Gender Roles On Male Strippers

Although exotic dancing is considered a deviant behavior situated between entertainment and sex work, gender roles have a compounding effect on the stripping experience. Sociologists argue strip clubs merely mirror the subordinate role of females in the wider society. Many argue male strippers maintain their sense of agency, despite their role as an object of sexual desire, for reasons related to the dynamics of stripper-client relationship and improved social standing of the male stripper in contrast to his female counterpart.

As researchers Montemurro, Bloom, and Michelle argue, power relations between the male and the female remain unchanged by the presence of male strip clubs or male strippers. Male and female clubs tend to cater to a different typology of strip club patrons, fostering a unique environment for the dancer dependent on gender. While female dancers sell a sex fantasy and eroticism, male dancers function as entertainers for typically “virgin clientele” during social events like bachelorette parties or 21st birthdays. The male stripper controls the crowd, approaching their clients in a confident, sexually aggressive manner when entering their space to perform an act perceived as a proud display of male sexuality.

It can be seen, then, that male stripping has become ‘masculinized’ by aligning to the patriarchal privileges

As Pendleton argues, “‘Using femininity as an economic tool is a means of exposing its constructedness and reconfiguring its meanings. Therefore, by exposing the instability of heterosexual roles, by showing they are performative, sex workers effectively ‘fuck with heteronormativity’ ”. By taking professional ownership of gendered stereotypes, one participates in the subversion of the same social constructions that enforced them. Stripping makes a mockery of the gendered caricatures we are assumed to