The Strip Club Debate

Sometimes I come across a piece of writing so amazing and on-point that it takes me a week to fully think through the details. Sometimes it’s Plato. Other times its sports writer’s blogging about strip clubs. This time it’s the latter.

As has been well documented, Vince Young, quarterback for the Tennessee Titans, was arrested after an altercation in a strip club. Now, let me blow your mind with something you can completely disregard in ten minutes. Young men, clouded with unreasonable levels of testosterone and lust, completely lose their minds in strip clubs and become someone else. Therefore, men should only be blamed for attending the testosterone Disneyland and not the way they act. Fucking A!

Given my lack of recent experience with strip clubs and the dancers that occupy them, I do understand that they seem to be a breeding ground for fights and illogical decisions (not based on field research). I’ve had multiple acquaintances banned from clubs for jumping up on stage and performing crude acts during a dance. The crude act usually only lasts about five seconds since club bouncers are so incredibly trained to expect such an event that they can tackle the idiots and throw them out of the club in 12 seconds flat (the really good ones, the Olympic strip club bouncers, can do it in 10 seconds flat—no joke). The men I know that succumbed to such idiotic behaviors are completely level-headed guys that hold down big-time jobs and keep their cool with millions of dollars on the line. Yet, they cannot keep their animal instincts in check when Jay’Z’s Big Pimpin rips through the speakers and a glittery half-naked woman wraps herself around a pole (the long and silver strip club pole you filthy fools).

Some men may argue that crude acts at strip clubs are only done by lesser men, societal hooligans with no manners. But I argue every man is susceptible to strip-club blindness and crude acts. The ladies out there know what I’m talking about. Every time a woman—any woman—walks down a busy street, they are met by honking horns and assholes hanging out of their cars while yelling something that sounds like it could come from the Gorilla exhibit at the local zoo. I, too, have honked and yelled. And it is unexplainable why I feel the sudden urge—while driving 50mph past a woman simply walking on the street—to stop concentrating on the road and yell at the top of my lungs. I don’t want to yell. And in my mind (honest to god) I’m thinking of something along the lines of “That woman is very attractive and I enjoy the way her hair blows in the wind and perhaps I might escort her to a ball on this fine day.” I’m not sure why I think like an English person in my head, but what comes out of my mouth is something like “Hey! Hey! Hey!” And I’m completely baffled at my own behavior.

There is something that comes over men, an impulse that blocks the part of our brain for rational behavior, when we see a woman or group of women walking down the street.

Our body and voice forces something out that we later regret. I promise all women that 90% of the honks and comments you receive while walking by a construction site or just walking to your favorite restaurant are later analyzed and regretted, and what men want to say is something completely different than what comes barging from our mouths. If this is what happens when we just drive by a woman on the street, then one can imagine the affect on our brains when multiple attractive women, wearing almost nothing, walk around the confines of a bar. Our systems go on overload and we might as well remove our brains from our skulls and check them at the door with our winter coats. Yet, the demand for such clubs is incredibly high. The demand is so high that in certain events, such as a bachelor party or partying with New York City Firemen, strip clubs are inevitable. But acting out in odd and stupid ways is only part of the problem at strip clubs.

The other problem is financially strip clubs does not make sense. For example, the line to the ATM at any strip club is usually ten people deep. This is longer than any line at the bathroom or any line of men purchasing over-priced well-drinks that come with a bit of poison meant to make them open their wallets a little wider. Now, the ATM you’ll find at a strip club is not just any ATM. It’s a magic ATM. How else can they explain charging their patrons $15-20 for crisp bills that fit ever-so-nicely into a g-string? On a quick Google search, I found forums with hundreds of men complaining that clubs charge upwards of $20 every time they take out cash. And there are men lining up to do it! Now we can all imagine drug addicts—their brains clouded from substance abuse—making poor decisions and parting with ridiculous amounts of money. Well, to men, a strip club is the ultimate drug and so why should we not believe that people are not themselves in these situations?

So to quote my man Mo Money from the article, “Goodell(head of NFL) needs to realize he has a strip-club problem, not a Vince Young problem.”

He could not be more right. Vince Young acted inappropriately because that is what young men do in strip clubs, especially those with large amounts of money. The only reason men leave strip clubs is because they’re kicked out or run out of money. If a man has an unlimited amount of money and can behave for 24 hours, then it will be an entire day at a strip club.

I wish I could think of something more to say but Mo Money says it best-- “If I’m elected to the Senate, it’s part of my political platform. I want to ban all men under age 30 and all active professional athletes from entering strip clubs. They’re not mature enough to handle it. All they wanna do is make it rain and listen to that loud, cussing rap music. A proper-functioning strip club is a place for a mature man of wealth to help a young woman work through her daddy issues.”

Amen