Have you read anything I’ve written? If so, where on earth did you get the idea that I would want anyone to feel sorry for strippers? That’s pretty much the opposite of what I said. Also, if you’re only making a couple hundred dollars a month, that’s sad. That’s what I’m telling you about the “big bucks” you think strippers make. It can be a good living, but not unless you work your ass off for it, and it isn’t feasible to live like P Diddy on most strippers earnings.
I’m not saying anything about men that they’d need standing up for. I love men. And I love most strip club patrons. Most of the ideas people have about them are wrong. The vast majority aren’t pigs as much as they are human beings looking to connect with another human being. Many travel for business, to cities where they don’t know anyone, and they come to the club for some conversation with a pretty woman who will laugh at their jokes, flirt with them, and rub her delicious body on them. It doesn’t have anything to do with the “frigidity” of the average woman. That shit works both ways.
There are a lot of men who have been married for 15+ years and because of kids, money, mortgage, job stress, life, etc., they aren’t getting flirty specialized attention at home. It isn’t a statement about how they feel about their wives, it’s just a reaction to the reality of life. So they come to the club, spend a few hundred dollars, and leave with a little ego boost and sexual tittilation. And for older men who aren’t married, it is not uncommon for them to go months without so much as a hug from another human being. Every one of us needs to be touched, acknowledged, for so many reasons. And for men like that, the strip club is the perfect place to go for that attention, superficial as it may be.
Life isn’t black and white. Women don’t all fall into two categories, frigid and nympho. Most are in between all of that, and it would take all day to analyze the male/female dynamic with regard to sex workers and the reasons men seek them. Does that make sense?
Err… you misread my comment. I said I don’t feel sorry for strippers - which is what you want (that is, for people NOT to feel sorry for strippers). I’m agreeing with you (as I explained further immediately after the part you quoted).
Also, my defending men isn’t based on anything you’ve said. It’s just based on the fact that no one else does and in general the attitude that we’re always in the wrong grows tiresome.
My knowledge of male strippers is limited, but from everything I’ve read and heard, the ones who make good money dance for gay men. I think men dancing for women is not terribly common, and nothing like the way regular strip clubs work.
One of the clubs I worked at for years used to have male strippers on Saturday nights, in addition to all of us. We had six small stages in the club, and the guys would dance on the one in the back. That made for an interesting dynamic, lol. The women would start showing up crazy early, like 7 or 8:00, and by the time the guys got going they’d be pretty energized. They weren’t as aggressive as you’d think, but the guys were. They’d hump all over the women, and just get rough with it. I never understood the appeal of it. By 1 a.m. the women would start meandering over to our side and mixing with our customers, which pissed a lot of dancers off because the women would start flashing their boobs and trying to dance on guys. These were the same women who would narrow their eyes and whisper about us all evening, and there were many nights that I expected it to turn into a brawl. We could only put up with so much, and they really pushed us. But it never happened. Strippers can lay the smack down on a bitch, but not at the cost of their job, which is what would have happened if we had assaulted any of the female patrons. But boy oh boy did we want to. They would have deserved it.
(These were specifically women who came to see the guys, not ALL female customers. Regular women customers are usually ok, annoying and cheap, but ok.:p)
Just to clarify- I wasn’t implying that she was. I was going off of your description of her as high school educated and unskilled. There are plenty of college- and post-graduate-educated folks with skills still looking for work these days. I imagine it’s even harder for a woman who has been dancing for years, and is hitting the job market with no skills and little education. I guess her years of dancing will be a seque into some other career, but I don’t know what, which is why I was asking.
I work my ass off to provide for my family, and there’s no way I can retire now in my mid-40’s. If she has to stop dancing at around the same age, I hope she has been working toward something before she does or she’s going to face a pretty grim reality.
shrugI’ve noticed plenty of men’s rights defenders on this board. Heck, without a doubt, *any * rape thread immediately spirals into a segment of men arguing that the real problem with rape is not the rape being discussed in the thread, but false rape accusations by nefarious women. This happens in every, single rape thread. I find it extraordinarily depressing.
I think it’s easier to notice that which impacts your group.
For example, I noticed here that women are being accused of being ‘frigid’. In other threads ‘slut’ has been used on anything from a raped 11 year old girl to a woman in a monogamous relationship who happens to make sexually charged videos…
Sometimes I feel you can’t win, as a woman. You’re either frigid or a slut…
If you think that strippers are providing some kind of emotional service that you expect to get from a woman in a relationship, I’d suggest that you have unrealistic expectations from a relationship, not that you’ve been involved with especially frigid women. Or maybe you’ve been to a different kind of strip club than the ones I’m familiar with.
And if you think you’re the only person on this board willing to stand up for men and complain that women are always made out to be the victims, even in threads where that totally isn’t happening, the good news is that you’ve got plenty of company.
Good point. (Edit) This made me think of the fact that a man going to a playground is much more likely to be looked at oddly (busy bodies thinking he may be a child molester or something)…so yeah, I’m not liking these sex based assumptions by either men or women…
And now, I’m completely getting off topic, so I’ll stop. I enjoyed reading the OP, and like the interesting point of view, so thank you for that Indygrrrl!
You are not entitled to sex. You are not entitled to emotional “warmth” from any individual woman except maybe those in your family. The fact that you feel that they are owed to you probably explains why you apparently can’t get either.
Long ago, and . . . well fairly nearby, I was a crazy street guy. I lived in the bad part of town, and slept out. I got to know a lot of strippers, and hookers. Most of the strippers were not hookers, most of the hookers had at least tried stripping. Some of the ladies were fairly hard luck folks, and most were in the lower half of the educational demographics. But they were not nearly so desperate and pitiable as the men in that part of town, me included. A whole lot of wounded and self defeating men. Me included.
I got better, by the way. A small part of that getting better came out of being used as a resource by the ladies of the evening. I suppose it was a network of sorts, but evidently I was known as someone who could give advice on how to get social services, legal services, and the logistics of economics for a cash only worker. I got coffee and sandwiches for pay, and got treated like a person as a bonus. Even the hookers were, for the most part not the archtype poor wretches in thrall. The strippers were certainly not. So many of them simply did not know that they were easily smart enough to get a degree during the day, and probably financial assistance to do so.
Feminism is pretty much sexism. Don’t tell any feminists that, though.
Of course they’re not owed, but the large unmet demand suggests a substantial gap, on the whole, between what men need and what’s being offered. And what makes you think I “can’t get either”? I’ve had a girlfriend for the past ~2.5 years who’s extremely sweet and caring, and pretty sexual at that. It took a while to find her though, as most women just aren’t like her.
If I had said Masculinism is pretty much sexism would you have asked for an explanation?
Black Pride is racism. If I had said White Pride is racism no one would have blinked.
Yeah, historic details support the argument that one particularism was more egregious than another. That doesn’t change the fact that feminism is sexism. Eliminating categorical judjements from your outlook on life is a whole lot of intellectual work, and spiritual effort. Short cuts, and binary categories have nothing to do with treating each human as a unique human.
