It depends entirely on the environment.

I've dated two strippers, installed a recording studio in a strip club, and used to be in a stripper-heavy cadre back in college/post-college. I can only speak to my experience which I don't pretend to be universal.

You can't have alcohol in strip clubs in Seattle. Which means you either need to be plastered before you get there or you go sober. Which means your excusable drunk behavior is now inexcusable sober behavior. It's still your behavior.

Strip clubs in Seattle are grim as a consequence. The men who go to them are desperate and sad. The strippers are therefore taking off their clothes for desperate and sad men. Dated one of those girls. It broke her. She did not relate well to men. In speaking with the guy who owned the club I installed in, he mentioned that he'd only operate a male strip club becuase of the dynamic - female strip clubs were entirely too predatory.

Compare and contrast: In Portland, you don't need any particular license to have strippers in your club. Which means you can be peacefully sipping a Budweiser at a sports bar and some girl will walk in with a boom box and start stripping. Been there, done that. I once hit fifteen "strip clubs" in one night without even trying. The dynamic, as a consequence, isn't wholly different from Seattle. I have never dated a stripper from Portland, but I've talked to a few. Totally different vibe from Seattle strippers.

I dated an Albuquerque stripper. Rules are somewhere between Seattle and Portland. Hard to get a read on that situation; she was pretty fucked in the head but I don't think that was the stripping. I think she was just fucked in the head. That's something else to consider - stripping doesn't necessarily attract emotionally whole, rational women.

Finally, there's Vancouver. Drinks are A-OK. There's actually a club up there that used to do female strippers monday-thursday, then male strippers friday and saturday. They'd charge women a tiny amount of cover to get in, then open it to men after 11pm and charge them a ruinous cover charge. Which they got. Because walking into a room where women have been watching naked men grind for hours is just too target-rich an environment to ignore. Bloody genius business model.

Is stripping a "Bad Thing?" I think it's a psychologically perilous thing. Some women can do it no problem and have the ook just wash off (there is ook - I think we can agree on that). It has been my experience, however, that the women who tend to get into stripping are not necessarily of a group with those who can shrug it off.

Thus the perception.