Some feedback from Stuart Greene, author of the Rake piece Should Married Men Go to Strip Clubs?.
I loved your comments with regard to my column in The Rake– I think you provide the subtlety that my column lacked. Like you, I feel like I’m a better, more complex person as I get older, and I especially liked what you said about putting that extra energy into finding new ways to get jollies with the old lady.
I’d only take exception, I think, to the widespread urban myth you touch on, basically that all strippers are victims, which I tend to think is condescending in a backhanded kind of way. Here’s where I cue the stereotypical rebuttal, “Well, I have a good friend who’s a stripper, and she does it because she likes it, feels blessed with a beautiful body, and makes heaps of money.” So you can see where I’m going with that– though surely there ARE plenty of hard-luck cases, to be sure. (On the other hand, think of all the really essentially unhappy men in positions of white-collar power who are there because of horrible mistreatment as children. For some reason we always assume the incidence of victimization is much higher in the so-called sex industry, when there doesn’t seem to be much hard evidence of same, but plenty of speculation based on political prejudices– i.e. that vice is essentially caused by abuse.)
I can’t back up my comment with facts or research studies, so Stuart might be right. I think my perception is based on articles contending that prostitutes have a higher incidence of childhood sexual abuse in their backgrounds. Here’s one site: “… survivors of child sexual abuse are vastly over-represented among the ranks of prostitutes and other sex workers…” Where’s the research to back this claim up? I don’t know. Are strippers considered sex workers? I don’t know either.
But it’s not far-fetched to imagine that the environment for women who work in strip/gentlemen’s clubs is ripe for on-the-job abuse, as reported in this study: Stripclubs According to Strippers: Exposing Workplace Sexual Violence. The details cited make for grim reading. Even if vice is not caused by abuse, it’s easy to see how a “vice environment” leads to abuse.
So even if I’m a patron who doesn’t personally abuse the strippers, I’m still supporting the whole enterprise. Most of us can understand why buying stolen goods from a fence is wrong, or even buying clothes that were made in a children’s sweatshop. Patronizing a strip club seems similar to me… as much as I’d like to go occasionally. I don’t see that as condescending, upfront or backhanded, but since I do have a tendency to be more than a little arrogant [cue a knowing smile at my wife here] I could be missing something.
And what about all the “… unhappy men in positions of white-collar power who are there because of horrible mistreatment as children”? I’m not sure how serious Stuart was with that remark, but I’ll assume he was. It’s just hard to feel sorry for guys who are political, economic, or cultural kings-of-the-hill (Bill Clinton? Jack Welch? John Gotti?), miserable though they may be. And it would seem to be a real stretch to imply that childhood mistreatment tends to create powerful but unhappy men.