strip clubs

[Pompey Bum]

In Bangkok at the gay clubs they wear number tags so you can easily request the one you want to take home. It's a bizarre experience when the floor show is done and they all line up to be either brought to a table like pompey described or brought home. I went with my spouse though so there was no private entertainment involved for me.

Cacian asked about prostitution, so I will mention what I know (though like Pip, I don't go there). The odd thing about bar girl prostitution is that it gives both parties lots of chances to opt out. The next step after playing "musical girls" is to make a date. This requires paying an exorbitant escort fee to the proprietor of the clip joint, but there is absolutely no understanding that there is going to be sex involved (and often there isn't). Bar girls gain status at work if they get a lot of dates. There is usually a quota they must fulfill, and they can be fired for not keeping up with it. The locations of the dates (arranged ahead of time) are top-dollar nightclubs and restaurants. The dumb punter gets to be seen with a beautiful woman (face, face, face), and the beautiful woman (who gets none of the escort fee) gets at least a top-dollar night on the town. The real winner, of course, is the proprietor, who makes out like a bandit without running any risk with the law. During the evening, the happy couple may or may not negotiate their own arrangements. If they do, the woman keeps all the money (or jewelry or whatever). Or she may string the dumb punter along for more dates before relenting. Or they may just date (at the dumb punter's cost to the proprietor) indefinitely and never have sex. Sex seems to be secondary to the whole thing.

I am describing the way the system works in Taiwan. There is a relatively literate true crime book (okay, a pretty low bar) called People Who Eat Darkness that describes a similar system in Japan. The book is about Lucie Blackman, a young English woman who jumped ship as a British Airways hostess and took a job as a Tokyo bar girl because it paid so much better and wasn't as boring. She went missing after a date, and her skeleton was eventually found in a cave by the sea. The book is mostly about the crimes and trial of the turbo-creep who killed her, but it necessarily describes the bar girl lifestyle in some detail. It helped me to put together the various things I knew already about the subject. But it is an upsetting book, and I wouldn't recommend it to everyone.

[cacian]

In Bangkok at the gay clubs they wear number tags so you can easily request the one you want to take home. It's a bizarre experience when the floor show is done and they all line up to be either brought to a table like pompey described or brought home. I went with my spouse though so there was no private entertainment involved for me.

strange ir is it does sound more like a flesh market sadly to say.
no entertainment for you haha
and the spouse?

[OrphanPip]

strange ir is it does sound more like a flesh market sadly to say.
no entertainment for you haha
and the spouse?

My spouse also didn't bring back any company lol.

In Bangkok it's mostly about the sex, the shows at strip clubs are just to draw in crowds where you have to get a one drink minimum. You then can either pay to get the boy/girl to sit and flirt with you. In bangkok its far more directly sexual than in East Asia. They will usually offer to let you touch them etc. You can then chose if you want to pay their fee to take them away from the bar or club for a short period or the whole night. After you pay the fee to the bar you then need to arrange with the person for prostitution on your own.

Though its still very common for people to pay just for company and not sex even in Thailand, especially in the less sleazy bars.

[Pompey Bum]

In bangkok its far more directly sexual than in East Asia.

Taiwan's a funny place. It's not that prostitution doesn't exist there, but my impression is that making a face trumps the sex. On the other hand, "Bangk" is a hugely popular tourist destination, and everyone knows what you get there (apart from HIV).

[JuniperWoolf]

I recently met a girl who works at strip clubs along the west coast. She's smart, and really into sex worker health and culture. There's a massive community of sex workers you know, and the culture isn't what you might expect. Everyone expects them to have "tragic pasts" and psychological hangups, and to be violently oppressed by their male overlord employers, but that's not the reality, at least not for the girls who move along the West Coast. It's just a job. They're like anyone with a job - on the whole they aren't depressing at all, they don't feel sorry for themselves or like they're better than anyone, they make fun of the stupid sh*t that customers do (customers of strippers do a lot of stupid sh*t apparently), and work is boring work like it is to everyone. I think that they're in a unique position to see a lot of the falseness in society, and for that reason they're some of the "realest" people out there.

[cacian]

I recently met a girl who works at strip clubs along the west coast. She's smart, and really into sex worker health and culture. There's a massive community of sex workers you know, and the culture isn't what you might expect. Everyone expects them to have "tragic pasts" and psychological hangups, and to be violently oppressed by their male overlord employers, but that's not the reality, at least not for the girls who move along the West Coast. It's just a job. They're like anyone with a job - on the whole they aren't depressing at all, they don't feel sorry for themselves or like they're better than anyone, they make fun of the stupid sh*t that customers do (customers of strippers do a lot of stupid sh*t apparently), and work is boring work like it is to everyone. I think that they're in a unique position to see a lot of the falseness in society, and for that reason they're some of the "realest" people out there.

I dont know
i think if no one takes their clothes off at the first place there would no falsness nor stupid customers attending.
it is not fair to call everyone else a fake or a sh""t when one is willing to bare all.
in other words dont take your clothes off if you do not want to be peered at.

[desiresjab]

Stripping is good, nudity is not.

[Whifflingpin]

Or vice versa

[Pompey Bum]

Or vice charges if you try it in Massachusetts.

[Ecurb]

In general, drinking is a form of bonding (I don't know if strip clubs enhance this kind of bonding). "Never trust a man who doesn't drink," states an adage. The principle, I suppose, is that drinking can expose nefarious plots and betray the truth. In vino, veritas (if I'm spelling it correctly).

The result:Alcohol is often associated with vows and promises. Jesus provided wine for the wedding at Cana. Perhaps sober wedding vows are not as trustworthy as those fueled by alcohol (in addition to alcohol's value in entertaining guests). Alcohol is associated with fraternity pledging (probably for the same reason). Toasts are offered (Scotsman used to pass their hands over their glasses when toasting the King, suggesting that though they dared not refuse to toast the King, they were toasting the King over the Water -- Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was in France). In Communion, drinking the wine symbolizes loyalty to the Church.

Stripping is in some ways similar to drinking. The inhibitions and trappings of societal norms are stripped away (symbolically, at least) by removing one's clothes, just as they are by drinking. Strip clubs offer a double whammy. When societal norms are suppressed, we see what our cohorts are "really" like.

[Ecurb]

In "backpacker culture", everyone goes skinny dipping at the end of a long, dusty day, if there's a lake or river that approaches swimmable temperatures. The main reason for skinny dipping is that we don't want to get our clothes wet (we didn't bring bathing suits), we want to wash off the dust of the hike, and swimming is fun. However, there's also a sort thrill to it, especially (but not exclusively) in co-ed groups. Swimming naked adds to the "wildness" and "naturalness' of the wilderness hiking experience. Of course this is very different from strip clubs, but some of the flouting of societal norms and freedom from societal repressions remains the same.

[stlukesguild]

Stripping... like pornography, pin-ups, burlesque, etc... exists... has long existed... and will long continue to exist because their is a demand for it and money to be made. We have a girl in our family who has made a living as a stripper for years and her experience is quite akin to what JuniperWoolf describes. I would suggest that there is a good deal of pretension involved in judging either the sex workers (strippers, etc...) or the customers. I would also suspect a good deal of hypocrisy as well considering the number of people who use/look at pornography (Haven't we had that discussion before?)

[Pompey Bum]

In general, drinking is a form of bonding (I don't know if strip clubs enhance this kind of bonding). "Never trust a man who doesn't drink," states an adage. The principle, I suppose, is that drinking can expose nefarious plots and betray the truth. In vino, veritas (if I'm spelling it correctly).

Yes, spelled correctly. And soldiers, sailors, and freshman roommates are notorious for not trusting each other till they've vomited in the same toilet at the same time, so maybe there's something to what you say.

Stripping is in some ways similar to drinking. The inhibitions and trappings of societal norms are stripped away (symbolically, at least) by removing one's clothes, just as they are by drinking. Strip clubs offer a double whammy. When societal norms are suppressed, we see what our cohorts are "really" like.

If it was the dumb punters who were stripping, I might agree with you. Back in Middle Bronze Age summers, my buddies and I used to skinny dip in the moonlight and phosphorous with the Irish wetbacks we'd pick up on Cape Cod--but it was really just to get them to take their clothes off. Getting drunk together was a sufficient bond between the guys. Getting naked together was just an ugly necessity.

I think the bond with strip clubs has to do with keeping secrets. Strippers may be fine/bored with their work, but that doesn't mean wives and girlfriends (or even female bosses) are going to be as open minded. So men have to learn to trust each other, which is really what it's about. That and seeing naked ladies wiggle around.

[Ecurb]

Co-ed skinny dipping (I think) creates some trust between the sexes when it doesn't result in sex. If the girls can get naked and yet the boys don't attack them, the boys have demonstrated some modicum of self control. When I was in college we used to have skinny dip parties in the college pool (one of our friends had a key, and in those days there were no surveillance cameras). The boys and one or two women would play tackle keep-away with a ball, and the rest of the girls (who were too shy to participate) would watch from a safe corner. Sue M., who was one of the best female athletes in the school and was very good looking, was also a great animal ball player, and was a sight to behold making flying tackles on the unfortunate man who had possession of the ball for the other team (it was a team game, involving passing and tactics, and we took the game more seriously than the nakedness). She has since become the campus minister.

My other college nakedness memory is of streaking the town police station the night before graduation (we'd been skinny dipping in the local lake, and it seemed like a good idea). We (me and one other guy) had to run about a mile and half through town to get back to our house, although not many people were about. We were jocks, and were confident we could outrun any policemen who chased us. None did, but we did say, "Hi" to a couple of students we met along the way.

[Pompey Bum]

She has since become the campus minister.

Ah, you see? Naked and not ashamed.

And now that you mention it, stronger friendships than usual tended to blossom with the other guys' girlfriends if we'd been in the sea together. I mean, there were other factors, too. The girls we'd meet were usually right off the boat so they needed friends, and we all knew these were the summers of our youth and boy-girl relationships were all pretty intense. But certainly knowing what we all looked like under our clothes was a part of that.

Do 20-somethings even wear clothes now? It seems like nudity would be a bore if you saw it all the time.