Something that bugs me

I have talked to people directly about this, it is not just something I am coming here to yell at them about behind their backs, or in front of other people, etc.  It is just something that has nagged at me ever since I read something a woman wrote not even in these parts of the blogosphere.  Somewhere else entirely.

What it is, is, there are occasional women who will use strip clubs as a way to boost their own sexual capital amongst dudes while still looking down their noses at strippers.  I have known, unfortunately, a couple of women who are like “hey let’s go to a strip club with our guy friends!” and what they have meant is, hey look at me I am super sexy because of my willingness to do what I think a guy thinks is hot, without stooping to the icky level of actually being a whore myself.

Now, it is not my experience that any and every woman who goes to a strip club is doing that, at all.  They may be doing other things, and that may be a discussion for another time, but they are not doing the “hey, whores, let me stand just close enough to you to get some of your spotlight, without you getting any of that nasty glitter on my clothes!” thing.

Specifically the last woman I am thinking of who talked about her visit to a strip club in a way that made me want to bar her from strip clubs forever and ever amen, her thing was to go there with dudes, and then openly mock and insult the strippers who danced while her group was there.  What people mean when they sneer about other people “slumming it,” trying to affect some kind of “street cred” by fake-street visits, that is what I am talking about with this type of strip club visit.

Here’s why it bums me out: not because it is the worst thing in the world and deserves ten times the press that men-in-strip-clubs-and-the-shitty-things-they-do should get.  Not because I have no understanding of where this impulse comes from, or think that it just originates out of the blue in some Mean Girls’ souls.  It bums me out because, really, fellow wimmins, is it me or do strippers not have enough shit to deal with, without you going out of your way to use them for something and then be unkind to them while you’re using them?  Couldn’t you just simply refrain?  That would take less effort than it does to actually go there.

 That’s all.  I may not like or agree with every single stripper I’ve met or read, but I can tell you of the times I’ve been in strip clubs, I and any other woman I saw there in the audience was treated really kindly by the dancers.  And I didn’t even have any money, so it wasn’t the same way they are nice to men in the audience.

Ah, which brings me to another Joan-Kelly-public-service-announcement:

If you are going to take the guyz! to a strip club to adorn yourself with someone else’s whorishness from a safe distance, please have the fucking decency to tip well.  For God’s sake already.  If you don’t feel like you should have to, I am just asking you to then stay home.  Thank you.

If you are a woman going to a strip club NOT to exploit someone else’s nake-idity, I am not trying to shame you into emptying your wallet on the stage.  I’m just saying, if you are there for the “look how sexy I am in a nude bar!  can you believe how skanky these broads are with their bad makeup and vaginas hanging out everywhere!” maneuver, you owe a toll fee at the very goddamn least.  That is my commandment.