I suppose none of us should really be shocked that the death of Michael Brown, a black teenager literally shot in the back reportedly shot six times by a white officer, has caused barely a ripple in the world of the Men’s Rightsers — there are only two small threads on the subject on the Men’s Rights subreddit at the moment, and the only active one is filled with a lot of tut-tutting about “violent” protesters. It’s hardly news that MRAs, almost all of them white men, are more interested in lamenting their own imagined oppression than they are in dealing with the real injustices faced by young men of color.
But I have to admit I was a bit surprised by the callous “logic” in the following, currently the top comment in the only thread devoted to Michael Brown’s death in the FeMRAdebates subreddit:
![ZorbaTHut Egalitarian [score hidden] 8 hours ago* Well, first, homicide may be the leading cause of death among young black men, but it's not the leading cause of death among men. It is certainly a concern, but the good news is that there are many organizations already concerned about it. The MRM aims towards improving the rights of all men, not small subsets of men, and spending a bunch of effort on an issue that is already well-covered would be a gross misuse of the MRM's relatively meager resources. That said, keep in mind why you've heard about this at all. Michael Brown's murder isn't getting airtime because he was male; it's getting airtime because he was black and because he was killed by a white police officer in a massive show of police power. If he was white and homeless you might have heard a bit about it, but it certainly never would have been discussed by the Tumblrsphere. If he was killed by someone who wasn't a police officer, nobody would give a shit, black or white. The problem isn't that the MRM is ignoring Michael Brown. The problem is that everyone else ignores all the male murder victims who weren't a black person killed by a white man in power. This problem isn't solved by making even more of a media circus around the one-in-hundred-thousand male murder victim that Jezebel decides to bother with.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/zorba.png?resize=497%2C408&ssl=1)
“Egalitarianism,” you’re doing it wrong.
The FeMRAdebates subreddit is supposed to be a neutral forum for feminists and MRAs to discuss issues, yet somehow manages to be even more cringe-inducing than the Men’s Rights subreddit.
(Thanks to diehtc0ke on Reddit for pointing out this amazing comment.)
“Yeah, guys, lets not try to do anything about the way black men are overwhelmingly mistreated on this country. So black men are pulled over, arrested, and incarcerated at higher rates than white men. So black men can be shot and killed with apparent impunity. We can’t get involved in this. What are we, some kind of human rights movement, or something?”
/sarcasm.
Sadly, this does not surprise me. If there was even the slightest bit of doubt in my mind that MRAs aren’t completely morally bankrupt wjony assholes and might actually care about men and boys, this just destroyed it.
Fuck the MRM. A man was murdered and the people out on the streets of Ferguson who are peacefully protesting and asking for the justice that Michael Brown deserves are getting shot with rubber bullets and tear gas, and this asshole says its none of their business. FFS.
As a woman with a healthy and otherwise perfectly able body, I’d be marching in that protest if I could, tear gas and rubber bullets be damned.
God forbid a MRA actually do anything for mens rights. I mean, besides blaming women.
Is that a collective sigh of relief I can hear from the mra’s after reading ZorbaTHuts explanation?
Typical men’s rights activist-
‘Phew. I’ve been panicking for the past couple of days wondering if I was going to be asked to get off my arse and actually do some activism for a genuine men’s issue.Good job it’s been made clear that when something effects white men it effects all men but something that effects black men is a fringe issue.
Any way,back to the hard work of real activism .Types bitch whore cunt slut……….’
Wow. So wait, the problem here is that poor oppressed white men wouldn’t get the same air time? Do young, black, shot dead men need to check their privilege? Fucking unbelievable. And I’ve never heard a feminist dismiss any injustice against women of color (or really anyone), as too small to be bothered with and “already well covered” so we’re good! The black ladies have black panthers and NAACP, so they are golden! Let’s get some lunch.
I find this whole thing especially offensive because Zorba the Hutt’s revenge is my favorite EU novel. (granted, Zorba the Hutt wasn’t presented as a positive character and considering the recent reddit ELS links of Misters supporting the Galactic Empire I shouldn’t be too offended)
(Also, the fact that Zorba the Hutt’s revenge is my favorite EU novel probably reveals something about my relative maturity)
Nothing I’m saying adds too much to this conversation but I got home from work and decided (Deicided?) there were too may partial bottles of vodka in the house and so blaaaahaa
in other news, hi parents! Super secret revelation time: I know you think I don’t know that you know what usernames I use online but I totally do know that you know and while I might care at some point in the future at the moment vodka.
@Nitram: Indeed. We feminists may not be 100% perfect, but we as a whole DO genuinely try to address ALL injustices, no matter what they might be. The MRAs? They simply just don’t care about anyone but THEMSELVES.
We can do better than this. This is not how we do things.
…or it won’t be.
I don’t want to say “soon”. I want to say “Now”.
How do I make that happen?
Oh dear. We don’t have money/ staff/ resources. Whatever shall we do?
+ anguished hand-wringing
Maybe, just maybe, do something that costs neither time nor effort nor staff. A header line across all posts on blogs for the next few days with a link to the MOS, moment of silence, and similar events around the country.
Or even a suggestion that readers who do have some cash handy might like to contribute a couple of dollars to Mike Brown’s family for funeral and other expenses. Links easy enough to find for those who look. All they need is the nudge to go looking. Nudges from blog writers are, last I knew, free of any cost to the blog or the writer.
I was thinking that if a female police officer had shot Mike Brown, the MRA scum would have been all over it – their misogyny would probably outweigh their racism.
They don’t want to put off any potential allies. “Well, I was going to get involved in your horribly abusive club, but then I saw that you cared about a black person that one time so I’ll just go back to stormfront.”
God forbid they add to the ‘media circus’ surrounding the racist murder of a teenager.
So if the MRM is limited to some “relatively meager resources” does that mean that Paul Elam is about to launch another appeal for funds?
How does anyone other than Paul know what the MRM resources are, meagre or otherwise, when Paul won’t show income and expenditure data?
It’s like he’s the PT Barnum of the MRM and they’re the suckers born every minute.
Also: a lot of activism is close to free. Marching is free if no-one is paying for your time, with some assumptions around organising transport. Writing emails to local politicians is free, assuming sunk cost of internet connection. Tweeting is also free, again assuming sunk cost of internet connection.
Relatively meagre resources is an excuse, not a reason.
They need to conserve their meager resources so that JudgyBitch can continue to call everyone in sight “whore” without financial distress.
cloudiah (citing MRA): Why? I would speculate that it is because drugs and criminal activity are more lucrative and beneficial activities than studying and working hard to leave the environment that way.
Er, no. Firstly they’re making the assumption that it IS possible for a black teen to succeed by “studying and working hard”, which seems increasingly unlikely, especially when you consider that they’re competing for fewer and fewer “pathway out” jobs with desperate white teens from better-resourced school systems.
Secondly, IIRC, it’s been shown that for most drug dealers, the job pays less than the minimum wage, and most have other employment to make it through. Save for a small number, selling drugs is economically just a bit of extra cash – the reasons are social.
@Phoenician in a time of Romans – and anyway, shouldn’t these young entrepreneurs be applauded for getting involved with “lucrative and beneficial activities”?
Obviously drug dealing is a complete red herring and completely irrelevant to this horrible mess, but surely the creation of personal capital is a good thing (to certain people). The hypocrisy is stunning.
It’s not even that. It’s a Me Monster movement.
Here’s the full clip btw:
Quoted in cloudiah’s comment:
Despite official data from the state showing exactly that very thing. Or the report from the whistleblower talking about how such distinctions were explicitly ordered by higher ups.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Nitram sez:
Maybe you haven’t, but a lot of women of color have. I see them talk about it frequently outside of white-dominated spaces. So we shouldn’t pretend feminists are innocent of this. On the other hand, at least there are intersectional feminists out there.
…I don’t think you can be in this society without picking up some unconscious racism. You have to check yourself. Ok, I had to check myself. I grew up with a bigoted dad and black friends, so I got how unfair it is by age 7 or so, but skin privilege is subtle, not easily gotten.
Skin privilege I had to think about, because as a Caucasian, it’s not easy to see that I have it. I think I was in my mid-30’s when I realized skin privilege probably did something HUGE for me.
I was suspected of trying to pass a felony hot check. This was due to hanging out with the wrong people and being entirely too trusting of them. People go to jail all the time for being around the wrong people, you know?
But the police detectives, both also white, believed I was truthful ( I was ). A person of color likely would not have been believed.
I would have had a much, MUCH harder life with a felony conviction on my record. My skin privilege at work, I think.
A. Noyd says it well. My younger brother was a stoner. Once, in a fit of intoxicated stupor, he broke into someone’s apartment, mistaking it for his friend’s and started eating all their food. He was arrested.
This has caused our brother at best, minor difficulty. He’s had no trouble getting hired, he’s catered to by his employer and might get a permanent position, and far as I can tell, all he had to do was spend a night in jail and get chewed out by our parents for bailing him out.
Pretty sure my black friends would not have gotten off that easy. At all. Our brother got dismissed as a harmless drunken fool because he was white.
Yes, in feminism intersectionality arose from criticisms *within* the movement. Somehow, I can’t quite see this happening in the MRA “movement”…
@A. Noyd
I’ve seen it countless times as well, as a trans WOC. Unfortunately, feminism’s marginalization of WOC still happens today.
My brother got away with the sheriff’s deputy seizing (and he thinks smoking) his weed.
…I’m so glad my brother quit, up until he did I worried he was going to end up in serious law trouble.
None of the other little hoodlummy white kids from our trailer park went to jail over possession charges either.
The ones that went to the state pen went over far more spectacularly stupid things.
blahlistic,
Your brother too? Mine said the cops would confiscate his weed and let him go. They got free smoke and they told my brother that they knew our stepdad and didn’t want to cause him any embarrassment.