10 minutes ago, The Hot Dog Buffet said:

Maybe somebody will misread your name someday and call you "Mr. Jizz."

Well, they've come close plenty of times. Super funny. Kids need to learn about The Clash.

3 minutes ago, safe sex said:

But where is this behavior in a context of actual political power, instead of a failing dyke bar in a bummer of a western Mass town? Can we get as "good" a piece of writing about those events instead of something like that? Is anything as perfectly dramatic happening where it really matters?

Well in my opinion, what I wrote above describes with equal accuracy both what happened at the bar specifically and how the left collapsed generally as a coalition, especially in the influencer era: intersectionality is weaponized and becomes a vector for bullies and attracts bad actors seeking interpersonal power when economic solidarity is removed from the center of leftist politics.

So when you say why we don’t have writing on that, I don’t understand. I feel like whole libraries have been written on that.

The bar story resonated for the same reason the joke lands about believing in long COVID when somebody who isn’t bisexual gets it. It’s the whole story of the online left in microcosm: the tyranny of Serene_Necrosis and Soe Noire.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by Bozo_Casanova

I think Republicans successfully convincing Democrats that any economic policy to the left of supply-side economics is socialism has a lot more to do with the loss of the left's coalition and economic solidarity than a bunch of queer people without any real power doing their best. I am not denying the bad actors/weaponizing of intersectionality and its negative impact on the perception and ability to act of the left. But I think it is vastly overstated by people who have an interest in overstating it.

I guess I've missed the joke in your next-to-last sentence, too.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by safe sex

I will need to see photos of some of the unmasked lesbians before pronouncing judgement on this one.

1 hour ago, safe sex said:

I believe we can be better than we are, Mr. Fuck

I'm not sure how you think we're going wrong but...

I feel very confident in the shaggy, surly ability to spot and make fun of that which is ludicrous. And the key issue here - what a faltering bar owner is doing to keep a bar afloat, while the purported patrons of the bar lose their shit while not offering any constructive help - is pretty worthy of that kind of attention.

57 minutes ago, Prepuce of Doom said:

This whole.....whatever this is (situation? Controversy? Story? Nothing feels quite accurate...) seems it could be one of the plotlines from Infinite Jest.

traveshamockery?

2 hours ago, Don Johnson said:

Y'all are like a week late on this.

• 
• Press Gazette @pressgazette

The Boston Globe says one story about a lesbian bar lifting its mask mandate for one night a week generated 1,000 subscriptions, making it the “best performing story of the year” and currently on pace to “shatter all sorts of Globe records”

• 7:07 AM · Sep 24, 2026

Wild Lesbian Bar Story Shattering Boston Globe Records

There may be growing concerns about the future of media and the rise of AI, but one Boston outlet is shattering records and laughing all the way to the bank.

mediaite.com

A24 should buy the rights. I see a sequel to Spotlight.

But seriously, I'm not a bar going guy, but I didn't actually know that bars were still in Year of our Lord 2026 were still doing covid-era mask mandates. The world is big and confusing.

2 hours ago, Don Johnson said:

They aren't dealing with a rational clientele. This is the part about them bringing in two mediators to facilitate conversations between the owners and patrons....

I'm old and white. This [what you shared that blurb] blows my mind. I didn't know that we had corners of societies that exist in this way. I see why old people are fearful.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by Vegas64

1 minute ago, safe sex said:

I think Republicans successfully convincing Democrats that any economic policy to the left of supply-side economics is socialism has a lot more to do with the loss of the left's coalition and economic solidarity than a bunch of queer people without any real power doing their best

You’re giving Republicans too much credit. Democrats, being largely a party of and for affluent, well educated city dwellers abandoned economic solidarity in the late 90s. And I would argue most queer people have not been able to do their best is one result. Except the affluent ones I mean, or those with the privilege of access to safe space. Safe now, anyway. Like, imagine how much MORE empowered most queer people would be to simply live their lives if they were part of a majority coalition.

13 minutes ago, safe sex said:

I am not denying the bad actors/weaponizing of intersectionality and its negative impact on the perception and ability to act of the left. But I think it is vastly overstated by people who have an interest in overstating it.

I don’t have any interest in that and I don’t think it’s overstated. I think it’s done incalculable damage to the American left.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by Bozo_Casanova

Fair enough.

I thought all the lesbian bars closed down years ago due to a lack of patronage and lack of drinking? There’s still one open?

4 minutes ago, scramblyn said:

I thought all the lesbian bars closed down years ago due to a lack of patronage and lack of drinking? There’s still one open?

Not for much longer, apparently.

There's one where I am in Ohio, actually, but it's aggressively mid imo

41 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

I will need to see photos of some of the unmasked lesbians before pronouncing judgement on this one.

They aren’t the lipstick variety. One has a beard. Not a man to convince others “beard”, but a full(but scraggly) beard. Which isn’t typical of the stereotype either.

one of the owners is off to clown school

They engage professional moderators for a struggle session(which goes exactly as expected)

One has a literal beard

One has preferred pronouns of “it/it’s”

One lives in a shed

One lives in a truck and has used her wages from other employment to keep bar afloat.

This has to be a bit.

2 hours ago, HenryJames said:

fun fact i learned recently, the girl that plays "kim" (the girl joey lauren adams is aggressively making out with in this scene) was married to jason lee from 1995-2001 so that would have included when this scene was filmed. must have been a fun day at the set watching your wife get after it with another chick. she divorced him because he was overdoing it with the scientology. i always thought she was hotter than joey.

this is truly one of the funniest scenes in cinema history imo.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by sidis

This story is just

this

for Late Summer 2026.

You really only need to point, laugh, and move on.

But if we are really going to discuss this, I have no problem with a private business trying a unique business model. It probably sucks to be immunocompromised and unable to socialize in person. It probably also sucks that the owners of this bar had to abandon the business model to stay open, and now it sucks that they've gone viral because of culture war clickbait purveyors.

It doesn't help that some people on Twitter are pathologically unable to shut the fuck up, and they keep posting insane stuff. At a certain point it's not even a left vs. right thing. It's not even being woke anymore. They will argue until they are blue in the face (and then they'll argue and scream even more) because 99.9999999% of everyone else has not met or exceeded their unreasonable and unrealistic expectations about how accommodating the world should be to them, in particular. These terminally online "communists" exist to make the faculty at Vassar look like Jesse Watters.

3 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

I love this discourse so hard and I’m thrilled that it seems to have entered a second week.

I'm thrilled that it somehow impacted my relatives in...*checks notes* East Texas who are not lesbians and who don't go to bars.

8 minutes ago, safe sex said:

There's one where I am in Ohio, actually, but it's aggressively mid imo

Mid? In Ohio?

3 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

This story is just

this

for Late Summer 2026.

Also true.

“I am not a lesbian and I would never live in a woke socialist hellscape like TAXachusetts. But because I assume the Democratic Party controls the wrong side of every absurd, trivial cultural dispute on the fringes of society, this lesbian bar’s policy on masks is the reason why I can never vote for a Democrat and will instead vote for the greedy sociopaths who will continue making my life miserable.”

- Red State “Centrists” this November, probably.

Edited September 29Sep 29 by BrickHorn

I fail to see how a bar and the lgbtq community arguing about a bar policy compares to the right wing extremism in this country? Was there a mass shooting I missed? An insurrection? Are these people in power in the local and national goverments? Please explain how these are comparable @austingirl ?

14 minutes ago, Covri said:

I fail to see how a bar and the lgbtq community arguing about a bar policy compares to the right wing extremism in this country? Was there a mass shooting I missed? An insurrection? Are these people in power in the local and national goverments? Please explain how these are comparable @austingirl ?

It doesn’t, but there’s no weighing and ledger clearing mechanism for these things other than elections, which are ultimately just a popularity contest.

3 hours ago, HenryJames said:

I don’t remember this scene in Jaws and I’ve watched it at least a million times. Is that Mrs. Brody making out with Hooper in front of Chief Brody & Quint?

It’s a deleted scene from Jaws 2. There originally was a (stabbin) cabin cruiser in the flotilla that Jaws is chasing. Unfortunately the scene was more than the MPA would allow for an R rating

5 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm pretty sure that "masked lesbian" is a pretty common internet search term for many of the posters around here.

Many of us have claimed to be lesbians trapped in a man's body but only a few of us have had the balls to do anything about it

Edited September 29Sep 29 by elfenix
Fuck you autocorrect

1 hour ago, scramblyn said:

I thought all the lesbian bars closed down years ago due to a lack of patronage and lack of drinking? There’s still one open?

You just don't survive the rep you get from a bunch of dudes in cargo shorts and burnt orange taking over your bar on a game day.

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

I'm thrilled that it somehow impacted my relatives in...*checks notes* East Texas who are not lesbians and who don't go to bars.

Yet.

2 hours ago, scramblyn said:

I thought all the lesbian bars closed down years ago due to a lack of patronage and lack of drinking? There’s still one open?

There's one here, right next to the coffee bar.

1 hour ago, elfenix said:

You just don't survive the rep you get from a bunch of dudes in cargo shorts and burnt orange taking over your bar on a game day.

Why are you misgendering lesbians ?

46 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

There's one here, right next to the coffee bar.

Goddamit...I laughed

5 hours ago, Covri said:

I fail to see how a bar and the lgbtq community arguing about a bar policy compares to the right wing extremism in this country? Was there a mass shooting I missed? An insurrection? Are these people in power in the local and national goverments? Please explain how these are comparable @austingirl ?

Are you saying that to be considered extreme you have to foment an insurrection or a mass shooting, and be in power in local and national governments? I think it's pretty established here that my politics are slightly to the left of Leon Trotsky and that I'm not here to defend right-wing extremists. I do think that Soe Noire and his ilk are examples of people who are philosophically on the far left and take it to an extreme level, using their positions (genuine or not) to act like bullies because they insist on being right, and can't imagine that they might be wrong. That's where the similarities lie. That the right takes a story likes this to use as an example of how "crazy" the left is just shows what extraordinary hypocrites they are.

6 minutes ago, austingirl said:

Are you saying that to be considered extreme you have to foment an insurrection or a mass shooting, and be in power in local and national governments? I think it's pretty established here that my politics are slightly to the left of Leon Trotsky and that I'm not here to defend right-wing extremists. I do think that Soe Noire and his ilk are examples of people who are philosophically on the far left and take it to an extreme level, using their positions (genuine or not) to act like bullies because they insist on being right, and can't imagine that they might be wrong. That's where the similarities lie. That the right takes a story likes this to use as an example of how "crazy" the left is just shows what extraordinary hypocrites they are.

A good chunk of my exasperation on this topic is that, yes, while there are similarities between the far right and the far left in terms of toxic attitudes and bad faith actors, the the Soe Noires of the world hold no actual political power whereas...*gestures broadly at everything*

Where is the far left Moms 4 Liberty? Where is the far left Turning Points USA? Hasan Piker? Gtfo.

Maybe somewhere online there are actual good discussions coming out of this, like working on ways to deal with the weaponization of intersectionality (and no, the answer isn't to act like Republicans), but the vast majority of the discourse I'm seeing is the right going with their "see how crazy ALL democrats are?" and the left punching down on their own community.

5 minutes ago, safe sex said:

A good chunk of my exasperation on this topic is that, yes, while there are similarities between the far right and the far left in terms of toxic attitudes and bad faith actors, the the Soe Noires of the world hold no actual political power whereas...*gestures broadly at everything*

Where is the far left Moms 4 Liberty? Where is the far left Turning Points USA? Hasan Piker? Gtfo.

Maybe somewhere online there are actual good discussions coming out of this, like working on ways to deal with the weaponization of intersectionality (and no, the answer isn't to act like Republicans), but the vast majority of the discourse I'm seeing is the right going with their "see how crazy ALL democrats are?" and the left punching down on their own community.

Totally fair and a great point about who has power. And about how the left deals with criticism.

17 minutes ago, safe sex said:

A good chunk of my exasperation on this topic is that, yes, while there are similarities between the far right and the far left in terms of toxic attitudes and bad faith actors, the the Soe Noires of the world hold no actual political power whereas...*gestures broadly at everything*

Where is the far left Moms 4 Liberty? Where is the far left Turning Points USA? Hasan Piker? Gtfo.

Maybe somewhere online there are actual good discussions coming out of this, like working on ways to deal with the weaponization of intersectionality (and no, the answer isn't to act like Republicans), but the vast majority of the discourse I'm seeing is the right going with their "see how crazy ALL democrats are?" and the left punching down on their own community.

I mean, this is fundamentally horseshoe theory in action in areas where the Republican Party is functionally nonexistent, politics is reduced to moderate versus progressive Democrats, and the Soe Noires of the world do get into some level of local government and promptly shoot themselves and their causes in the foot.

Personally, I find this particular episode to simply be amusing because, well, c’mon, but more broadly speaking these characters breaking containment is probably what has driven the establishment reaction against Mamdani and others. And I get that - it’s not the left punching down against their community, it’s more:

Also, since you will be in the Bay soon, have to share this all time classic episode.

Edited September 30Sep 30 by We’reTexas

Why do I care about this? I mean I guess it displays how leftwing stuff can get nuts, but we already know this. There are tons of weird little culty leftwing groups all over the place.

Generally these people are pretty harmless because they spend most of their time going after each other for insufficient purity.

I really hate both sides of the culture war, because I see it for what it is a wedge issue and a distraction.

That said we almost eradicated the flu during COVID all because we wore masks and socially distanced, We really should have been more radical than the lesbian patrons. Like really really really radical, just a small sacrifice (zero covid like China did worldwide) when we were all sacrificing would have saved millions of lives.

6 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

Yet.

They are boomers in Montgomery County. If they come out of the closet, they would give their kids a heart attack (grandkids probably wouldn’t care or notice). But visiting a lesbian bar…might be more appealing than typical bars in that county.

Edited September 30Sep 30 by atomheartbevo

15 hours ago, safe sex said:

this is a story that shouldn't have had an audience outside of Massachusetts. Instead it's now being massively amplified

You’re sort of helping with that, aren’t you? I wouldn’t have heard about it if you hadn’t posted it here. That’s probably also true of some trolls lurking here who will take it up and spread it further, promoting a negative message.

14 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

I wouldn’t have heard about it if you hadn’t posted it here.

She wasn’t the one who posted it.

6 hours ago, safe sex said:

the the Soe Noires of the world hold no actual political power whereas...*gestures broadly at everything*

Again, I don’t agree. Not about Soe Noire personally, but “the Soe Noires of the world” who demonize allies and drive them out of left spaces and left politics in. the name of centering marginalized voices. That’s tremendously powerful and we are living with the results.

That’s why this story is getting all the traction it’s getting on the left: it rings true and everyone in or around the left has seen or experienced some version of this.

Edited September 30Sep 30 by Bozo_Casanova

• 
• saki @sakisavavi

• 1:11 AM · Sep 28, 2026

• 
• esoteric fat boy @esotericfatboy · Sep 27, 2026

just explained the covid concious lesbian bar hijab inspired secular accessorization clown college discourse to my mom and she just said "the cia is eating your generation alive"

This Soe Noire clown got exactly what they wanted out of all this, massive attention

2 hours ago, G650 said:

This Soe Noire clown got exactly what they wanted out of all this, massive attention

And why not? I think Soe Noire and Ace Winters and people like them have provided the left with an object lesson; if the common struggle (or more precisely, the struggle we have in common) is not at the center of what we do, we have nothing.

Edited September 30Sep 30 by Bozo_Casanova

16 hours ago, safe sex said:

There's one where I am in Ohio, actually, but it's aggressively mid imo

Theres one in Austin called Brass Ovaries at 290 and 35.

17 hours ago, Covri said:

I fail to see how a bar and the lgbtq community arguing about a bar policy compares to the right wing extremism in this country? Was there a mass shooting I missed? An insurrection? Are these people in power in the local and national goverments? Please explain how these are comparable @austingirl ?

I think it just really magnifies the extreme degrees of mental illness that exist within certain insulated demographics, which is a nice parallel to the mental illness (same, but different /gif) of the right wing extremists who are also clearly "outside of their mind" I've heard it put.

The reason this must be taking off is that it's eye-opening to a ton of people that this flavor exists out there and it's jarring. Most of those people are so used to their own paradigm or framework of mental illness that this one confuses and scares them.

Edit to add to put a finer point: the mental illness in question seems to be a singular Soe Noire

Edited September 30Sep 30 by Vegas64

1 hour ago, MissingInAction said:

Theres one in Austin called Brass Ovaries at 290 and 35.

That's a pole dancing studio.

5 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

That's a pole dancing studio.

Oh shit. It totally is. Awesome.

9 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

That's a pole dancing studio.

Does anyone have any doubt whatsoever that you know this not because a wife, friend, or acquaintance went there but rather because you peeped through their windows?

Ill have to visually confirm for research purposes.