I finally got around to watching last week’s episode of Law & Order: SVU. As usual, it was filled with the plot twists and “oh no he didn’t” moments that I love so well. But there was one part that stuck in my craw.
So, the premise is, this woman was murdered. Turns out she was a lawyer moonlighting as a stripper. The inimitable Detectives Benson and Stabler talk to her fiancé, whom they learn had recently dumped her. Why? Apparently he didn’t know she was a stripper, until one night when he “went out with the guys” and they “hit every strip club in Times Square” - including the one where she worked. When he saw his fiancée “grinding on some guy” he felt sick and “went out back and puked.” And broke off the engagement.
Come again? Am I the only one who sees the glaring hypocrisy here? He’s been making the rounds of all the strip clubs in Times Square (most likely without telling her), yet he dumps his fiancée because she’s a stripper? How exactly does that logic work? Oh I forgot, it’s that old worn-out double-standard bullshit; men can get their jollies however they please, but by God they’ll put the smack down on the ladies if they try to do the same. Those uppity free-thinking bitches need to be reminded who’s boss.
Now, am I saying there was nothing wrong there, that he should’ve just smiled and given her a twenty and moved along? Hardly. From my perspective as a third-party observer of a completely fabricated, fictional TeeVee relationship, their situation was rife with, how you say, issues. She being a stripper and he going to strip clubs were merely manifestations of the real problem: dishonesty.
This is what happens when the double standard is fimrly in place in people’s minds, when there’s a climate of sexual judgementalism (yes, I’m aware that I just made up a word), when people feel that there are things they can’t tell their partners because it’s “wrong.” Screw that; it would’ve been much more productive to just get everything out on the table - he likes watching naked women dance, she likes to dance naked in front of men. There’s no reason for either party to feel threatened by these facts, and if one of them does, then that is his or her problem (e.g., due to lack of self-confidence), and not the problem of the partner. Because, uh, guess what, just because your S.O. might like to watch other people grind or be watched grinding by other people, doesn’t mean that they’re going to stop loving you, fucking you, and so on.
To me this is not exactly rocket science, but what do I know…?
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24 Responses to "Social commentary, thanks to Tivo"
Well, I don’t totally disagree with you. These two do seem to have had a dysfunctional (if fictional) relationship. I do, however, think that there’s some difference in being a stripper and visiting a strip joint.
If I were in the guy’s shoes, I’d probably feel betrayed–especially betrayed that this was the first time I was finding out my partner had this whole secret life.
That was my point exactly - she was hiding a huge part of her life from him. THAT is the problem though, not the simple fact that she was a stripper.
What? Because it would be okay for said guy to get grinded on by a stripper but not for her to do some grinding on a guy? He’s doing something with someone (the stripper) that he doesn’t really care about, and so is she (the client).
I think that was the point M@ber was trying to make. Yeah, she was dishonest, but so was he if she didn’t know.
I see this as more than a double standard issue. The fiance guy likes to go watch strippers at strip clubs. The way I see it, those women, to him, are objects to be used for his entertainment.
His fiancee was supposed to occupy a different place in his sexual hierarchy (i.e. the old ‘virgin/whore’ syndrome) He considers the women who strip to be of a different caste if you will. I think it was not that she was even being sexual with another person (client), the thing that really got him, it seems, was that she was allowing herself to be “used” in the same way that he normally “used” other strippers for entertainment. She took something that was supposed to be “his” and put it on public display.
(To be clear, I am speculating about this character’s rationale and motivation, these are not my opinions.)
I agree, the fundamental problem in the relationship, if it were real, would be dishonesty. No, I don’t think anyone in that situation would have been happy to encounter their partner working in a strip club without their knowledge. Just as I wouldn’t expect to find my fiance moonlighting as anything without my knowledge. But to get some overcome that you get sick, indicates a deeper level of contempt felt for the strippers he otherwise would have enjoyed seeing.
Hmm. First of all it’s not clear from your synopsis if the boyfriend was the murderer.
Secondly, it seems to me the moral heirarchy goes the other way. He went to the strip club for stimulation. All she did doing was go to work.
There are a mulitude of reasons one might become a stripper. At the end of the day there’s only one reason to go see one.
That’s assuming one wants to be judgmental in the first place, which evidently the episode’s writers had in mind.
Good post, Amber.
figleaf
I don’t think there’s any hypocrisy in his decision. I agree with Joseph that there’s a difference in their behaviors - not to mention, a lot of people go to strip clubs without getting grinded on.
I’ve been dragged-out to strip clubs a couple of times before, but it doesn’t happen often. If, when out there, I saw a girl I thought I was dating (saw a girl I knew once, but we were never intimate) then I’d get a little jealous.
I didn’t see the television episode, but maybe the guy didn’t go to strip clubs a lot, and it was a special occasion.
Amber wrote:
Everything you said up to this point made pretty good sense. But it seems like here you’re trying to claim that it should be acceptable to either partner if the other pursues stripping as a line of work; It’s particularly bewildering that you say, “and if one of them does, then that is his or her problem.”
So, in your view of relationships, if one party decides to become a stripper and the other has a problem with that, that is (1) evidence of the latter’s insecurity, (2) they should just deal with it? That just doesn’t strike me at all as agreeable with reality or reason; sexual behaviour with other people by definition stands opposed to the integrity of a monogamous relationship. If two people have the kind of relationship where sex or sexual scenarios with other people are mutually acceptable, I suppose that’s one thing, but that’s a relative minority of people. Everywhere else, they call that infidelity, and for good reason.
Guess most of these discussions boil down to the fact that people like myself want an extremely sexually-desirable girl, but that individually I only want her just for myself; it doesn’t matter if other guys find her attractive as long as she wants me, and I can keep her on a leash. Right?
Dude, all I’m going to say is that titty bars are totally fun! Drinks too expensive. But I think the whole appeal is the gaping mouth factor of, “Holy smokes! Titties! Unbridled, naked boobies! IN PUBLIC! Just walking around doing what titties do best! Incroyable!”
But if you’re still regularly going to titty bars when you’re an adult, I gots no love for you. Some things are for children, and bad tit jobs and expensive drinks are for amateurs.
I suppose that the most disillusioning thing about the first time I went to a titty bar is that there was not the unadulterated carnal beauty I expected. Mostly, they looked like me, which is to say, normal, and an overwhelming majority had uglier faces than me. Granted, it isn’t a face bar, it is a titty bar, so I can understand why this wouldn’t be prohibitive to employment at a titty bar. I expected intimidating beauty. The girls at Cabaret Royale did not deliver.
In short, titty bars/bad augmentation on display/expensive drinks = same thing. If you stil are interested in those things and you are an adult, you are a loser, officially.
With regards to Law & Order:
Even though I think that, strictly speaking, it is more fucked up to lead a double life as a lawyer-cum-stripper and neglect to mention it to the person you’re fucking exclusively than it is to go out on the town to a titty bar, I still think the man has the most problems because even though I am not sexist or racist, I am an ageist. And you can quote me on that.
I’ve been thinking about this awhile, and I guess I’ve decided that I want to date Melissa.
Audacity & Adam: please expand on that. Why the difference? Why would you be “jealous”?
No time to write more right now; off to Augusta. Recap of last night’s kick-ass Of Montreal concert to come.
And Melissa: would you like to start an exclusive girl-on-girl show and make the rounds of all the classiest ATL strip clubs? C’mon, I need a partner in this venture.
There’s a difference between being a sex performer and being a consumer of sex performances. The consumer is just passively sitting there watching something happen. The performer is actively sexualizing his or herself.
Do I think that a guy should be going to a strip club without telling his partner? No.
I do, however, think that it’s a much bigger sign of dishonesty not to tell your partner that you are a stripper. Not only is that going to be a much bigger part of your life than if you’d just happened to have a “night out on the town,” but it’s also putting yourself in a position that sexualizes you in front of large audiences.
If you found out your boyfriend was secretly working as a stripper on the side, would you honestly look at that the same way you would if he happened to go to a strip bar with some friends? I wouldn’t.
I think that the guy totally should have used that to his advantage, as you said, she liked to dance for men, he liked to watch women dance for him. There is not a more perfect fitting relationship; I practically just typed, “he could eat no fat, and she could eat no lean”. It was his OWN insecurity and their dishonesty with one another that led to the situation. It would have been easily solved if she would have talked to him, and he would have talked to her; if that would have happened, they could be at home fucking, instead of the police telling him she was dead (given that he didn’t kill her, or that circumstances wouldn’t have played out just the same regardless of the boyfriend’s presence).
People are silly… communication is the key to ANY successful relationship; it seems like I will be saying that until I am blue in the face (believe it or not, I “counsel” many, many gay men about “how to have a successful relationship”; and they are always like, well duh, that makes sense!!).
I guess my point of view’s that I don’t go to strip clubs a lot. Just get dragged out to them once in a while. Big difference.
If I were, uh, habitually fucking some girl and my office people decided to go to Hooters for lunch, and I found out that she was working there a couple of hours a week for extra money, then I’d get jealous because she had this other life making tips off of looking hot for other guys.
Burn me in hell forever for going to lunch at Hooters; I just went there for lunch, but she’s actually working there.
Melissa wrote:
Wait, hold up — I thought he was her fiance? Do you not differentiate between that and “the person you’re fucking exclusively”??
That’s ridiculous. I have no patience for people who are so huffy about their S.O. “looking hot for” other people. It speaks to nothing but their own unexamined insecurities, and yes, I said it. (Now, her working at Hooter [or anywhere] and not telling you would be indicative of a problem, as I’ve already said about 50 million times, but anyway…) And there is not time to go into the differences between Hooters and a strip club.
Anyway, I am finished commenting on this thread… am v. busy and do not see the point in expending my energy on it, when some people are just never going to “get it,” so I should get over it and move on to something more productive. I overslept today so I shouldn’t even be dicking around on the computer right now.
Oh and btw the finacé was not the murderer.
Yeah, I get easily jealous over things that I probably shouldn’t. Sue me.
I have some good and bad news for you all.
There’s nothing (affectionately) sexual about stripping in the mind of the stripper. It’s a way to make money, and she hates most of the men that come see her dance. They’re rubes with wallets, to her. They’re dim cattle to be manipulated for cash.
How do I know? I used to date a woman who stripped for a living. She made a ton of money, believe me, and we had loads of very, very hot sex. But her job was just a job. She’d do about 12 bong hits (to take the edge off… lol) and go to work, just like most of my friends at the time, and after work, she would talk about “the pigs” and we would spend their money. Then she’d throw a leg over and put it on me like a beartrap. Ah, youth.
Yes, she was a powerfully sexual woman, and yes, she had some bad stuff happen to her when she was younger, it’s no secret that all of these things are often connected. However, stripping is a way to make money by willfully objectifying one’s own body, and there’s no “relationship” between a woman who dances and the (ahem) “client” except whatever’s in his head. He might be thinking “Uh…heh… titties… she likes me,” but she’s thinking “Open up that wallet, you shithead.”
As for jealousy? Eh… who cares? I was a professional musician and she was a stripper. Big deal. She came home to me every night, and we’d [censored by the author].
Interesting that the people who wrote this show made her a lawyer, which is an interesting look into the morality of class. What if they had made her a single mother or a secretary at the firm? Would it have been so scandalous?
in an unrelated, unserious note, i hate all these types of Law and ER shows… but i happened to catch this because the roomie tivos it. i knew about 20 minutes into the episode that Rebecca DeMornay walked…
i even used the ever popular Big Lebowski line “ive seen spinals before dude, this chick can walk”
Where was your spoiler alert???
Valeko,
As a matter of fact and a manner of speaking, when I fuck, I fuck exclusively. And when I fuck someone, I am emotionally invested in them at least to the degree of someone who is engaged to be married, or I would even go so far as to say actually married. As I have been married myself and am well-aquainted with the demands of such a relationship, I feel qualified to say such a thing without having to appeal to a more experienced authority.
That is to say, I do not become more committed or suddenly monogamous just because someone has uttered pretty, but ultimately meaningless, words to me, or purchased my affections with a pretty gemstone. But that has more to do with my disbelief in language and disinterest in being bought by a rock than it does a disrespect for the institution of marriage or for the sanctity of monogamy. It would take the same level of irreconcilability for me to cut my losses on a “fucking exclusively” relationship as it would for me to cut my losses on a marriage. I am an all or nothing kind of girl, so, to my mind, fucking someone exclusively and being “engaged” are too similar, materially if not legally, to warrant contradistinction.
Conversely, I’ve know plenty of engaged people who do not fuck exclusively, either by accident or by design, so I can understand your confusion. Just not my cup of VD is all.
And, to this end: sorry Adam, I’m fucking someone exclusively, and Hooters wings are disgusting.
Unfortunate that such a simple concept requires such a long, drawn-out, laborious explanation. Well done, though. I tried my best not to bristle at the VD remark, because despite my immediate, reactionary urge to go off on a safer sex rant, I thought it was, after all, a pretty clever play-on words. Thumbs up.
The “sanctity of monogamy” - ha! Almost as good as “integrity.”
It would never work out anyway. I love Hooters Wing Sauce.