Why There's No Such Thing as a Businesswoman's Lunch

Finally, Wall St. firms are cracking down on the businessman's lunch--the more common name for taking clients to strip clubs to cinch deals:

The NASD and the New York Stock Exchange both recently proposed rules that would force firms to adopt business entertainment policies that cap amounts and specify appropriate venues. The move is expected to rule out company-paid or work-related strip club jaunts at the more than 5,000 brokerage firms in the USA.

The stock exchange and the NASD acted in large part because of lawsuits brought by female employees. The women who have sued say strip clubs are emblematic of a larger problem on Wall Street: a macho culture that leaves them behind in all areas.

"There are two levels of discrimination: the frat house environment in the office and the deeply embedded practices that are just starting to be uncovered, like the distribution of accounts, business leads and promotions," says Hydie Sumner, a financial consultant who was awarded $2.2 million in 2004 after suing Merrill Lynch for gender discrimination. "When 'business activities' involve the strip club, golf course or hunting ranches ... discrimination is often perpetuated as those in power support and advance those with like minds and tastes."

About freakin' time...

However, check out the comments to this story in USAToday's OnDeadline blog:

Stop the insanity...Only in America will we hamper business from getting done, and then turn around a complain that foreign competitors are taking jobs and market share. In a competitive global market, taking clients out to strip clubs, getting them drunk and singing their favorite bar songs is common place...

So, I guess it's okay to have some chick's twat in your face, and that it's just an incentive to get business done--otherwise we're hampering business. Nice to know that business in America hinges on the naked bodies of its women. That's a real comfort...

and another:

I have no problem at all with people going to strip clubs. But it can't be on the company's dime or time. The point these women are bringing up is 100% valid. It's just unprofessional. If you have to do it, use your own personal time and money to do it.

There are a number of comments that appear to support this notion--and highly ironic that many of these people feel they have to preface what they say with the statement that they don't oppose strip clubs per se...

Apparently, we have to be on the lookout for bully-boys who will immediatley brand us with the word "puritan" (or is it "pussy"?) if we don't preface our comments about strip club deals being unprofessional with the caveat that we're not against them in general when they're on the wheeler-dealer's own dime.

I seriously wish people would get with the program and realize that maybe, just maybe, the sexual revolution is pretty much over, that we're not shocked or disgusted by strippers (many with psychological/drug problems) rubbing themselves all over guys for a buck--but that, in reality, we're pretty much bored by the whole thing. Been there, done that, yawn...

The discussion got even funnier when this item hit the Today Show. Unfortunatley, there are no tapes or transcrips, but the man they engaged to play devil's advocate made the silliest remark: if women are offended by females strippers, why don't they take clents to bars where there are male strippers?

I heard this and I had to sit down because I was laughing so hard. Apparently, the boy's never been to a male strip club.

So, here's a clue, buddy: women don't go to male strip clubs regularly because we know that the men who are dancing there are gay--they can say they're not, but given that the clientele at most male strip clubs are gay, we figure the dancers have to be. Even if they say they're not, if they're taking money from men...well....their sexuality is at the least questionable.

Male strippers are cute to watch for awhile--but who wants to be bothered figuing out if he's only pretending to like us? Maybe there's some cool cachet for guys to pay for women to be interested in them--but for women to have to pay cute boys to listen to their problems just doesn't make sense.

In the female psyche, a boy who wants our money to listen to our problems either needs to get a real job or think about getting a psychology degree...

Further, if we need to talk, women prefer to talk to their girlfriends--or to guyfriends they can trust. We also go to therapy. We don't think some honey who's interested in the hundred we've just pulled out of the purse is an adequate friend or therapist.

And we can always think of better things to do with that hundred than give it away to some boy who should get himself a real job. A manicure and pedicure, a real spa massage, or a new pair of shoes are always good alternatives.

To straight women, boys who want our money for their company really aren't men. And if they aren't men, we really don't need their company.

Yet the bottom line of the whole thing really isn't about whether or not women brokers are offended, and that they should think about taking clients to clubs where there are male strippers--it's about power. Men with money have power in strip clubs. It's a power thing to be the big spender where the women will only go to the dude with the big bucks. It's a power thing, too, to either exclude a woman colleague, or demand that she go along for the display. While we can't necessarily get rid of the first kind of demonstration of power, we can do something to remedy the second. And the bully-boys are just going to have to zip it up deal with it.