Myfriend was arrested last weekend. We were at a surprise birthday party being held in her honor, when a police officer knocked on the door.
He told her that she was being arrested, and he handcuffed her. Then he pushed her against the wall.
Then he started dancing.
Okay, so he was not really a cop, and she was not really arrested, although she thought she was for a few minutes.
All of the guests at the party -- all women, as is required by the "dancing" company -- knew how the entertainment was going to be provided on Friday.
We all knew the surprise party would feature a live erotic dancer, and thirty of us showed up to see the show.
He was late. After waiting in tense anticipation for over an hour in a very hot and stuffy room, one of the hosts brought out Pop-Ices for everyone to suck on--for temporary satisfaction.
Soon the stripper -- sorry, I do not know his name -- arrived.
Judging by the screams, I'd guess that most of the women were pretty pleased.
That was when I became confused.
As the stripper danced around the room, women danced with him, touched him, and even helped to undress him. I saw normally reserved women stuffing dollar bills into the stripper's G-string.
Trying to avoid undesired grinding with the dancer, I confess I left the party early. My friend told me the stripper took off his G-string after I left and danced completely nude.
The stripper also sucked on a willing guest's toes and put his head up someone else's shirt.
I suppose being one of the few people who chose not to drink that night might have something to do with my feeling of surprise. Perhaps I would have behaved in the same way had I been drunk and goaded on by my friends and the stripper himself.
Still, I was sober, and I came to the party thinking that most women were not attracted to this sort of sexual situation.
I did not expect my friend's party to become what I had seen on television -- a crowd of sexually voracious women surrounding a professionally naked man.
It seems the stripper provided something to these women that women at Dartmouth are lacking -- the opportunity to be openly and unashamedly aggressive in their sexuality.
"There are more people here than at a Tri-Delt meeting," I overheard someone comment during the event.
Sororities are often lauded for their role in providing "women's space," places for women to be together and to be free from gender stereotyping.
But they are not supplying equality of sexual opportunities for women.
I sometimes think sorority parties are an attempt to do just that.
In the Dartmouth social scene, and perhaps in life, most would probably agree that women and men operate differently in sexual situations.
Why is this? Some reasons might be natural, some the result of social pressures and norms.
I would guess sexual aggressiveness is something that women have somehow, but rarely expose it in public.
At the party, drunk people revealed part of their sexual characters to a hired actor and they look back and laugh, maybe with some sense of embarrassment.
But the event was a release from the confinements of frat basements and even from the women's space of a sorority meeting.
I wouldn't advocate the objectification of any person, including the stripper on Friday night, as the way women should learn to express their sexuality.
That is a separate issue.
But it is interesting to note that the erotic dancer allowed the party goers to escape the gender restrictions of everyday life at Dartmouth.
Maybe a different kind of "women's space" could help to continue the work that the stripper started.
