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!!!
Well I wouldn’t take it as far as the MRAs do, obviously, but I think there is a growing, and already significant, misandrist element to society- or at the least, a sort of male indifference. Especially to men who aren’t the traditional ideal (which is most guys on Reddit.) I think a lot of them do not feel valued by society. This is their response, piddling as it is.
God forbid we discuss MRA “talking points”. Particularly since the politics of “trafficing” are filled with phoney statistics, it would just be ridiculous to talk about the issues without fedfem orthodoxy defining the parameters of allowed discourse.
Having some gross, sweaty, pervy guy fondle your most private parts and penetrate you for money, while telling you what a filthy whore you are – and continually trying to pull off the condom so he can spooge in you and give you god knows what diseases – is SUCH an easy life!
And it’s not like there is any social stigma attached to it; everyone sees it as a totally reputable and noble profession – on a par with being a football coach or a junior partner in a law firm!
Prostitutes use sex to abuse men.
Prostitutes…use sex…to abuse men.
Prostitutes
use
sex to
abuse
men
It’s like the world’s worst game of Madlibs.
Jessonian, I don’t think that, because most of Reddit’s community are young guys, as in twenties or even my age and younger. The rub with them is, they have never known a world in which women were disadvantaged- I think (and this is extrapolation, I admit) a lot of them feel the opposite. I don’t think it’s a huge thing that defines their life… but I do think, in a lot of these guys’ minds, it’s a sort of background resentment, white noise or whatever. And again, some of it manifests online.
“They see a view that sympathizes with men for once (as opposed to the endless parade of Women’s XXX)…”
The entire world sympathizes or at least caters to men. It always has and sadly always will. Putting aside all the craziness that the MRM brings out, I will never understand how MRAs can look at the world, where men run the government on pretty much every level, as well as most industries including the financial world and even the women’s fashion industry, and say, “Wow, men are so oppressed!” It’s as silly as when people complain that white people are oppressed.
I said that of course this guy is a douche, and almost certainly a troll. But these upvoters don’t take the time to consider that- it’s someone sympathizing with men (for once) and even more krazy, criticizing women (for once). They upvote, move on.
The belief that it’s OK for background resentment to manifest as callous indifference to the suffering of others is pretty much the definition of entitlement.
Well, Crum, there are a hell of a lot of guys- intelligent guys, guys that have problems, guys with more problems than women- who do not feel that way. Think on it.
I guess this is an example of a stopped clock being right twice a day. I mean, sure, the stuff about the customers of the Thai brothels being exploited is absurd, but the sensationalist claims of the anti-trafficking crowd about how the women there are all twelve year old slaves aren’t really any better. Sex workers don’t actually seem to be coerced more often or more severely than people in other kinds of low skill work (not a high standard in a third world country, admittedly), and they are mostly in their 20s and 30s. While relatively few sex workers seem to be in the business because they love the work, the same can be said for maids or factory workers or migrant farm laborers; overwhelmingly the most common reason women are in sex work seems to be because they make more money there than in the other unappealing options available to them, not because anybody is forcing them.
@MRAL,
There’s indifference to all people who aren’t the traditional ideal. That’s sort of the thing about cliques: they’re arbitrarily selective. They effect everyone, not just men.
Maybe you don’t realize it fully, but women are just as varied in our interests, inclinations, histories, and personalities as men are. Therefore, we get classed (by other women and men) into categories which tally how well we fit with what’s hot, trendy, classic, indie, and so on. Generally the beauty ideal serves a tiny minority of women who fit it, and the tiny minority of men who are told they can ‘get’ these women. The rest of us are left to find our own definition of beauty and acceptance…and we’re much better off for it.
The moment you stop wallowing in what you imagine you’re missing out on is the moment you realize how wide and wonderful the world is. It’s the moment you really start to live.
Oh, and in the case of Reddit it also manifests as rape jokes, harrassment of 14 year old girls, etc. This is not a reasonable response to feeling put upon.
MRAL, these guys are not representative, most of these guys are frustrated teenagers or jobless middle-aged men. Several years ago, there was a guy making a lot of shit on various Usenet groups, so people started trolling him to find out who he was and they discovered that he was married, had no jobs, his wife had a job and was paying for everything and the house and everything belonged to her – and I’m sure she was not submissive with him. I think many of these guys that bitch against feminism are like that.
Well, feminism (sort of) has the power to end this background noise, but they choose to continue to demonize men, refer to them as oppressors, discuss women’s shit ad naseum, excommunicate men from their girls’ club for failing to be perfect princes at all times (re. Schwyzer). Fuck feminism.
I don’t speak enigmatic occasionally-appearing troll. Can anyone tell me what a ‘fedfem’ is?
I can’t even…. you’ve got to be trolling
I think there are hardly any middle-aged men on Reddit. Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it. It is extremely skewed toward young, technogeek dudes.
@Protagoras
My parents actually lived in Thailand for a while. The average sex worker there is not in her (or his) 30s. If you go into any red light district in Thailand what you will see is in fact mostly teenagers. In some cases, you’ll see kids who haven’t even hit puberty yet.
So what you’re saying, MRAL, is that there is a ‘cream’ of white, het, cis males who have it so fucking good (money, bitches, power) that those males who fall well below that standard feel like they lucked out in life?
Sounds like the problem lies with a few dudes being massively selfish assholes to me and other dudes aspiring to be like those gigantic assholes.
I’m not trolling. I do not like Schwyzer, of course, but the way he’s been crucified is extremely telling. What if Marcotte or Valenti admitted to sleeping with their students? What if they had Schwyzer’s full history? If you think the outrage would have been anywhere near this level, you’re fucking dreaming.
Yeah, that’s not actually what’s going on. He’s not offering a substantive critique of the stats, which, yes, can be highly problematic. He’s claiming he (as the owner of a “lady bar”) never seen evidence of trafficking, and that sex tourists are the real victims, and bragging about how cool he is for being surrounded by sexy women all day.
Mags, I understand that you don’t agree with most of us here about things. I just find it sort of remarkable that no matter how loopy the stuff I quote is, you never want to criticize it in any way.
Also, there are feminists (like Debbie Nathan) who have critiqued exaggerated trafficking stats. But trafficking isn’t imaginary. And sex tourists aren’t the big victims here.
Those who are congenitally unable to see oppression if it affects women should check out the old British TV documentary about khatoey that followed a young boy from the hill country as he tried to make his way in Pattaya. He started out wanting to be an entertainer, ended up in the sex industry just like most kids in his situation do.
He was about 15.
they have never known a world in which women were disadvantaged-
Let me fix that for you: these young, straight, white, cis, probably not living in extreme poverty, men who may not even be supporting themselves yet look around at the young, straight, white, cis, conventionally pretty young women around them who give them (MEN) boners and who (women) are relatievely privileged as well…..and have absolutely no fucking knowledge of the extreme oppressions that women who are not in that very small privileged group in the US face during their lives based on poverty, discrimination, rape as a tool of war, genital mutilation, etc. (and even quite a few women in the US are in groups who are very much facing major discrimination), but since those boys don’t know shit about the world, they spend a lot of time whining on the internet about oh how sad and bad their lives are.
Cry me a river, boys. It will float the smallest violin in the world which is all you deserve.
*offers you cheese to go with that whine*
@MRAL,
Children are aware of gender expectations at early ages. By five I think most children, if you ask them, could articulate what girls are supposed to like/do/look like, and what boys are supposed to like/do/look like. If boys are being programmed that they are entitled to do/think/become/own and girls to be done to/thought about/married/owned, then growing up and realizing that no, in fact the world does not revolve around your penis, is discombobulating and frustrating for many men, I’m sure.
And yes, that has everything to do with entitlement and privilege.
Did some asshole just say that they may be “influenced by poverty”?? OMFG.