Equal Time for Women

Abstract

This article utilizes data from observations at a male strip club and semistructured interviews with the club's strippers to explore the gender roles and the sexual behaviors associated with the strip show and with dancer-audience interaction. The male strip show is described in terms of three interrelated features: (1) the fabricated egalitarian motif of the show; (2) the heterosexual and homosocial functions of the club setting; and (3) the dancers and the audience and the degree to which they portray gender role transcendence Given a supportive opportunity structure, women, who have traditionally been stereotyped as sexually passive, exhibit sexual behaviors with an aggressiveness usually associated with the societal stereotypes of men.