Today in Did That Really Get 196 Upvotes on Reddit: A Redditor claiming to be the owner of a brothel in Thailand explains how what he euphemistically calls the “problems in the sex industry” are mostly the fault of evil, lazy whores. Literally.
Let’s join the discussion already in progress. (ChaChaKrahp is the alleged brothel owner.)
A little further on in the discussion he makes this charming claim:
According to him, sex trafficking isn’t really a big issue, but when it does occur it “is more likely to victimize men” than women. (The main victims in his mind being trafficked men (by which I assume he means transwomen) … and male sex tourists.)
Those poor, poor Western sex tourists, suffering so at the hands of women and girls who’ve been kidnapped and sold into sex slavery!
But let’s just put this whole “trafficking” thing out of our heads. As ChaChaKrahp explains it, prostitution in Thailand is just a way for lazy ladies to make money. It’s totally on the up and up – “[j]ust like college girls in the US that work as strippers for $300 per night instead of picking strawberries for $50 per day.”
The only real problem is all those evil ladies ripping off dudes.
Did that last bit sound a little … MRAish to you?
Though this discussion isn’t in the Men’s Rights subreddit., ChaChaKrahp shares a lot of opinions and obsessions with the MRA crowd, peppering the discussion with MRA talking points on everything from dangerous jobs and breast cancer funding to false rape accusations and paternity fraud. While he claims not to “give a shit about MRA groups,” he links to prominent Father’s Rights site fathersandfamilies.com, and rails endlessly about the evils of feminism. He walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.
While ChaChaKrahp seems quite sincere in his beliefs, this is the Internet, and so there’s a chance that this “brothel owner” is not actually a brothel owner at all, just some dude making this all up for Reddit karma points and lulz.
Even if that’s the case, we still have all those hundreds of Redditors who read his comments and happily upvoted them, either because they thought what he said was sensible or true, or because the thought of owning a brothel in Thailand gave them boners.
The question remains: does Reddit attract the worst representatives of those in its heavily young, male, geek demographic, or is this how most of these (mostly) guys really think — even if they don’t usually say so out loud?
(Thanks to ShitRedditSays for pointing me to this lovely thread.)
EDITED TO ADD: Brothel Owner under attack (by a few people)! Send in the r/mensrights upvote brigade to upvote him even more than he’s already being upvoted!!!
@Cassandra
I don’t know that they think she should kill herself, but if you’re a woman who is ugly you are pretty much worthless in their eyes. There is nothing more you can contribute to the world. That type of thinking is pretty common in the manosphere, specifically the PUA blogs. Good looks are the only thing of value in a woman, maybe submission for the second value. If you lack those things you’re trash. I mean, those singers may be ugly to them, but what about the music they make that brings other people enjoyment? does that matter? nope. Only their fuckability.
Anyway, this subject just got too depressing so I think I’ll call it a night.
If women do not like to spend a family life with men, they will have to live as sex workers.
Look, it’s non sequitor man!
I currently live alone and am not a sex worker, EN. Sorry to burst your bubble.
oh and I want to put Meller in the middle of that Arch Enemy video.
Also, proof that EN doesn’t read any of the comments, if we needed any. It’s been hours since anyone was talking about the OP.
go fuck yourself Explore Nature
The best part is that Angela is about 5ft1, and you know she’d scare the crap out of Meller. Why, she isn’t even wearing a dress!
I’m really tempted to tell him that I’ve found the perfect woman for him and post pics and clips of Mana from Malice Mizer/Mois Dix Mois, though. He never talks so it would be easy to maintain the illusion.
@CassandraSays
Please don’t. He’s so far out there that the fall might kill him.
Re: your point about Nicki and Gaga, that’s exactly how I see Gaga. I think that her manner of dress and everything is trying to flip conventional notions of sexy. With Nicki though, and I think I get this image of her because of her music and lyrics in combination with her dress and persona, seems to be saying I’m sexy but also just a little bit different. I feel like Nicki is more just trying to stand out than make a statement. Wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right about the racist nature of the attacks though, especially if this was online.
Yeah, I don’t find black women attractive. Whoops, I’m racist, I guess?
For some reason I have this mental image of EN floating peacefully in a boat, all alone. It would explain the disconnection from reality.
In terms of Nicki versus Gaga, it’s about the audience too. Since Gaga isn’t even trying to appeal to straight men, she can be actively offputting to straight men if she wants. Nicki is trying to walk a much more populist line, as far as I can tell.
(I’d also say that she’s just naturally sexier, but if I start talking about women’s looks as well as men’s MRALs head might explode too.)
Hmm, populist isn’t really the right word there. With Gaga it’s almost like she’s written off the straight male audience, so if she catches any that’s cool, but essentially accidental. Whereas Nicki seems to be trying to snag a little bit of any audience that likes her kind of music.
Oh well. I feel like being as picky as Cassandra. Since I’m not getting any anyway I might as well. Pale skin is beautiful. I also like really blue eyes, and moderately big breasts, but not Christina Hendricks big, that’s too much. Between 5’4 and 5’7. AND dark hair. I prefer dark brown but black is ok. Blonde is ugly.
Right, Lady Gaga doesn’t have 50% of the audience, that’s why she’s the #1 pop star. I’ll tell you what’s going on. She’s comparatively unattractive, and knows it, so she goes for the whole insane woman shtick to kind of make herself about something else.
(Shrugs)
Be as picky as you like, kiddo, as long as you stop ranting about women being elitist bitches, etc.
True. But that’s kind of my point too, in that Nicki’s music is directed towards an “I’m sexy” kind of bend, and her physical persona then falls in line with that. To be honest, I think that Nicki’s success depends a lot on that type of image too, whereas Gaga’s success depends on her persona of flipping the bird at convention so, like you said, she has a lot more room to work with
Actually that’s an interesting hypothetical, whether or not a black artist could succeed using Gaga’s schtick. My guess is no, not yet, the market wouldn’t accept it. Plus the physical persona, as you said – it’s hard to desexualise a woman who’s that curvy, people just can’t wrap their heads around it.
Well, Cassandra, she could always just remove the silicone.
I’m always a little weirded out by people who have rigid “types”. I don’t think it means anything nefarious, or that people are being unreasonable, I just don’t get it on anything but the most intellectual level. There are so many different ways for humans to be sexy and gorgeous. (To be fair, I also don’t get people being rigid about only being attracted to one gender, even though I realize I’m in a small minority here.)
I guess that makes my life a lot easier, though. I know sexy people old enough to be my parents, and sexy short people, sexy tall people, sexy people with long hair, sexy people with short hair, sexy people with beards, sexy people without beards, skinny sexy people, chubby sexy people, sexy people of different skin colors and nationalities… it’s pretty awesome, really. Sexy people everywhere!
Oh, there’s no way that Nicki Minaj was not going to be sexualised. Pretty (I find her to be a turnoff, but I can see her appeal), curvy and black, three strikes as it were. But her music also attempts to cater to the straight male crowd so she plays it up as well. Whereas if you take rappers like Jean Grae or MC Lyte, both of them are model gorgeous, but they’re trying to cater to the straight male audience as b-girl lyricists rather than sex symbols, so they don’t have that persona built around their sexuality like Nicki.
Your point about a black Gaga is spot on. Also, black women are so sexualised by mainstream society that I don’t think people would even get it.
The conversation about Gaga and privilege has been done to death so I won’t rehash it here, but yeah – only a certain kind of person is given cultural space to do the kind of stuff she’s doing.
Now I feel like digging up interviews of Nicki to see if I can get a better sense of what she’s going for with the persona. I know that little girls love it, so that may be what the cartoonish part is for, or that may just be her personality. Hard to tell, you know? The public personas of celebrities often have nothing much to do with their actual personalities, but sometimes there’s more personal expression going on, and I do get the impression that Nicki is just naturally a bit weird.
Actually I think this is a big part of the odd cultural reaction to Megan Fox too. If you see her off-duty she’s weird and a bit geeky and kind of awkward – not cool in any sense of the word. She’s an oddball, basically. But beautiful women aren’t supposed to be really weird, so I feel like in her case weird and awkward gets interpreted as bitchy and cold. How people are interpreted is always filtered via their appearance, especially for women (for men too, just not in as extreme a way).
No, it’s more extreme for men. Ugly men are losers and that’s it, basically.
Let’s go with the NSFWEvers …
And a personal favorite. Much more singable unless you’re at karaoke with someone who is easily offended.
You know how sometimes people seem to be trying SO HARD to offend you that it comes full circle and just becomes blah?
I used to go see Deg a lot, and around this time it was obvious there were “issues,” but their shows were still fun. Went a year or two ago and it was ho-hum.
Annnnd there is no preview button, so hopefully this works.
That’s true. It’s basically impossible for a man to have an acting or musical career if he’s not really attractive. It’s considered a funny joke to put in tv shows, to have the characters sitting around dismissing the attractiveness of famous men. Even men in roles that have nothing to do with appearance, like politics, are assessed in terms of their looks and cannot possibly succeed if they are not at least reasonably conventionally attractive. And men spend tons of money on fancy clothes and beauty products as a result of this.
Duh.
My absolute favorite:
And very singable for karaoke too. Used to love this one when they would blast the flames … ahh, 懐かしい …
Too true. I haven’t read any of her interviews but, especially with hip hop, i think it’s really hard to tell when an artist is speaking as themselves and when they’re speaking as their music persona. I dunno if you’ve found this to be true of rock and pop artists as well. Or are they more free to keep their personas for performing, and speak more freely during interviews?