The Men’s Rights subreddit has a new favorite lady! The one in the pictures above, if you haven’t guessed. Her name is Sonia Verstappen, and until recently she was a sex worker in Brussels; she’s also an activist for the legalization of sex work. The stills above are apparently from a documentary called Sex Workers and Proud.
The Men’s Rights Redditors who love her don’t actually know any of this. They just love her because she’s a women who apparently thinks hysterical, man-destroying American lesbians have taken over feminism.
This little set of screenshots has been posted to the Men’s Rights subreddit several times before, and I’m pretty sure it’s always gotten a positive response, but never quite as positive as it’s gotten this time: as I write this, it’s been sitting comfortably in the #1 spot on the subreddit’s main page for some time, and has garnered more than twelve hundred net upvotes. The headline? “Wise words.”
[EDITED TO ADD: I stand corrected: On one previous occasion three months ago, the same collection of screenshots recieved more than 1900 upvotes and generated more than 500 comments, making it the 18th most popular post of all time in the Men’s Rights subreddit. Men’s Rights Redditors can’t get enough of this lady they don’t know anything about!]
The main debate going on amongst the regulars is whether or not the man-hating feminists in question are really lesbians or not. No, really. The regulars have all sorts of interesting theories on the subject. And by “interesting,” I mean “ignorant and homophobic and generally just … well, read it.”
I mean, even setting aside Idiopathic77’s rather limited understanding of the mechanics of lesbian sex (and sex in general, come to think of it), that’s just … weird. I guess this sort of discussion is what happens when you learn about feminism entirely from the Men’s Rights subreddit and YouTube trolls. It’s a bit like learning about Jewish people entirely from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and this clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
But where exactly is Whisper here running across all these “lesbian separatists” and heterosexual-women-turned-lesbian-for-political-reasons?
I mean, there was once upon a time in that wild and wacky era called “the seventies” a thing called “political lesbianism” that was based on the idea of lesbianism as a choice, but it got pushed to the fringes fairly quickly, because, you know, sexuality doesn’t really work that way.
Has Whisper developed some sort of time machine? Or do women just declare themselves lesbians when he starts talking to them because it’s a quicker way to get rid of him than giving him a fake phone number? That could also explain those 20% of Florida women who apparently gave Idiopathic77 the impression that they were lesbians of the phony, man-hating sort.
RE: katz and Argenti
Well, the room is only until September, and then it’s back into the closet with us, but I’m hoping that in those three months, we can stockpile sanity points like a mofo and then embark on our road trip that I’ve been planning for fucking ages, but haven’t been sane enough to do. (It’s one of those things where I’m POSITIVE the trip will help my brain, but it requires a base amount of sanity that I haven’t been able to maintain–but I bet I can with proper housing!)
And Argenti, Sneak and Gigs already hope to get a pet one day. Whether it ends up a mammal or reptile remains to be seen. Alas, it will likely not be a fish; Sneak prefers pets zie can cuddle.
In other random cool news, me and Mac went hiking and discovered a magical grafitti path! Check out the kicking photos I grabbed! (Also, there was a baby bunny, but I didn’t manage to take a picture of it.)
Cuddly fish are sorta a thing…it’s my one consolation to losing plec. My previous one I raised from being teeny tiny and trained it to eat out of my hand. So cuddly not really, but letting you pet it? Yep. (Plec mouth bits feel like cow tongues)
And despite referring to you as BLT (XD) my mother is happy for you and your walls and window.
Very pretty! Undersides of bridges can be a treasure trove.
RE: Argenti
Yeah, I’m taking the stance that if the kids want a pet, they have to take care of it. (Since Sneak sometimes has a short attention span.) Gigi likes snakes and turtles; Sneak likes rats, cats, and dogs. Who knows what’ll end up happening.
Hooray for housing, and windows, and reading nooks, and AC (just in time for Summer)! I hope you’ll all be really happy there for as long as you’re there!
LBT: congrats on walls and windows!
LBT: I’m so happy that you’ve found a better situation (even if it is temporary). Fingers crossed for the next step in your journey.
“I’m pretty sure it’s always gotten a positive response, but never quite as positive as it’s gotten this time”
Actually, Boobz (you’ll love this), it HAS gotten a more positive response in the past. Check it : this screenshot compiliation was posted three months ago and now sits as the 18th most popular post OF ALL TIME in /r/mensrights. The post from a day ago has only managed to make it to the 71st most popular of all time (as of yet). The same image, with the same absolute non-relevance to the rights of men, appears twice in their top 100.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/18dlfu/wise_words_from_a_woman_on_feminism/
PS: Totally not a hate group.
LBT, that’s great news! Congrats!
Getta Lode, thanks for the correction! I incorporated it into the post.
I’m happy to hear that things are getting better for you, LBT! ^_^
LBT, that’s wonderful news! Congratulations! Cupcakes! Bonbons! Fizzy drinks! Streamers!
It’s that weird focus on sex again. People who belong to groups that experience actual oppression realize that “sometimes I want to fuck people and they won’t let me, and sometimes the people I date are selfish jerks!” is not the same thing as systemic oppression. Since these guys aren’t actually oppressed in any systemic way, and they don’t have enough empathy to notice that other people are and feel bad about it, they end up with “women not wanting to fuck some men = male oppression and misandry” as a political position. And then everyone who’s involved in any sort of real social justice movement points and laughs.
QTFW! Hadn’t thought of it like that before, but it’s so true.
When I first came out of the wardrobe seventeen years ago I DID get the “you’re probably a lesbian who doesn’t dare come quite out of the closet yet” a bit, but it was WAY more common to just regard me as some sort of extra sexy version of a straight girl. On the other hand, I have a male colleague who’s bi, and he gets the “but you’re probably actually gay” ALL THE TIME.
Now, I do know a couple of cases of women coming out as straight after first pretending to themselves as well as others that they were bi, mostly because there can be some weird pressure in sex-positive circles on women to identify as bi (or pan). Like, completely straight women are seen as merely repressing the bi side that’s OBVIOUSLY there somewhere. I think this is probably fairly rare though; the reason that so many more women today compared to when I came out seem to identify as bi is probably more due to there being less of a stigma, and therefore women who are mostly into men but a bit into women choose to call themselves bi when it’s more accepted, but would have called themselves straight if it were less so. And in any case, I don’t think this is where the “bi women are really straight!” comes from, since I got it a lot when I came out, and back at the day (at least in my circles) bi women were rare. The “bi women are really straight!” is probably just because “REAL sex requires a penis, and therefore, what a so-called bi woman does with another woman is just some kind of foreplay, the REAL sex she has with men!”.
And yay to LBT for the room! 🙂
I am going to quote/para-phrase/adapt what John Holbo said about David Frum (my changes in square brackets), in his blog post http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/mill_and_nietzs.html
“[The MRA’s] a seething mass of potent preferences and aversions, which are after all merely customary observances: some reasonable, most groundless and arbitrary or outdated. But it is intolerable to [them] to check and see which are which, because [they are] powerfully attached to the whole set – even the teeny, tiny aesthetic ones. ([SCENTED FUCKING CANDLES]!) Yet it is necessary for [MRAs] to produce reasons, because [they are] also powerfully determined others should share [their] preferences. And [they are] averse to authoritarianism. [They do] not wish to impose [their] mere private preferences tyrannically. As Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man puts it: all should be compelled to bow down before me voluntarily. This entails tortuous, self-deceptive mental gynmastics.”
Did I ever tell you the definition of manboobery?
I definitely saw them talking about this same woman like 2 months ago….I guess they have to keep refueling their circlejerk somehow.
Feminist Lie. Men (“guys”) are oppressed under the current social system.
“Countering” here is our old friend “Objective Observer.”
Did I ban him or just put him on moderation or what? I can’t remember.
Are you saying that “guys” is a problematic term for men? Seriously? =S
If he hasn’t been banned yet he should be, for excessive repetition.
I don’t recall him being banned, I think he just s cycles through socks as his nonsense gets old. In any case, seconding Cassandra, he’s tedious and pointless (excessively so this time)
There’s also the fact that he seems to be made of Steele.
Yeah, he’s at least on permamod, though I don’t recall the specifics. Time to chuck him in the garbage disposal.
A lot of bi people that I know tend to have they sexuality regarded as a “phase”. One woman I know who is Bi and has been in relationships with women but is now with a man says that her father basically “breathed a sigh of relief” when she told them about her boyfriend, as if it was like “Oh thank god she’s got over that stage”.
In a slightly different scenario, a close friend of mine who is male (but Gender-fluid) and Bi has been told (by a gay man) that he is actually straight because he avoids doing anything sexual or relationships with men because he’s has had bad experiences with them.
So yeah… Bi-phobia is definitely a thing.
Oh hey there, creepy manipulative rape culture-influenced thinking. Nice to be reminded that you exist in gay culture too.
(I’ve heard the “if you don’t want to sleep with me you’re really straight, and if you want to prove that you’re actually bi you can do so by fucking me” line thrown at me by lesbians. It’s bullshit.)