Why do men pay more? I don’t know. Maybe because women are the entertainment, maybe because women aren’t willing to pay more, maybe just to control the amount of men at any event and ensure that the looky loos don’t show up. It’s not fair and if often doesn’t work — if anything it sends me as a woman the clear message that this event is full of the kind of men I probably won’t want to play with. However, it works for the clubs or they wouldn’t do it, and capitalism is what it’s really all about.

This is actually a better link to the essay, though I think both links should get you to the same place.

Also, in the comments, he links to this completely intriguing survey of BDSM practitioners (pdf file)…. I hadn’t seen it before, and thought you might be interested – in particular because there is data there on whether there actually are more women who are bottoms than women who are tops.

This all reminds me of this article by freaksexual (here). His article really clarified my own personal confusion on this subject. It’s long and targeted more at non-monogamy than BDSM but I think some of the points he makes still holds. The relevant section starts after the subheading “Sex parties”. One of the points he makes in the essay is that unequal entry requirements such as cheaper costs for women means that the event organizers have found or expect that their event tends not to attract women and are trying to clumsily correct this by making it cheaper, when really, they should be examining the event to determine what they are doing to drive women attendance down or fail to interest women in attending. I also don’t mean “things that interest women” in terms of sexist things like “paint the club pink” but rather things like “advertising imagery which assumes women are sexual objects” or “an environment where men are not constantly expecting you to be sexually available”, etc.

I also have to wonder, has a difference in entry fee actually been shown to work at all in equalizing a gender skew to any significant degree?

The play parties I have attended in Boston have all charged the same fee no matter what gender. The gender ratio at these parties is not skewed. Parties which charge nothing also don’t have a skewed ratio. Of course, the parties in Boston tend to be private or only semi-public – you may argue what effect this has in terms of the gender skew, but I wonder if it simply means that the organizers feel more free to enforce dynamics at their parties which do not drive women away.

I wanted to add that I go to a public kink event where every entrant pays the same amount  (unless they’re on the guest list, which I’m not). I once went to a public kink event outside of Ireland, and every entrant was charged the same there as well.

At the Irish event, more often than not, I am left with the strong feeling that the door staff  (for whatever reason)  have been telling every male submissive entrant that I am their personal free pro dom for the night  (which I’m not, of course),  and pointing me out to them to make sure they know precisely whom to harass.

I am then deluged all night by men I have never met demanding to know when they “get to have their turn” with me, sometimes interrupting a scene in the middle.

I can’t say for certain that the door staff at this event have ever done anything of the kind. However, that’s what it felt like to me.

The people who run these places want to make a profit, so no matter how the entry fee is charged, and no matter how they distribute their charges, somebody will have to pay it,.

I didn’t go to the most recent public kink event because of being tired of being mauled like everybody’s free sample.  (many submissive women are cherished and protected at this event like precious jewels, which is fabulous, I just wish they extended that same treatment to all women) There aren’t too many of those events to choose from in Ireland, up til recently there was only one. Lately there is another one, but I don’t go to it.

I think it’s incredibly likely that if kinky women feel uncomfortable at these events, then those women will stay away, no matter how the organisers organise the entrance fee.

I think that people will vote with their feet. Perhaps the event organisers think that charging less will convince more women to come to places they’d otherwise rather not? I doubt that strategy will work – nevertheless I wish them luck with it. It might be worth checking out with the women at these events how comfortable they feel on the night, what they think about the entry fees, and whether they think the entry fee charges are likely to reflect their comfort level on the night. Having never been to an event with a differing charging structure for entrants, I couldn’t say.

Recently I noticed that Midori’s charging structure for her rope dojo differs between singles and pairs. As much as I might understand the benefit of having pairs to work with each other at an event like that, as a polyamorous person I personally feel frequently annoyed that so many of these events appear skewed in favour of “the couple”. According to her FAQ, poly triads are expected to purchase one pair ticket and one single ticket.

In short, I personally don’t think the entry fee signifies very much. I don’t think charging everybody the same is going to change anything, I think it’s likely that they’d just charge everybody more.

One question – you said:

“I don’t blame them for doing it. I just don’t understand why.”

That sentence makes no sense to me. You don’t understand why they charge inequitably but you don’t blame them for doing so? Do you blame anybody? I’d really like to know.
 
 
“Oh how I wish this wasn’t true. If only I were being the one consumed and used like a product.”

And I just had this mental image of you parading around at one of these events with a sandwich board or something, advertising your availability for use, featuring a picture of an iron, with a free phone number on it. I think that’d be cute.
 
 
Best regards,

Lubyanka.

(it used to be $35 for men!)

It still is $35 for men. $25 is the party price. The regular entry fee for men is still $35 unless an event is happening.

I have no issue with not having to pay as much as a guy to get into a kink event, bar, party, or anything. Quite frankly, I’m cheap, and if having a vagina gets me half off cover, I’m fine with that.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you’re fine with getting discounts because of your physical genitalia, then you can’t reasonably argue that you should earn as much as a man does in your job. And if you want to earn as much as my penis makes for me, it’d be in your best interest not to let your vagina give you these kinds of discounts.

My 2¢.

But on the other hand, I also have no problem with the fact that I can get in for $5.

I have no issue with not having to pay as much as a guy to get into a kink event, bar, party, or anything. Quite frankly, I’m cheap, and if having a vagina gets me half off cover, I’m fine with that.

One other variable I would add to the equation though: As a general rule, women get paid less than men.

Maybe in order to encourage women to go to otherwise expensive clubs and parties, there has to be an incentive. I sure as hell wouldn’t attend any party where I had to pay $25 or more to get in. Then again, I have no idea what the average entrance fee is for non-kinky clubs, since I have no interest in them, but which many women go to.