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!!!
“not the same as premeditated murder, or whatever.”
Brilliant.
Anyway, she probably was secretly laughing at him for having a zit at one point. THE BITCH MUST DIE.
Maybe she spit on him. All bets are off then.
Oh, joy, a EWME and MRAL combo.
I can’t wait for dessert.
Hugo was nominated for 11 Academy Awards!
Oh wait different Hugo.
“Hugo was nominated for 11 Academy Awards!
Oh wait different Hugo.”
I NEEEEED to see that movie.
What does being fat, geeky, or male have to do with one’s political opinions? And before you say all fat geeky feminist men are virgins you kind of need to explain the fat geeky feminist men I know with multiple girlfriends.
Shaenon, I’m not saying that what Schwyzer did wasn’t really terrible, he tried to kill someone, and I recognize that. Only that, I don’t think it’s the same thing as premeditated murder, or whatever. I get how it could happen. I think it’s something that can be moved past.
That’s not what you said. Not only did you act like it was no big deal, you didn’t even seem to notice the “attempted murder” part of the story. You were talking like he broke a piece of furniture. It was scary as hell, not in the least because I can see you talking to some future girlfriend in exactly the same way. (“Yeah, I got pretty fucked up last night, good thing nobody was hurt. Oh, I punched you in the face? I mean, like a man getting hurt, like somebody who can feel pain. What’re you all worked up over? It’s not like I planned to punch you in advance! I was angry! And sad! And stoned!”)
Like I’ve said before, on a fundamental level you don’t see women as human.
Fortunately, I have an assignment for you!
1. Choose one of your intellectual talking points from this thread.
2. Turn off the fucking computer.
3. Leave your room and find a real live woman in the real world.
4. Discuss your thought-provoking intellectual idea with her.
Do not come back here until you’ve done this. I’ll be watching.
Why am I not surprised that MRAL can “get why that would happen” in regards to the attempted murder of a woman?
MRAL, you are a violent little shit that is at the present time totally unfit for human company. Not because you are male, either, but because you are you.
Ban him. Ban him. He’s an annoying little asshole. Also, he’s boring.
Shorter EWME: “You only get laid because you’re *nice* to people and they *want* you to fuck them. That’s cheating.”
MRAL: Note that the entirety of her position is that she believes there was a rape. It’s sort of like the people who say OJ killed his ex-wife.
Which is why she wasn’t, “scourged”, though there are feminists who think she was over the top, and said so. Some have even said so here. Confirmation bias much?
implies that she didn’t disclose her gender because females get more such threats, which is untrue- look at Schwyzer. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but, you know.
Um… you’re justification for this codswallop is what?
Let me give you a little outside evidence,
All of the bloggers at Tiger Beatdown have received threats, not just in email but in comments, on Twitter, and in other media, and the site itself has been subject to hacking attempts as well. It’s grinding and relentless and we’re told collectively, as a community, to stay silent about it, but I’m not sure that’s the right answer, to remain silent in the face of silencing campaigns designed and calculated to drive us from not just the Internet, but public spaces in general. To compress us into small boxes somewhere and leave us there, to underscore that our kind are not wanted here, there, or anywhere.
*GAG GAG GLUCK* You have discovered the only vocables worth hearing from Sady’s cock-stuffed maw…die tr*nny whore…[slut walk] is a parade for people who suffer from Histrionic Personality Disorder aka Attention Whores…I know where you live, r#tard…why don’t you do the world a favour and jump off a bridge…Feminazi…
A small sampling of the kinds of things that show up in our inboxes, in comment threads, on attack websites, in things sent to our readers.
Rape threats happen. Death threats happen. People threaten friends, families, jobs, household pets. Stalkers go to considerable lengths to collect and exploit information. People who are open about this, who do talk about threats and stalking and danger, and they are out there, are punished for it. They get more abuse, they’re told that they’re making it all up, that it’s all in their heads, that they are exaggerating, entirely new hate sites spring up to speculate about them and talk about their ‘desperate ploys for attention.’ That’s what I have to look forward to for writing this piece, for laying out some of the costs of social participation for you, for openly discussing the thing which dare not speak its name, the brash, open hostility reserved for people who do not shut up.
Are you going to say your little foray into hate maile is equal to that?
I’ve done the, “pretend to be female on the internet”. I’ve done it in BBS,and in blogs. I got crudely hit on. When I said I wasn’t interested… I got rape mail.
That’s without me talking about politics. It was just being female in public.
So no, I am not taking your claim that Schwyzer got that sort of treatment, just for being male. Because he didn’t. What abuse he got, from people like you, was for being feminist. What abuse he’s gotten from women is for being a self-confessed attempted murderer. Neither of those deserves death threats, but one of them certainly does justify some hostility.
So… care to try to get some evidence to support the claim… because the moment Digby came out… the rape mail, and the death threats happened. Stuff that had been non-existent (the rape mail) or much less common/vitriolic. She has a before/after condition to measure things against. In that situation, being female is worse.
You’ve got your certainty, which is worth about the same as a bucket of warm spit.
I guess I’m late to the party. But re: MRAL’s assertion that 1) There has been a lack of feminist condemnation of Schwyzer; and 2) Female feminists are never aggressively attacked.
I thought pretty much the entire feminist blogosphere that was at least as “radical” (for lack of a better term) as Feministe pretty much censured him. I’m a regular reader of Feministe and seem to recall a 1,000 comment apocalypse unfolded when Clarisse Thorn linked to an interview with him. The response was so negative that Thorn shut down the comments because she felt she couldn’t deal emotionally with moderating them, and as far as I know she has made only one post on their since, in which she tried to explain herself. The response to this post created another hundredsofcomments apocalypse chastising her and the site for giving him a platform. Fellow Feministe contributor Caperton then subsequently made a post that pretty much condemned Schwyzer and Thorn. Feministe then crossposted a post by feminist blogger Maia calling out Thorn and Schwyzer. This was accompanied by addressing of the issue on various other blogs that fall similarly on the feminist spectrum to Feministe.
And, since it wasn’t that big a deal to MRAL, the substance of much of the backlash regarding Schwyzer noted that most of the commentariat thought he was a huge tool before he admitted to trying to kill his ex-girlfriend.
So basically, what we had on one of the most popular feminist blogs, one that isn’t even anywhere near being a radfem blog was:
1) Widespread condemnation of Schwyzer for various actions; and
2) Widespread condemnation of a popular female feminist blogger.
MRAL: Why everyone thinks this is the MRAL Show is beyond me. We’re having (more like I’m having, while you babble) an intellectual discussion about men’s role in feminist discourse.
I’m babbling? You are being intellectual?
The former, perhaps but not likely, the second, not happening. You are blathering unsupported nonsense, and trying to convince us that it’s some sort of critical commentary.
Look, I guess we’d just disagree. I don’t find his story to be that big of a deal. On the other hand, I do find him to be a misandrist, so I suppose being excommunicated from feminism can only be a good thing. Less male-bashing. So screw it. I don’t know why I’ve gotten so invested, I don’t like the guy. Go ahead and mob him.
I get it… saying you believe a woman who claims to have been raped is worse than someone who says he tried to murder a woman.
Why do you wonder when people say you hate women?
Oh, I’m sorry, it was Magedelyn who asserted that feminists haven’t condemned Schwyzer, and MRAL just said that feminists never attack female feminists.
You want people to “think on” shit, MRAL? Well think on this; You have found yourself in a position where you’re begrudgingly paying lip service to notion that attempted murder is bad. Seriously? You hate Hugo Shwyzer for making some men feel bad, but can’t be bothered to give a shit that he tried to take a woman’s life.
And you’re trying to convince us you’re some kind of deep, profound thinker because you like fucking Radiohead? You can’t past the end of your own fucking nose. But what do I know, right? I’m just some big meanie who can’t see special and sensitive you are. Yeah, you’re sensitive. That doesn’t mean you’re not self-centered asshole.
Shaenon, I think it’s more like, if I got high, and THOUGHT about punching my (hypothetical) girlfriend, and then didn’t. Remember, no one actually got hurt, and Hugo Dickbag changed his mind later on.
Which, I mean, thinking of punching someone still sort of sucks, and I’d feel kind of bad (not that this would ever happen because I’m such a passive person…) but no, I don’t think it’s a huge deal.
Also, for the record, of course I realize that the situations are different in terms of severity, but I’m just extrapolating your example.
But he didn’t just think about it MRAL. He actually attempted to kill his girlfriend. They were saved in time but could have very easily died.
It’s also racist to magnanimously grant that there is racial discrimination, as if it needs your approval in order to exist.
Well I’m back from work. Nice to see this thread is still going four hours later….
Don’t worry, Joanna. This thread is forever.
I thought he called the police himself and asked for assistance because he didn’t have the strength or will or whatever to turn the gas off. Maybe I’m misremembering?
Also, katz, that’s dumb. Are you kidding me? I’m saying I do believe that there is significant racial discrimination. I’m AGREEING with you.
I think I, personally, have it worse than most black dudes on the whole, sure, but me being white is one individual advantage I will definitely admit to.
What does being fat, geeky, or male have to do with one’s political opinions? And before you say all fat geeky feminist men are virgins you kind of need to explain the fat geeky feminist men I know with multiple girlfriends.
My husband is unaccustomed to the geek social scene (except when it comes to comic books, his one thing), and he has repeatedly expressed amazement that all poly guys seem to be fat beardy nerds. It’s gotten to the point where if we meet a fat beardy nerd, he says, “I bet that guy’s got like six girlfriends.”
EN is a closet Mellibertopian… be a “good girl” or be sold to a brothel.
There are your words (*is very thankful for ithiliana’s compilation*)
You mention that it was a murder-suicide in your first sentence. Not mentioned again. It’s like the “murder” in “murder-suicide” is just there for decoration.
Also, I’d like to pass on some wisdom given to us by the great thinkers of yore: “Don’t start none, won’t be none”