Won’t someone think of the middle-aged white men? How many innocent men will have to suffer ugly strippers needlessly? Why is there no law to protect their delicate eyeballs from gross, old, and fat strippers at the strip clubs they frequent? To avoid this type of irreparable damage to men’s ocular nerves, brave Louisiana GOP lawmaker Kenneth Havard set out to save the day.
Asking no special credit and refusing a special honor by the state’s governor for exemplary service, Havard shrugged off the praise heaped on him for this stroke of lawmaking excellence. Truly, this man is an inspiration.
The above was a joke. But, sadly, the story is not.
A Louisiana lawmaker really did try to pass a piece of legislation that would ban strippers over 28 or over 160 lbs. He added it to a bill that was written in order to increase the minimum age of strippers to 21 in the wake of a tragic death of a 19-year-old stripper.
After it was read (and is now on public record), chuckles, jeers, and what I assume was a flabbergasted silence by most caused Havard to withdraw it. Later, he claimed that he was making a joke:
“No, it was meant as a poke that we’re overregulating everything around here.”
But not everyone was laughing. Havard’s GOP colleague Julie Stokes claimed that she has “never been so repulsed” to be part of the legislative body. Stokes said this type of misogyny is an everyday practice in the Louisiana legislature:
“It has got to stop. That was utterly disrespectful and disgusting.”
Considering that it was a bill designed to protect women and men from predators, Havard chose a strange time to make a satirical point about “overregulating everything.” It’s almost as if it wasn’t a joke at all.
Almost as if, instead, Havard wanted to make a point (on the record) about how women’s bodies are only for amusing men, and how, outside of a certain narrowly-defined limit, those bodies are gross. Which is why none of the women in the legislature were laughing.
