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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3407 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 13, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I admit I may be skirting the edges of "Fun", but this story made me laugh:

Thai masseuse in Connemara stops taking male clients due to barrage of enquiries for sex services:

THE OWNER OF a Thai massage parlour in a small village in Connemara has stopped taking male clients due to the volume of enquiries seeking sexual services and “happy endings”.

Yosita Fitzpatrick, who is from Thailand, set up Connemara Thai Massage and Wellness in Letterfrack last November, but the certified massage therapist has since been shocked by the calls and messages she has received from men.

She has reported communications from several individuals to An Garda Síochána [Ireland's police service], and has posted screenshots of some offensive messages on social media in an effort to dissuade prospective callers.

However, Fitzpatrick continues to receive offensive enquiries asking for sexual services “pretty much daily”, and announced last week that she would only be taking female clients in future.

“I am fully aware that, in the eyes of the world, the phrase ‘Thai women’ evokes unfair and negative stereotypes – portraying us merely as objects of desire,” said the mother-of-two.

“The truth is far richer. Thailand has so much to offer, and Thai women possess value that cannot be confined to narrow, outdated perceptions.

“No one has a right to harass me simply because I am a Thai woman or because I own a massage business,” she said.

“I am a therapist. I heal people. This is what I love. It is my purpose, and I do not want to walk away from it.”

(Is it my imagination, or does the above quote sound suspiciously like something generated by an LLM?)

Fitzpatrick said it was a difficult decision to stop accepting male clients, as they comprise around 40% of her clientele, and there are “many respectful men” who will miss out because of the actions of a few.

She will continue to cater for her existing male clients.

Fitzpatrick claimed that other Thai massage therapists around the country are also subjected to the same harassment, but choose not to speak publicly about it.

She announced on her social media accounts last week that she would no longer be accepting male clients, and warned callers that inappropriate enquiries would be reported to gardaí and may be shared publicly.

Remarkably, however, she continues to receive calls and messages from men seeking sexual services on a daily basis.

On the one hand, legitimate massage therapists have every right to feel offended when they are mistaken for sex workers, and Fitzpatrick was right to report these men to the police. On the other hand, it's a simple factual statement that many massage therapists do provide the requested services, and that the ones that do are disproportionately likely to be of Thai or Filipino extraction. The bolded passage above ('there are “many respectful men” who will miss out because of the actions of a few') really illustrates how symmetrical the situation is: just as perfectly respectful men suffer because a minority are badly behaved, every massage therapist who offers sexual services negatively affects the reputation of the legitimate therapists who refuse to.

More than anything, though, I can't help but laugh at the hapless would-be punters/johns. A man who DMs a massage therapist directly requesting a happy ending is just asking to get arrested. Have these people learned nothing from the Epstein files? Never put anything incriminating in writing.

This reminds me of a post, I think it was here on the Motte (or maybe back when we were on Reddit), about Taboos (it was in the context of incest, but applies more generally).

A taboo against incest is less about blocking the rare two siblings who fall in love from the dangers of their own decisions, and more about protecting millions of normal siblings from misinterpreting innocent signals or having to treat each other at arms length in order to avoid accidentally sending such signals. The normal barriers of intimacy between men and women can be largely ignored by platonically loving siblings who would never even consider sex because the taboo is well established and protected.

A taboo against prostitution is less about blocking the consensual trade of money for sex between people who want it, and more about protecting the millions of women who do not want to sell their bodies and do not want people to possibly interpret them as wanting that or try to change their minds about it. If the taboo (and laws upholding it) were actually still in place and enforced for thai massage parlors, this stereotype would have never developed and caused this sort of incident.

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