You Are Not a Product, part I: Strip Clubs and Rubes.

[Doktor Howl]

Once, back in 2002 or so, I had the painful duty of taking a bunch of Euro & American colleagues out to The Palace in Toronto.  I can't stand strip clubs...They are dismal in every sense of the word.  The Euros, though, were fucking MAD for them.  In any case, I wasn't interested in the strippers that would come by looking to sell lapdances, etc, and wound up chatting with one of the regular waitresses (in Toronto, the strippers cannot wait tables).

When the stripper that was busy fleecing the rubes at my table noticed that I wasn't paying attention, she went into overdrive trying to "seduce" me.  It was both comical and awful...I had apparently impugned her self image.  After a good 20 minutes of grotesquery, she finally realized that I wasn't going for it, at which point she called me a "fag", and flounced off.

The waitress - a sociology student, no less - laughed herself fit to bust a gut.  Her laugh was the only attractive thing I saw or heard all night.

Strip clubs - regardless of gender or orientation - are, to my mind, a form of trafficking in humans.  A person is paid to take off their clothes and present themselves as an object.  A "lapdance" is basically prostitution for Johns who can't find the real thing.  In both cases, the person is the product.  People, in my opinion, should not be products.  I find the notion both depressing and offensive.

I'm not saying strip clubs should be banned, of course...Just because I find them to be dismal and depressing doesn't mean that people who see them differently shouldn't be able to go to one, and nobody (presumably) is putting a gun to the dancers' heads, at least not in a literal sense.  Besides, many strippers are strippers because it's the only work they can find.

Doesn't mean I have to like it, of course, and I don't...Again, not because of any fake moralistic reasons involving "decency", but because You Are Not a Product.

Okay for now,
Dok

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I like this. I think it hits the nail on the head.

[Freeky]

Yep, nail on head.

[Salty]

I don't enjoy them.

I've been twice. Once when I was 19, my GF wanted to go out all the time, and in underage strip clubs do well here for that reason. There's nothing else to do, I guess. I go in, my GF hangs back because I don't know why and I'm alone. This woman with what could be described as HOLYFUCKBALLSWHERE'SALLTHATPLASTICCOMINGFROM sized tits walked toward me, saw my face and said, "Oh Honey, don't tell me you're shy." I made a face that made her stop, frown, and turn around.

The rest of evening was an intense anxiety attack and yelling.

The other time was EOT on the way to the airport. But he assured me that the place was less strip club and more prostitution ring. It was an all right place to drink whiskey. There were no naked people.

I just can't see how people can engage others sexually with such little thought and that great stench of money in the air. There's something so presumptuous about it. And then there's the mangled human lives...

WOOOOO YEAH MAKE IT RAIN horrible sadness.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

There's another aspect of that sadness too, in a society where strip clubs are normalized and even considered cool, where young women who have limited options for one reason or another think that it will be a reasonably easy way to pick up some extra cash, and selling themselves as a sexual commodity won't affect them on any deeper psychological level.

I used to believe that.

Now I know better.

It's not that it's sexual. Some people think that it's stigmatized because of social shaming of sexuality. But it's not that; it's the dehumanization of it.

[E.O.T.]

THIS

          is rather how i feel about writers. like, just now i'm reading 'secret avengers', and i see rick remender in a circusy like big top style box, inside with a typewriter, balanced on a giant, teetering stack of skrull dolls,

TYPING,

           just typing away for my amusement like a purple otter dancing on a candy cane bouncy ball. that dirty little otter. i gotta use the john right now(!)

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

THIS

          is rather how i feel about writers. like, just now i'm reading 'secret avengers', and i see rick remender in a circusy like big top style box, inside with a typewriter, balanced on a giant, teetering stack of skrull dolls,

TYPING,

           just typing away for my amusement like a purple otter dancing on a candy cane bouncy ball. that dirty little otter. i gotta use the john right now(!)

Yeah, but you're a pervert.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Once, back in 2002 or so, I had the painful duty of taking a bunch of Euro & American colleagues out to The Palace in Toronto.  I can't stand strip clubs...They are dismal in every sense of the word.  The Euros, though, were fucking MAD for them.  In any case, I wasn't interested in the strippers that would come by looking to sell lapdances, etc, and wound up chatting with one of the regular waitresses (in Toronto, the strippers cannot wait tables).

When the stripper that was busy fleecing the rubes at my table noticed that I wasn't paying attention, she went into overdrive trying to "seduce" me.  It was both comical and awful...I had apparently impugned her self image.  After a good 20 minutes of grotesquery, she finally realized that I wasn't going for it, at which point she called me a "fag", and flounced off.

That's where dehumanizing one group dehumanized another group. If the women are a commodity, the men must be chumps who can be separated from the bulk of their hard earned cash by a little tit shaking.

The waitress - a sociology student, no less - laughed herself fit to bust a gut.  Her laugh was the only attractive thing I saw or heard all night.

She probably still remembers that. 

Strip clubs - regardless of gender or orientation - are, to my mind, a form of trafficking in humans.  A person is paid to take off their clothes and present themselves as an object.  A "lapdance" is basically prostitution for Johns who can't find the real thing.  In both cases, the person is the product.  People, in my opinion, should not be products.  I find the notion both depressing and offensive.

Yeah. One of my friends took me to La Bare's as a birthday surprise one year. She meant well, but the situation wasn't improved by having the "shoe on the other foot", so to speak. The customers in that place acted a lot WORSE than men in strip clubs (who will at least try to pretend not to be fazed by all that T&A), yelling and banging their beers, paying for five dollar tongue kisses, etc. The vibe I got was that it wasn't really about guys in g-strings, it was about their night to get even with every husband or boyfriend who ever hung out at a strip club or ogled another woman. I mean, we're less VISUAL than you guys. Twinkies in cowboy and Indian headgear showing off their buttcheeks and packages and hustling fat housewives just didn't do anything for me that way. 

I'm not saying strip clubs should be banned, of course...Just because I find them to be dismal and depressing doesn't mean that people who see them differently shouldn't be able to go to one, and nobody (presumably) is putting a gun to the dancers' heads, at least not in a literal sense.  Besides, many strippers are strippers because it's the only work they can find.

Doesn't mean I have to like it, of course, and I don't...Again, not because of any fake moralistic reasons involving "decency", but because You Are Not a Product.

Okay for now,
Dok

No, they shouldn't be banned. They're dismal, depressing places that tend to pay a lot better than the rest of the dismal, depressing places.
People have to live. But they do fuck people up. All the strippers I've known were druggies and/or alkies, and they never had their own place to stay. They just got fucked up so they could dance, danced so they could get fucked up, and crashed at different peoples' houses.

Of course some strip joints are pretty high end, like Rick's Cabaret. That's where Anna Nicole Smith got her start, so...same difference.