a call starting about 22 minutes from the beginning
I just listened from 21:00 to 26:00 and heard the end of one call and the beginning of another, neither of which was the call described in the OP.
Was the stripper demanding to be friended on Facebook as a way to carry on contact with her in hopes that they could be have a relationship or was it something he wanted for promotional purposes? Not that it matters for the main point, which I agree with you on. I'm just distracted by the idea that even strippers have moved into the part of social media where people mostly use their actual name.
Whoops, 22 minutes from the end. 34 minutes from the beginning. I will edit the post.
it's a hour of pruriently amusing entertainment while I ride the subway
You should also change that to "56 minutes."
If the way you express that you want something to stop isn't forceful enough, it doesn't count. How do you tell if you were forceful enough? If the person you're talking to stops. If they keep going, you weren't forceful enough.
I can't tell if you're saying this in propria persona or not. Clarify?
I am not -- I am imputing those views to Savage and his ilk.
Not that I know if he has an ilk.
Thanks for clarifying where in the podcast this occurred. I agree that Savage's response was not good.
Oh go fuck off, bob, you are an idiot.
Savage has always been pretty rapey though, innit?
Would she have any idea what to expect? Granted I'm not the target audience for any of this, but I never heard of a lap dance except with somebody dancing on or about the lap of a male client. And I don't really understand how it would work, anatomically speaking, with a female client Possibly, I'm reading too much into the "lap" part of "lap dance."
Senator McManus, I know strippers. Strippers are my friends. And you, Senator, are no stripper.
Please, bob. Really. Go play with your dogs.
It is called a lapdance. It involves rubbing the crotch.
Oh great, NOW you tell me! All this time I've been rubbing the tops of my thighs until the skin was raw and my pants were raggedy, without a whiff of an orgasm. Not even a mouse-sized one.
From the first sentence, I knew what story this would be because I heard a furious rant about it last weekend from the woman I'm dating (whom reprobates in OBC have deemed Punchy because our first date was for punch and also probably to annoy Flip) and so the not-even-lurkers support you strongly, LB.
In more general terms, this is something I think about a lot, whether people have treated me badly because I allow them to do so and/or whether it's important to stick to the behavior standards that feel morally right to me even if they're ineffective against jerks. I think the jerks should be the ones to change, even though of course they won't want to.
Savage's response is dumb (I don't really follow him, but my impression is that he's pretty dumb) not least because it doesn't answer the question, which is relevant here: is this normal when a woman gets a lap dance? Any other situation in which a guy puts his fingers inside a woman without clear consent in front of witnesses is a pretty easy peasy rape case. So should she have expected something like this? That's also relevant to how she responded. She didn't know what was normal, so she didn't know what the socially appropriate degree of refusal was. As it is, she communicated her displeasure pretty clearly, so LB "if only you hadn't been zapped by the culture" is extra dumb. Now she wants to know what to think about what happened: did she do something she wasn't prepared for and should chalk it up as a lesson learned, or was this guy out of line, even given the circumstances? No answer.
Uh, LB IS RIGHT THAT "if only you hadn't been zapped by the culture" is extra dumb.
I can't see myself visiting one, but I a just a bit glad to know that exists.
Yes, this sounds very bad, but of a piece with the widespread [American?] superstition that anything bad, unwelcome or unpleasant that occurs is one's own fault and responsibility. I guess we could blame John Calvin, Norman Vincent Peale or Oprah.
17: I have no idea why that would annoy me. Congratulations!
You just punched a hole in the wall, didn't you?
19, 20: Thought I was going to have to fight you for a moment there.
But you're right -- the question she was asking was a real one. While she was clear about what she wanted to stop, and the stripper was at minimum an asshole for being repeatedly pushy, was he way out of line by 'male stripper giving a private lap dance' standard, or was he behaving normally (up until she told him to stop the first time, at least) and she was doing the equivalent of being surprised and upset that a masseuse expects you to get naked. (Which, again, the stripper is still wrong, just like a masseuse would be if they kept pushing you to get naked over your objections. But possibly not initially out of line.)
I don't know, myself, but I'd guess the former -- what she describes seems, even if you wanted it, as if it'd over the line from stripping into prostitution, which suggests that it wouldn't be a normal part of a lap dance. And I'd think the right answer to "what should she do" is complain to club management -- I can't picture the police doing anything, but she's at least a very unhappy customer.
Moby, it's just a regular bar that also has some punches on tap, so it would be fine for you. Except not dark and smoky and Squirrelly, at least the time we were there.
And I really don't want to derail with new-relationship stuff, but thanks, Flip. It's regular but not serious, if that's a thing, meaning we text every day and see each other when I have my free weekends, but no one's going to be settling down or anything and she has other people to keep her occupied the rest of the time. (So do I, at that, just in a different way.) But it's been two months and everything is nice and comfortable and it's certainly eye-opening to go out with someone who cares about me.
17 OBC?
And let me just add a preemptive "thanks" and "d'oh" to the above.
28: I was violating the sanctity of Off-Blog Communication.
And sorry, U-Haul Joke. Though one lesbian couple who came to Mara's (successfully French-y!) birthday party yesterday and we were discussing how the playgroup for kids with queer parents seems to have fallen apart and they had been the last to agree to host but it had been terrible weather and they'd chosen an outdoor space. But then when we realized that the three couples whose houses they'd gone to (mine included) had all broken up, we joked that maybe they'd dodged a bullet. There's plenty of other space for U-Hauls, but I have no interest in getting any more parents involved in my kids' lives.
28.2 to 30.1 (And I would have gotten "VSOOBC".)
It sounds like the guy in the story is in the wrong line of work. "If you're making the costumer visibly uncomfortable, you're doing it wrong" seems like should be obvious. in that sort of job.
Savage's reply was awful. I suspect he was just phoning it in. "How awful it is that in our society women are socialized so that they don't feel empowered to express that a situation is making them uncomfortable and they want it to end" sounds like a pre-packaged talking point that he might just pull out of the bag if didn't want to think too hard about his response.
Are male strip clubs aimed at straight women a common enough thing that anyone knows what's normal for them? Is this club really aimed at straight women, or is it a formerly gay male space that women have recently moved in on? The only scenario I can think of where the strippers actions aren't totally insane is if the private rooms are well-know as a place that gay men go to get blowjobs from a pro and he assumed that female clients (which they didn't have many of until recently) would want the same thing.
If it's actually aimed at straight women I'm somewhat shocked that the management wouldn't be more careful about enforcing good behavior, as they'd only be a successful business if they're getting really good word of mouth.
If it's actually aimed at straight women
Like dowsing?
Can somebody try to explain what a male lap dancer might be expected to offer to a female customer and what would be appealing about it?
I'm sure there's a reasonable answer and I'd appreciate a first-approximation, short surmise. I'm completely nonplussed as it is, and feel I should at least have some idea.
Oh, come on. It's obviously not anything like as big a business as it is for men, and not my kind of thing, but is the appeal of "Attractive naked(ish?) person of the gender I'm interested in on display" that hard to comprehend?
So what a stripper does but personalized, one-on-one?
So what a stripper does but personalized, one-on-one?
Plus, I presume, lap.
Plus, I presume, lap
The part I'm not clear about. So some kind of touching, or just real close and personal?
From a google search, I'm guessing the place was the Stallion, and from the Yelp reviews it seems like it's a pretty terrible place.
Er, sorry, "Stallions".
19/25: it took him a long time and obviously was buried deep under a bunch of bullshit, but Savage did ultimately clearly answer her question and say "no, this is not ordinary behavior for a male stripper, it was sexual assault".
Weirdly, one of the only positive reviews is the one that says "At times there was perhaps a little too much one on one attention. This is absolutely not a good place to be if you are horrified by the prospect of being touched by strangers."
The part I'm not clear about. So some kind of touching, or just real close and personal?
I know you did want to know what happens, and I'm failing to be in a position to tell you, but either way, is it really puzzling to you "what would be appealing about it"? Because I think it's pretty clear what could be appealing about either one. As for what is standard, that was of course the original caller's question, too!
I think he's asking whether women typically have their genitals stimulated through their clothing during a lap dance, and if so, how that works anatomically. (And if not, what's the point of a "lap dance" as opposed to just someone stripping nearby.) You can't just swap genders in "woman straddles man and rubs his cock through his pants with her body" and get something that works anatomically.
That was my question in 13. Because I didn't listen to the podcast, I didn't get the gist of the thing until 19.
If it's as I'm suggesting, personalized close proximity stripping and display, and "lap" is just a way of saying how close, no touching, then I get it.
It's the term that I haven't been clear about.
Also, I only listened once and I'm not in a position to listen again and confirm, but I could have sworn that there was one very weird detail in the caller's question that didn't get addressed AT ALL in Savage's answer: didn't the caller say that her straight male friend bought this lap dance for her "so that he could watch"? Did I mishear that or was that part of her question? Because, if so, that really opens up many more questions... Did the friend instruct the stripper beforehand on What sort of things he should do? Did the friend think this was normal male stripper behavior? How did the friend react when she was obviously uncomfortable? Why didn't the friend do anything to intervene? Basically, unless I misheard or am misremembering what the caller said, overall I have a lot of questions about this "friend", and I don't think much of him.
The direct manos-a-genitales contact was nothing that I had expected based on what I've heard about strip clubs from various people and in Chris Rock songs.
Yeah, ok, I listened to the beginning again and confirmed that I'm not misremembering. What the fuck was her friend doing during all of this?
I thought her "friend" paid, but that her "friends" (i.e. including her female friends) were there for the dance. Did I mishear?
Does it make me a bad person if the combination of urple and a disastrous incident with a male stripper sounds like near perfect unfogged?
55, 56 You need to say like 20 Our Fathers and 10 Hail Marys to get absolution for that.
47: nice big quad muscle is, mm, frequently enough through two pairs if jeans. Cf. YT and Raven on the Raft. Woman can sprawl back on a low-armed couch or chair.
Mm.
Savage has recently been unbelievably tone-deaf to the history of legal marital rape; I suppose he's working through a set of inadequate defenses of "GGG".
First, it had never occurred to me that lap-dancing, for either sex, was something that was intended to result in orgasm. I thought it was just supposed to be low grade titillation. Now I feel like I've gotten ripped off.
Second, am I the only one who thinks that the involvement of the woman's friend in this scenario is odd and possibly troubling (depending on details we don't have). I thought Dan Savage was odd for not picking up on this as a noteworthy point worth exploring further, but based on responses so far no one else seems to think much of it either, so maybe I'm the odd one on this.
Well, I had the vague idea that what Ogged, and the summary in 47 suggested were what "lap-dancing" was, so that the discussion so far, which suggested it was only a metaphor for "really close" confused me.
I haven't listened so I don't know about the friend.
No. He is very possibly more in the wrong than the stripper. I just don't know how we'd know enough to say and even if the guy buying the dance was wrong, "somebody paid to me to grope you" isn't any kind of a defense.
Savage has recently been unbelievably tone-deaf to the history of legal marital rape; I suppose he's working through a set of inadequate defenses of "GGG".
It's hard to conceptualize a lot of problems when your mindset is that in any dispute, the person who is wrong is the less open-minded person.
"somebody paid to me to grope you" isn't any kind of a defense.
No, but it gets to state of mind. "Do this, she'll love it. She might act a little shy, but trust me, she wants it." To me that sounds like BS, but I'd have to think that to a stripper it sounds plausible enough that he wouldn't back off after just one refusal.
Again, not a defense, but it makes his actions more explicable.
I just listened to the woman's description of what happened (WTF?) and the first few sentences of Dan Savage's response (WTF? I knew I hated you but I HATE YOU!) and the whole thing is weird. I do suspect the friend dynamic was part of the weirdness for her, that if they hadn't intervened it was because this was how things were supposed to work or something maybe? I've never been in a strip club and don't expect to be, but it made me think about how I'd intervene in a situation like that where someone's discomfort and lack of consent had been made apparent. Ugh.
Jarring change of tone, but 26 is good news. Hope it goes well.