Rayne and I agree on so much. Though I've only been to one once, I find strip clubs to be both degrading and intensely frustrating: You go there, spend money, get an erection, and.... nothing. There is no sex, not even in the Champagne room. What's the point? Here's your hard-on, that'll be 60 dollars, now off you go! How degrading.
Oh, and I the exploitive nature of those places leaves a bad taste in my mouth as well. (or is it the shitty cocktails.)
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"Here's your hard-on, that'll be 60 dollars, now off you go! How degrading."
So strip clubs are degrading...to men? And they would be less degrading if you DID have sex with the strippers? So you go in, they strip, and then you choose one to pleasure you, a la the buffet Rayne talks about? I guess that makes sense. You'd be much less degraded if your manhood wasn't insulted by cockteases.
To get back to reality, if you slept with those women, strip clubs would be even worse in the same direction in which they are bad now. More demeaning, more degrading.
I agree with you, it is ALSO degrading to the girls who have to dance there and be objectified by assholes and off-duty servicemen. I mentioned that in the post. And everyone else says it all the time, I think the 'Degrading to to women' angle has been covered to a degree where there is little I can add to the conversation.
But see, my point is that you said it is degrading because they aren't sleeping with you. (reread your post if you don't see that.) My point is that it is degrading, meaning "lowering in dignity or estimation; bringing into contempt", to women, since it reduces them from people to things (that overused "sexual objects" phrase which is still quite apt.) To an infinitely lesser extent it might be argued (by someone who does not respect women qua people) that it is degrading to men in that we might feel contempt from these women since they don't actually sleep with us, they just take our money and we are don't get to take anything. Being able to sleep with them might mitigate our degradation some tiny amount therefore (though only if you believe that they couldn't sleep with us and still hold us in contempt) but whatever gain we might have would be at the huge expense of the women involved, whose last vestiges of being taken seriously and with some respect (As an entertainer) is now totally replaced with their objectification.
The problem for men is not the extent to which we are degraded, but the way we are coarsened by being put into the role of purely sexual users. This too, of course, would be exacerbated by turning strip clubs into sexual buffets.
Sorry if this sounds strong, the reason I'm putting it this starkly is because I know you aren't, in actuality, a misogynist. I just don't think you're thinking it through and realizing what you're saying. Rayne is not the voice of reason.
Woah! I wasn't suggesting that strip clubs be Sexual buffets. I was just saying that the whole deal is unsavory.
I don't think it's degrading BECAUSE they're not sleeping with me. Hell I live in JUSO, if I wanted to go to a shop where I could pay women to have sex with me I wouldn't even have to get on a train.
I don't though, because that would be pointless and degrading too. Indeed, just a you say, moreso. My point in the "Here's your hard on, that'll be 60 bucks." Comment was that nobody in the entire exchange in a strip club gets treated like a person, the patrons or the staff. Everyone gets exploited.
Contact with that kind of atmosphere is what I find degrading. I dislike being used.
The odd thing is that I have no objections with erotic dancing or even prostitution in a purely ideological sense. If there were somewhere, somehow a place where people danced naked in front of people who came to see people dancing naked without the exploitation that would be ok in my book. Even with no sex (not even in the champagneroom) because you're not going there for a hard-on you're going there to see some art. (The boner is just an added bonus.)
Y'know what. You're right.
My post was poorly written and suggests things I don't mean at all. I'm sorry. I retract the comment.
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