Why I won’t visit France again “France is just bad value for money”

For this article I wanted to talk about a country that I did not enjoy so much and wanted to get off my chest and that nation is called France.

I feel like this is an issue that needs to be addressed not just within nightlife in France but nightlife across Western Society as a whole, as I think if I don’t address this, what are the chances that this is going to get worse as silence will just pile more problems on what I’m not happy with, so it’s either get backlash now or even more backlash later down the line.

A quick disclaimer that this is based entirely on my own thoughts and personal experiences, I have been to France many times in the past when I was younger and loved it, but this time around I did not enjoy it so much.

For relevancy I went to France in Summer 2022, when I had Dreadlocks and my perspectives of the world weren’t as wise as they are now, but nonetheless although I’m not in France anymore it is a country that I think about often. And just because I’m more experienced and wise over traveling, it doesn’t change what I think about France.

Let's begin with the good. France has beautiful landscape within its towns and cities and it’s almost similar to living in the UK but even prettier, also the public transport in France is fantastic, with their high speed rail bullet trains, double decker carriage trains and the fact that they have a very unique way of designing things in terms of their transport, plus I do acknowledge that the people in France aren’t as rude and as unfriendly as people say they are as I was invited round someones house one time in Rouen, Normandy.

But that's about all the nice things I have to say about France…

So when I arrived on my very first day, I was in a good mood and decided to explore the Nightlife in France, I was super excited to visit some of night clubs within Rouen, Normandy, it was a Thursday night and tried to enter a club called ‘Ibiza Club Rouen’ but by the time I tried to enter, there were 3 bouncers, one of the bouncers who was a black guy said I think in french, “No Pussy” whatever that means, and none of them could understand English and then a lady came out of the entrance who I think was the boss and she said in English “Your not allowed in because you're wearing shorts, have a nice evening.” which okay, perhaps this club has rules, I don’t know what’s so dangerous about someone wearing shorts, if it’s sportswear then fair enough, but not all shorts are considered sportswear plus this was in July, July is practically one of the warmest months of the year in Europe and France isn’t considered one of the coldest country in Europe out there, so I was like whatever, perhaps try again the next day but this time don’t go in shorts, no problem. The next day, it was a Friday night I tried again at that night club just after finishing from a cocktail bar and made friends with a couple of boys and even though I was wearing long trousers and not shorts, they still refused entry, and not only did they refuse entry they didn’t tell me why I wasn’t allowed in, I just didn’t get to go in. Originally I thought that it was because I’m English and they didn’t like tourists, But the guys that I made friends with didn’t get in either and they said that its because we didn’t have any girls, as in Rouen a city in France, as a guy, you can’t get into most clubs without a girl, but girls on the other hand are allowed to get in alone, also wearing shorts in clubs is a big no no according to someone that I meet, this is what it’s like to go clubbing in France. Seriously explain the gender equality in this, how can a 1st world country in the west have such a rule like that for its nightlife, not forgetting that this was in 2022 which really wasn’t that long ago and we're in a time of place now where we’re very sensitive about discrimination nowadays. Some French people have tried to answer this question and say that it’s because it’s to protect womens safety out at night and believe that it will decrease the amount of misogyny, but by having these rules, they're giving me a reason to be more misogynistic. Because they're taking equal rights away from me, just for being a guy. So a few days later, I decided to go somewhere else, I went into another small bar, made friends with a few more people and the people that we made friends with wanted to go to a gay club called ‘XXL’, Luckily unlike ‘Ibiza Club Rouen’ we did get in including myself however the bouncer there was probably the scariest bouncer I have ever meet in my life, personally I was pretty intimidated by him, it was a really dark skinned like 7ft tall black guy, and on top of all that, that wasn’t the only place where the bouncers we’re scary and intense, but every entrance to a club that I walked passed were all majority just a giant bold black meathead guys, who looks like they played the character Bane in Batman. And I was actually more afraid of the French security guards than I was of the French police themselves, so clearly messing with the bouncers in France is also a big no, no. In general you shouldn’t be messing around with bouncers anyway, but with France, why do they have to be so scary and intimidating, that doesn’t make nightclubs feel fun, it makes everyone who got into the nightclub feel vulnerable in a bad way, and that's how I felt when being inside the club ‘XXL’, the music was blasting out french pop music, majority of people in the club could barely speak any English and there was a really scary tall black guy standing around the entrance and I could’ve got grabbed and kicked out by him any time if I did the wrong thing without realizing. Plus ‘XXL’ wasn’t even my type of club, because a lot of the people in there were middle aged women, and people that I wasn’t sexaully attracted to, because personally I’ve never really been a fan of gay clubs, nothing to do with the fact that it’s a gay club and that it’s for gay people but it’s because every time I visit a gay club, the music there usually always so mainstream and filled with furries, fat people and old middle aged women, and because of all that it just made the environment within the club feel low end. And in a way it feels more like an insult to the LGBT community, because there getting less for who they are, and that it somehow for being them true selves doesn’t meet the standards of higher end clubs out there as LGBT people are human beings as well, why can’t they have the same amount of fun as straight people can as there's a difference between being your true authentic self and being an actual lazy, crazy, nutcase who disrespects everyone's culture, including LGBT people, and this stereotype that being LGBT, fat, lazy and delusional are all in the same category is a homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic stereotype and as the night clubs in France have a really strict dress codes, like you can’t wear shorts, can’t wear birkenstocks, tank tops, crop tops as a guy but women can wear that stuff and get in, what happens if your a crossdresser male, like myself and that this is your identity, your basically quite frankly discriminated against for who you are as a person. And if you enter a lot of the clubs in France and end up wearing the wrong thing, not only will the bouncers refuse entry but they will harass you for it. And that happened to me many times experiencing French nightlife and by the time I arrived in Spain, I was no longer brave enough to give a lot of the night clubs in Spain a try because I had such an awful experience with the nightlife in France and didn’t want to go throw anymore while being and Spain. Does this sound like a country that has one of the best LGBT rights, it would be different if I was talking about Turkey or Lebanon. Does Turkey and Lebanon advertise themselves as countries for having the best human rights laws, no they don’t, and tourists are aware of that. But France does and there anything but.

Not forgetting Spain was actually okay compared to this, because when it comes to Spanish people and foreign tourists, even if there was a language barrier, Spanish people would at least try to put some sort of effort to try and understand you and they would be polite about it. But with France and French people, if there's a language barrier, you're basically toast. And as a crossdresser Male, and that fact Spain is further south than France and Britain, (as stereotypically the further south you are the more dangerous everything gets) I actually felt more safer living in Spain than I did living in France or even Britain, my own country.

Things like limited wifi within all my accomadation, No air conditioning in 30 degree celsius weather not even having a basic fan, and the people not being very English speaking friendly aren’t reasons to dislike a place, of course, I may of very well just went to France at the wrong place and time, but what happened certainly doesn’t contribute too much etheir.

Another problem is that the staff in France are just awful, they just don’t give a s**t about tourists and they treat tourists like trash, they probably treat their refugees from Sub-Saharan Africa better than their own tourists just because they can speak French and we can’t as tourists. One time I was in Mcdonalds trying to order food because I was hungry, and I couldn’t speak much French at all, so I spoke to the staff on what I would like to order in English (as I assumed that English was an international language that anyone around the world could at least somewhat understand) and then she freaked out and made fun out of me in front of all the other customers waiting to order like she was shaming me, and I’m like com-mon, can I not even order my food in peace. I get that this is not England, this is France and people speak French but don’t you think this idea that this is a French speaking country is going too far, cause it’s like whats next, am I going to get punched in the face for daring to speak to staff members in English or any other language?

One thing that I did not realize about my time being in France is how uncultured the people are, for an example it’s very rare for people in France to have Dreadlocks especially if your white, so when you have them like I did, they just assume that your some crazy, delusional crackhead, when really you aren’t, and that was the kind of attention that I got. It is rare for people in the UK and possibly the USA to have them as well, but nowhere near as rare as France has them.

You may think I’m being racist here as I mention a lot that there’s a lot of black people in France, but I am not over exaggerating here, I am telling you exactly what happened with my experience being in France. Their football team in France amuses me, because it’s all just black people, most of their players are black and there isn’t a single white native French player left on their team, France might as well change the name of their football team to Africa because there’s barely any white French players left.

France vs Argentina, Qatar World Cup 2022

And I feel like for whatever reason, people treat sexism like it’s less evil than racism and we know that is definitely the case in terms of its nightclubs, like does the average westerner not realize that racism isn’t any less evil than sexism is, there both equally as scummy and evil. But unfortunately there are still quite a lot if people who don’t seem to view it like that and people react worse in terms of racism than they do over sexism, because if there was a nightclub rule where as a black person, you can’t get into a club without a white person, it would be end of the world, everyone would explode in anger and would want to kill the bouncers for it, but they can get away with it if it’s gender related. And this isn’t coming from a religious background or anything, as I reckon a lot people will use Religion as the excuse for this but not everyone in our society is religious you know, France is suppose to be a secular country, and enforcing those traditional unfair rules onto society were not everyone is religious is pretty fundamentalistic.

So moving forward, I was in Paris for 4 nights, and Paris was actually a lot more dangerous than I thought it would be, I am somebody who likes to take risks at things and sometimes in life I can’t do something right without being vulnerable, but when It came to Paris, it just felt too much, I’ll be honest especially late at night, there were times where I didn’t feel safe myself and I’m a heterosexual man saying this, there was just so many sub-saharan Africans trying to scam you with their ice frozen waters or Eiffel tower keyrings.

I actually got into a club in Paris called ‘211’, that was the name of the club and me and a mate at a hostel that I made friends with actually got into the club wearing whatever we wanted and that was sweet! And not only that but the music and people weren’t actually all that bad, I meet a proper French woman for once in the smoking area and she was hanging out with all her ‘black friends’ and she said that those were her “brothers'', which I was like okay, so this may seem all fine doesn’t it, nothing bad happened right, well, not yet. The next evening me and my roommate from the hostel decided to go to the ‘211’ club again and it was a Saturday night, it was much more busier than yesterday, but what happened the second time I went was that Bouncers which was a young black lady young and black guy, and the lady just yelling at me in French and refused entry because I was wearing Birkenstocks or sandals if that’s how you call them, but right in front of the entrance was the smoking area and in the smoking area, there were girls wearing the exact same thing I was wearing, Birkenstocks and they got in. The only difference was that I was a guy and they were women and I was outraged and so pissed off by that, that I left and my roommate went with me, because that is sexist discrimination, and I could’ve sued them for that but I didn’t have time because I was still exploring Paris.

In conclusion it’s obvious that a lot of the nightclubs in France expect men to be a certain way and not be whoever they want to be even if it does no harm to anyone else, they don’t want guys to dress to impress, it’s pretty obvious, all these clubs care about as a guy is your money and that there trying to use regular women to objectify so men can waste their money on, and these nightclubs pretty much follow an ideology fetish of masochism, that involves harming Men's mental health and encourages men to hate women even more. I don’t think you can even consider them to be nightclubs to begin with, a lot of them are more like strip clubs if anything, and it certainly doesn’t give women in France a good name either. Yes I do think having standards and traditions is sexy and attractive, but if the standards and traditions involve taking rights away from certain groups of people for who they are, that’s unacceptable. In the UK, where I’m from, it’s actually illegal to have those kind of laws where guys can’t get into clubs without women, but for some reason that still isn’t the case in France, a country that is part of the West, part of NATO, part of the EU and Euro.

If these night clubs I was refused entry for were honest about what they want, it would pretty much be this.

And I know some people will respond by saying, “why not go to these places in normal clothes, lol” like it’s no big deal, and it’s like what do you mean by that? You expect me to blend in with all the other men, my Identity is not the same as other guys. And this is what I don’t like about these night club dress code rules such as smart casual or just casual, etc. Because smart casual could mean anything as people have their own way of what is considered smart casual and gender shouldn’t have anything to do with it because clothes have no gender, The only thing that I think (in my opinion) that does have Gender I suppose are Bras to cover and hold the breasts and that men don’t need to wear that, but that's about it.

So why am I putting this out there, I’m putting this out here because something needs to change in France within its country and its nightlife and not just nightlife in France but nightlife all across the west in general. Now am I capable of fixing all that, unfortunately not, I don’t have the power to do that, but we can change, we can change by stop going to places that don’t respect for who we are and stop giving them our money, because the best way to make organization’s and company’s recognise they’ve f****d up is by them losing money. My advice would be don’t go to France, the people and staff don’t treat tourists with respect, a lot of things are expensive there, your giving a lot to them but don’t get much back in return, France is just bad value for money, I wouldn’t recommend it upon my biggest dickhead. Yes there are lots of countries around the world that are uncultured and have unfair discrimination between gender and sexual orientation, but I guess the difference between those other countries and France is that the other countries are usually developing countries, the governments in those countries are authoritarian and corrupt, there’s a lot of poverty, religion is more mandatory in those countries, they went through a rough history, whilst with France, fewer than 50% of its population is Christrain, the rest are atheists or other religions that aren’t traditionally associated with French people, it advertises itself as a first world country, being part of the west like Britain and North America, and it’s part of NATO, EU and even the Euro. And I think for a country that has all that, I think the people and society should know better than that when it comes to its human rights laws. We're not living in Kazakhstan, and this isn’t the 1960s either, this is western society in 2022 when this happened, so knock it off the idea that we are living in that place and time.

And like I said before there isn’t anything wrong with having standards and traditions to make something feel and look high end as long as it doesn’t take rights away from people based on Gender, Race and Sexual orientation, and taking rights away from certain groups of people because there doing something wrong towards other groups of people is never a problem solver like all men having their nightclub rights being taken away just because some men did something bad with women. But overall this country is a mess, don’t go to France. It's safe to say that I will not be returning to France again anytime soon and if any of you, including my worst enemies, are ever consider going, I would encourage you to think twice.