relationship or just a correlation.

3

I’m a woman and I see nothing wrong with strip clubs. The women make good money and they do it most times because it’s fun. The sleazier places are pretty depressing, but nicer establishments don’t bother me at all. My husband and I went to one together and had a blast. I think most people have a dislike for the sleazy places because the management doesn’t make an effort to control drug trade or prostitution on the property. Those are two separate issues from naked dancing girls.

4

Not at all. Anytime that I want to go out and none of my friends is available, I go to a strip club. And in NJ, strip clubs that serve alcohol are usually not too sleazy. You’re not allowed to be nude or even topless in alcohol-serving establishments. I always say to my friends: Why would you go to a regular bar by yourself when you can go to a go-go bar where there’s beautiful half-naked women dancing around?

5

Movies. The clubs you see in movies are usually suspect and seldom accurate. Think Bada-Bing (Sopranos) or any club you see in an action movie. Dancing at the Blue Iquana? is the only exception. And maybe Flashdance. In the movies it usually it’s loser guys hanging out, sometimes whooping it up like morons. (who stands up and cheers in a strip club?)

6

I don’t have a problem with them, but I never really saw the point in the whole thing, and after a couple of forays in the military, never went back. That is, until a couple of years ago when one of my employees left. He wanted to take us to a strip bar here in town for some farewell beers. Holy crap, have things changed! It’s no longer just a place where a woman dances for awhile, then takes off her top. It’s more of an anatomy lesson, with little pretense of dance, unless you want a “private dance”. There is nothing left to the imagination, and frankly I’d rather read a book.

7

As a former exotic dancer, I can tell you that if I were a guy, the reason I wouldn’t patronize strip clubs is that the dancers talk an incredible amount of shit about you as soon as you leave. We are there to exploit you, and 95% of our flattery or flattering attention is out-and-out lies. In our minds we are likely to be sizing up how much more bullshit, or listening to your bullshit, it’ll take before your wallet makes an appearance.

Plus, Kalhoun, my experience was not that most dancers did it because it was fun (though it occasionally was), but because it offered good money for women with pretty bodies but
a) few regular worksplace skills,
b) little confidence in themselves as regular workers,
c) obstacles to working day jobs, like being single mothers, or, most sadly,
d) substance abuse habits that made them too unreliable to get regular jobs.

Oh, and the occasional e): prostitutes looking for safer leads on clientele than walking the streets. Ick. They didn’t seem to last long, though.

When I did this, I worked one night a week and only with a good friend, because it was way too stressful to do more often. I couldn’t maintain the necessary perky, flirtatious attitude if I worked any more than that. I often got my evening’s cash stolen by other dancers, I saw a lot of backstage behavior I’m not interested in seeing ever again thankyouverymuch, and

And cuauhtemoc, I honestly think a good part of the moral indignation is perpetuated by local cops. A raid on a strip club looks good in the papers… and the [guy] cops are just as eager as you are to spend the evening chatting up scantily clad women, even if they do have to arrest some of them at the end of the evening.

8

There’s nothing wrong with going to a strip club. I’ve been a few times, and they can be a lot of fun, especially if you have a chance to chat with the different girls. If you’re craving social contact, it’s a safe, simple way to get it.

I think the only problem would be if you started using it as a crutch to avoid forming real world relationships, or lose sight of the fact that the strip club is a fun but inherently artificial situation, a business transaction and nothing more. Going to a strip club is better than sitting in a bar by yourself, but it’s not a replacement for making friends and dating people. This of course may not be relevant to you, in which case disregard.

9

Three Cheers for cuauhtemoc!!! :smiley:

Its all about moderation, baby!

actually its all about your hold on reality. You knew the “girls” were doing their jobs. It was a curiosity-fantasy thing and you werent pawing them like a maniac. Its all in fun which was what you were looking for. In that respect, the strip bar you went to was great.

Keep in mind that because of years of ill-reputation, strip bars are magnets to the dregs of society also and theyre pretty well mixed in with the regular crowd. Theyre usually the ones causing all the problems and are the ones cited was what would happen to you if you do go to these places.

10

Who said there was anything wrong with strip clubs? :smiley: Okay, the $4-for-a-glass-of-Coke bit is a bummer, but you just learn to drink reeeeeeeeeeeeeeal slow.

The way I see it, the girls are there to pretend they’re interested in you, and you’re there to pretend you’re doing something besides ogling their assets. As long as everyone realizes it’s all a charade for the sake of a harmless diversion that’s being done with full consent, what’s the deal?

11

I presume what the OP is talking about is the so-called ‘upscale gentlemen’s club’, rather than the dreary biker-run dive that more typifies the form and which I’ve always found almost suicidally depressing. Here in Houston, upscale clubs are practically an art form.

Even for these clubs Emilyforce, sad to say, has it pretty much nailed, although I think the part about 95% of the flattery being lies is a bit harsh. I’d say no more than 90% :smiley:

Seriously, though, I personally try to avoid saying or asking anything that would cause a stripper to want to lie to me, and avoid the ones who are obvious substance abusers, can’t hold up their end of a conversation or haven’t the skillz to keep the hustle subtle.

The simple fact is, stripping is more about customers voluntarily being exploited by the dancers than the other way around. If you’re personally OK with that, there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you:

a) practice moderation: this is more difficult than it sounds, given how much effort everyone involved is making to separate you from your dollars, and how tempting it is to take the ‘easy way’ to meet attractive women

b) remember always that you are basically paying women to be nice to you and that as soon as the supply of money stops, so does their interest, even if they sincerely like you

c) it’s not any easier to make a real connection with a female there than in real life; in fact it’s probably much harder

d) a vast number of ‘entertainers’ have severe socialisation problems of their own, some of which only become apparent with time.

Lastly, there’s something to be said about the idea that stripping tends to ruin the ability to have a healthy relationship for both stripper and customer, in that it promotes an attitude that honesty is of no particular value and that relationships all boil down to an exchange of services for compensation.

12

Well, you know what the say,

“the key to a great and lasting realtionship is Sincerity. Once you fake that, you got it made.”

13

So that’s how it works, eh? I’ve been to a couple of topless places before (and once in Baltimore, an all-nude place) in different states, and there seem to be a different set of arcane regulations for each jurisdiction. Once in Florida, I asked a dancer about the tiny band-aid™-sized sticky thing covering her nipples. She told me the law said she had to wear them. Kind of silly, I thought.

All told, I think I like the non-topless ones better. There’s just less pressure. Dancing provocatively is one thing, but when a woman shows you her breasts it’s like you feel some sort of obligation. Like you really owe her something good now.

Well, the women at this particular club certainly didn’t seem that cynical, but they could just have been doing their jobs really well, in which case it’s really none of my concern what they said about me after I left the club. Basically, I’m not paying them to fool my cerebral cortex, I’m paying them to fool the part of my brain that produces those special endorfins, the ones that make my heart race and my breath quicken and my face get warm, which is much, much easier to do.

Unless making friends and dating people are not an option, in which case what’s the problem?

I hear that. I was in CA on business one time and I wandered into a Deja Vu, which is apparently a chain with strip clubs in several states. I ended up talking all night with one of the dancers, and we still email and talk on the phone sometimes. Some of the stuff she tells me makes me feel bad that I’ve ever given money to this industry. And this is supposed to be a reputable club! Sleazy business, this stripclubbery.

As for the place I was in on Saturday, I don’t know how “upscale” it was, but it was no dive either. Just a very laid back atmosphere with lots of friendly people.

14

Heh! The blue laws that regulate this stuff are incredible and vary hugely from place to place. In the not-too-skanky Déjà Vu I worked in, there was a lot of discussion about exactly how wide the back of your bottoms had to be. It seems the state law mandated that one could not display one’s genitals, breasts below the areolas, or “anal cleft” (unless one was “on stage”). But different local jurisdicions had different opinions about exactly how much covering a buttcrack has to have to be covered enough… ah, those were the days.

In Washington state, at least the last time I was up on this stuff which is admittendly about a decade ago now, you couldn’t serve alcohol in a club where women take their tops or bottoms off either, just like NJ. (In practice, this meant that all WA strip clubs reeked of cigarette smoke, moldy spilled soda in the carpets, and sixty layers of cheap perfume.) And a nekkid dancer had to be at least 2 feet above and 2 feet away from any patrons (this was the “stage”). We could touch patrons if we had all our bits properly covered, but not “with intent to arouse”. That piece of brilliance let the cops haul in a lot of clean dancers. “Judge, it may have been my shoulder, but she had Intent To Arouse!”

15

It all depends on what you really want. Presumably, if you go to a bar to meet woman, you’d like to see them again at some point. One may also presume that friendly as a stripper may be, you aren’t going to want to see them again.

Personally, I rarely frequent strip clubs; partly, its because the quality of such establishments here in Orlando is pretty low (although Mons Venus over on the west coast is rather nice.) Partly, its because I’m a broke college kid and my wallet tends to get carried away when it comes to buying my friends lapdances.
My fraternity buddies and I will go, say, once a year, basically just for laughs.
On the other hand, I dated a girl I met at a strip club for a few months, although it was a long time before I was convinced that a) I wasn’t going to catch anything, and b) that she didn’t expect the relationship to involve a transfer of funds for “services rendered”.
She was a great girl- intelligent, putting herself through college, unable to pay for both living expenses and tuition with any other job, and unable to apply for financial aid because her parents didn’t file their taxes. I couldn’t really stomach the idea of my girlfriend grinding on other guys two nights a week though, and broke things off.

So, the point is, if all you want is an evening’s entertainment, by all means go for it… if you want to meet chicks, you might want to go back to looking forlorn on a bar stool.
And if you choose option #2, learn to play pool.

16

The only thing I ever found wrong was the price of the drinks…rjung you know it :smiley:

I actually went in one once, they had lost their liquor license and were entertaining w/ no alcohol. It was BYOB, yep you heard right! A BYOB strip joint…damn it was a first for me and yes I had my cooler in the back of the Jeep…:smiley: :smiley:

17

BTW I did tip quite generously since I didn’t have to pay for any drinks.

18

Pardon my naivete, but do you have to pay these women to talk to you? Or are they soliciting you for prostitution, and then leave you alone when you decline? Or do you have to buy them over-priced drinks, as rjung seems to be saying?

How exactly are they making money off you?

OK, OK - I’ve lived a sheltered life.

Regards,
Shodan

19

Have you ever dated a stripper? I never have, but I wonder if the lively conversation carries over into a date…but maybe, some nucleat physiscits also strip in their spare time?

20

Shodan, in the club I was in, the dancers do their thing on the stage, then go out among the customers and smile and chat with them. Usually you tip them something for their dance and they let you put it in the straps of whatever scant garment they happen to almost be wearing, and the understanding is that you’re basically copping a feel when you do this.

Prostitutes are strongly discouraged. They draw attention from cops and increase the risk of the club getting raided, which is bad for business. Plus, the other dancers hate them. My friend let one of her regular customers from Déjà Vu kiss her on the lips in the “Champagne Room” and one of the bouncers caught her. He threatened to tell the manager and get her fired unless she gave him more money (the dancers are expected to give a certain percentage of their tips to the bouncers, and he was demanding extra for hush-money). So apparently they do take prostitution seriously.