Steven said no to the strip club on a buck’s night. Then his mates shunned him

How on earth are we still having buck’s nights in 2024? How are we still thinking it’s OK for a bunch of blokes to go out, get wasted, abuse women and then pretend to be saints on their wedding days? How are they even managing their marriage celebrations?

Sure, not all men. Perhaps not even most.

The buck’s party: a time-honoured tradition, or past its time?Credit: iStock

However, amid the horror we all read this week of three men who gang raped three teenagers during a buck’s party weekend, one surprising detail emerged. Surprising at least to me. In 2024, men and women are still participating in rituals that belong in the past century. Maybe the century before that.

What is a buck’s night? British researchers call it a rite of passage, a pre-marriage celebration. Same with a hen night. Plus what’s with the language here? Stags? Yeah, right, that’s a bit of self-aggrandisement right there. Limber. Sturdy. Endless energy. Unstoppable antlers.

And what’s with hens? Am I just going to sit on eggs for the rest of my life and cluck? We get girls’ nights out, anyway.

What are these rituals celebrating? A lifetime of commitment? Hardly. The average length of a marriage in Australia these days is 13 years. The average age of getting married for a man is 32. That means you can probably squeeze in three marriages if you play your cards wrong.

What is the precise point of an event based on ideals we barely kept to, even when we were married forever? Never mind now when relationships appear utterly disposable.

Think I’m a wowser? Probably, but it’s a bit rich for these rituals to continue when everything else has evolved. We are no longer entering marriage as dewy-eyed virgins forced to have one wild swing before ending up in a lifetime of drudgery, the way in which monogamy is often portrayed by idiots at a buck’s night. Monogamy is underrated, especially when it comes to the reliability of excellent sex over decades.

When you read British researchers Daniel Briggs and Anthony Ellis on the buck’s night (or the stag do as it’s known in the UK), the summary is this: way too much booze and “engagement in deviant, potentially harmful, behaviour”.

Or there’s a parade of strip clubs and strippers and dares and drunkenness, and that’s the hen nights. Then there’s the ridiculous pinky-promise of what happens on tour, stays on tour.

Steven Roberts, a sociologist and professor at Monash University, has been to a fair few buck’s nights in his time. That was back in the day when he was a young man. At 45, he’s got a few ideas about how they might be dragged into the 21st century. His last one was 10 years ago, and he and a few mates were called party-poopers because they refused to go to the strip club.

And yet Roberts admires the pure idea of the buck’s night. Here they are, a bunch of blokes, showing how much they love each other. It’s the possibility of being vulnerable with each other. Sure, but do you have to get absolutely stonkered and then go to a strip club?

He does admit that, in his ladhood, it was about who could get “on the pull”. That’s an expression I’d never heard, but apparently it’s about who could “pull the most chicks”. That’s how those young men scored both credit and capital with their peers.

But Roberts reminds me it’s not all about that: “It’s one of the spaces bonding rituals take place, an opportunity for something meaningful and emotional to take place.”

Right. But isn’t it characterised as a last night of freedom? What does that say about how these young men think about marriage, as a burden and an imposition on their future?

Then Roberts tells me about a ritual I’d never heard of. Yeah, call me sheltered. Apparently at some of these absurd events, the stag is given a number of tasks: drink other people’s dregs, get someone to smack them in the face, pay penance.

What are these guys doing to themselves on the eve of what’s meant to be an excellent adventure?

So Roberts has other ideas. Make the parties mixed-gender. Cross-gender friendships happen, so let that be reflected in the events themselves.

‘In no way, shape or form should it be about “the boys”. Why shouldn’t everyone be there?’

Professor Steven Roberts from Monash University

“In no way, shape or form should it be about ‘the boys’,” he says. “Why shouldn’t everyone be there?”

Good question. But isn’t that what you are doing at the wedding? Aren’t you including all the boys with all the girls anyhow at the reception? These days, there are even stag tours and hen tours, which cost an arm and a leg. And probably an antler or two.

Why are you spending your money on this fantasy, as if this will be the last day of your life, the last day of freedom? And if that’s how you feel, why get married in the first place? Why go along with this charade?

Be more like Steven. Just say no.

Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist for this masthead.