To club going men, your sense of masculinity has been a socially derived stereotype put upon you. You do not have a biological right to get behind a woman you don’t know and “grind” her. Nor is it even socially acceptable to do so without an introduction. —What’s My Name?

This article appears in Apr 7-13, 2011.

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51 Comments

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  6. You seriously have to consider the place you are in if this bothers you. Take a look around, they’ve got stripper poles next to the dance floor FFS.

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  7. Haha, thanks, Ivan.

    Hay Matt, mind if I join your guy-on-guy grinding? 😉

    OK is THAT too far? LMAO.

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  8. Unless it’s you, NGF & Sebaceous on Dancing With The Stars – nope still not too far. >; )

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  12. Is there any way I can find out about future summits without having to read every reply to every post here?

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  14. Snoop I’m loving the sarcasm today.

    How was the summit anyway? It was my baby shower – Miss Kitty was to relay that. Are you ok PK? How come you couldn’t make it?

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  15. Summit was Awesome RC. We inaugurated “Sitting on a Deck Swilling Booze” season. The Black Rose, Paingirl, zZz, Ralmn and her BF all showed up along with PK, Hugo, Brend-Org et Moi. Also, Sebastian in his wheelchair, playing his guitar. *narf* >; ) Once again Annie ditched.

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  16. Oh I made it 🙂 It was fantastic! Those fabulous bitchers always put a smile on my face. We sat out in the sun and I’m the pastiest of them all and I look like a cooked lobster now! I’ve been applying the lidocaine’d aloe gel all day. Everyone at work was all “WHOA WTF HAPPENED TO YOU? ROFLZ” this morning 😛

    We’re probably going to have another one in a bit. Definitely before you finish cooking that little guy!!! 🙂

    PS: I’m not preggers 😛

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  17. Snoop, sexual assault is never ok, but check out the dance floor on one of those pig pens sometime and get back to me.

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  19. If sexual assault is never okay, then there’s no need for OP to ‘seriously consider the place they are in’ if it bothers them.

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  22. Wish I could have enjoyed that sun & company! But the shower was great and we got lots of cute stuff. Hopefully I’ll be at the next summit.

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  24. this may sound shallow but….doesn’t it depend if the culprit is uhh, a gorilla-guido-juice head?!?!?!?!?!?! c’moooon!

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  26. oh wait a friend once asked my (sociology student, yeah I know, lol) … What makes it ok to grind in the club … If you were at the mall and some guy came up and started grinding … would it be ok?

    I thought, hmmm, great point.

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  27. It’s okay to grind in a club because it’s considered “dancing” and that’s what people do in clubs. Also, they drink and try to find someone to sleep with (sometimes all three of those things at once!) which can lead to people acting more publicly sexual than they would when they are saaaay, shopping for tupperware in a mall… little kids around… people eating in the food court…

    Were you being sarcastic, Donk? Because I don’t think that was a great point your friend made.

    It’s like asking “What makes it okay to mosh in a moshpit? If you were at the DMV and someone started moshing in the lineup, would that be okay?”

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  28. In my bar going days it wasnt an issue, the wingwoman would look at the guy behind you, nod yes or shake head no and thats how the decision to keep dancing or to stop was made!

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  29. People dance everywhere, does that mean I can go grind some woman who’s dancing on the beach? How about a wedding?

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  30. Whatever happened to *asking* someone if they *want* to dance before doing the crotch-boogie against their ass?

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  32. if i was to grind a female at a dance, it would mean we are together, or she wanted to get it on, somewhere else. then you do what you have to do, giggetty.

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  33. p.k., you have a seriously warped mind, and that’s the why, we loves you bit. grind away sweetthang.

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  34. Hay, I’m not gonna lie: I like being the filling of a menz-on-menz sandwich at da club. Who wouldn’t? Especially if they’re super cute! <3

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  35. Yes, that’s exactly what I was saying! If someone is dancing, no matter what the context or place, it is completely acceptable to start randomly grinding them. You see, social interactions are black and white like that. Square dancing? Have at it! 11 year old birthday party? Get your freak on! I’m glad my comment was so completely understood and that the part about late night drinking hook up culture wasn’t ignored at all.

    People need to differentiate between two people grinding consentually in a club environment where that type of behavior is accepted to a point, and someone randomly walking up to and grinding a stranger in a parking lot or something… is it really that difficult to grasp?

    It’s not even applicable, this bitch is about consentual grinding vs non-consentual grinding in a club environment. Not molesting strangers in the streets.

    Non-consentual grinding in a club = bad borderline sexual harrasment. Consentual grinding in a club = largely accepted.

    I agree with Oceanchick, people never ask to dance anymore, they just leer up creepily behind you… ick. And some girls don’t even push guys who do that away even when they are uncomfortable because they “don’t want to be rude” as if grabbing someone’s thighs from behind and sticking your crotch against her butt wasn’t rude enough in the first place! So they just grind with him for the rest of the song and then spend the rest of the night avoiding him and complaining about how creepy he was. Well, if you don’t start to let them know it’s not okay to do that, they’ll never stop. It’s incredibly sad that people need to be told that grabbing complete stragers is unnacceptable, but that’s the downtown culture for you.

    And Cranky had a point, if you walk into most clubs downtown you might look around and think “Hey, I guess touching complete strangers in sexual ways is acceptable here”. And I think that’s what a lot of young men and women think when they go clubbing for the first time. So anyone who isn’t comfortable with the “being molested by strangers” thing is subjected to unwanted advances and such.

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  36. if you don’t want to par-take in the groping, grinding, sweaty orgy of a crowded dance floor, then dance somewhere else. or loosen the fuck up, have another drink and have some fun. who cares!

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  37. She was talking from a sober perspective (cause she doesn’t drink) and has had multiple ppl attempt to “grind” whilst just standing there … what makes it ok to do so without asking I believe was her point, not so much the setting.

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  38. Thank you Donk, my point too. You just don’t go up to people and touch them sexualy, regardless of the setting.

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  39. but, the setting IS an important detail of the bitch. otherwise we’d all be wondering where said ‘men’ were trying to grind on her without said ‘introduction’.
    i just think to myself, you’re in a club, what do you expect? but meh.

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  40. “you’re in a club, what do you expect?” I go out occasionally and when I go out 99.9% of the time my intention is not to get felt up and grind upon. I go to dance and have a great time with a group of girls. If someone approached me and asked to, or motioned to dance they’re usually more successful than the guys who just jump up all on it.

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  41. okay, valid point 🙂
    i don’t mean to make it sound like i agree with the men(s)…. i guess you guys were right, i was thinking too much about the environment this was all taking place in! mah bad.

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  43. I thought the setting was the main part of your friends’ point Donk, just because that was the only difference between the two situations, and it was a comparison.

    Don’t be so hard on yourself smurf, the environment IS important, it’s just not an excuse. You can acknowledge facts and stats (a woman is more likely to be advanced on by men in a bar than in a mall or parking lot) without using it as an excuse for shitty behavior. “What do you expect? It’s a club.” I do expect a certain amount of unwanted attention in clubs, it would be naive not to. It’s even good to expect it because if you don’t expect it you’ll get blindsided… but expecting it is not the same as accepting it.

    And what men do you not want to agree with? Most men don’t actually do this, and don’t think that other guys should be doing it either. Keep in mind that it’s women and men who are to blame, not just men. I see girls reward creepy advances by not defending their right to not be touched if they don’t want to all the time. Some women are TOO POLITE! If a guy “jumps up all on it” 🙂 then stop what you’re doing, plant an index finger on his chest, look him directly in the eyes, and slowly push him away while shaking your head and mouthing “NO”. Don’t just squirm away gradually or give one of your friends the “save me” face, embarrass him! Let him and everyone around him know that you just rejected the fuck out of him. Maybe he’ll think twice about doing it to someone else.

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  44. As far as men being the perpetrators of the grinding, I play bass in a salsa band, and I feel great looking out and watching the frottage and dryhumping that my bass tumbao causes.
    My tumbao is muey caliente!

    But at Cheers, during “You Shook Me All Night Long”, and the dude doesn’t know you and didn’t ask or buy drinks?
    Eeeew.

    I don’t go to bars except to (now seldomly) play them). Because I use a chair I think some women think I’m “non-threatening”, like their gay man friend. If the place is packed and I’m in the audience, I get boobs on my neck all the time, and especially as women turn sideways to pass me and my arms get a treat.

    I won’t lie when I say I don’t discourage this contact(I *know*! I’m a bad wheelie).
    But now that I have a great gf, the lovely Tamale,I do now discourage this extracurricular contact.

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  45. I don’t think I re-typed it as eloquently as she said it. How I understood it was that yes obviously the settings are different but you would never approach a person in such a way at the mall … then what makes it ok at the club. The settings, as I understood are just that settings, the people are no different. Thing is you wouldn’t specifically ask anyone to mosh at a mosh pit, you’d just do it … so the initiation of contact between two people in this instant was the point.

    “it’s women and men who are to blame” Oh Snooopity Snoop that’s so right!

    I don’t care how the guy looks or what he’s wearing, just starting to grind … no. I’m also not polite at all. They can f*ck off!

    “I do expect a certain amount of unwanted attention in clubs, it would be naive not to.” Of course! Isn’t that a given, but what I do not want is randoms sweating all over my flower garden.

    I can only speak from experience. My goal is not to pick up when I go out … which I suspect is a rarity (only from observation). I genuinely LOVE the loud music etc. I’ve sworn off more than 3 drinks in any one night simply because I tend to make improper decisions and would like to comport myself in a manner that is in line with my everyday behaviour. My everyday behaviour doesn’t let someone randomly approach me in such a way (at any place). I also find drunk men intolerable, absolutely insolent. That’s why I only frequent 1 dance club and always exit at 1:30, before the rough housing. Don’t even get me started on the Dome. That’s a whole other bitch though.

    Sidenote: girls are terrible drunks too, but they’re a lot less physical, I find.

    Oh and I didn’t mean to rag on smurf, I just wanted to point out that not everyone at the club is solely interested in bumpin’ and grindin’, which it sorta came of as.

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  46. Picture it… Halifax, 1992…I was young and slim, and my breasts were still somewhere up near my chin… men expressed their interest back in those days by purchasing you a beverage – a gesture which you would actually reciprocate if you enjoyed their company…

    But seriously. I am way too old to go clubbing anymore, and even on the off chance that I *do*, I am not likely to get my fat ass grinded into. I feel for you young people clubbing these days, here in cougarville, men my age tend to be more verbally overt than physically so, and the verbal salvos are *way* more easily discouraged.

    Touching someone you do not know in a sexual way (and crotch-to-anywhere contact is sexual) is just unacceptable, and deserves at the very least a “Dude, get off me!” as a response.

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  47. aaaand now we see why it’s just easier to avoid the whole shabang.
    quiet guy in the corner doesn’t get bitched at….
    he just gets brushed off until it’s time to go home.

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  49. it’s okay, i didn’t take it as being ragged on Donk, but thanks! i appreciate the feedback, once i re-read everything, it made much more sense to me, and a light bulb went off hehe
    also, thx snooooop 🙂

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  50. I got it Donk! You had originally said “Why is it okay to grind in a club?” but you meant, “Why is it okay to walk up to someone you don’t know and start grinding them in a club.” Because it IS okay to grind in a club, just as long as the two people grinding are both into it. I’d rather not see it, but what can you do.

    I was born in the wrong decade.

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