By David Futrelle
Sometimes what one says is less important than what one doesn’t say.
I visited the Men’s Rights subreddit today to see what the regulars there were saying about the police killing of George Floyd. Turns out they were saying nothing, nothing at all.
Is the police brutality routinely meted out to black men in this country not a men’s rights issue — one of the very few real men’s rights issues out there? Apparently not. MRAs don’t care about police brutality; they do nothing about prison rape (which mostly affects men). They will rail about “false rape accusations” until the cows come home, but that’s because they can easily see themselves charged with rape.
But police brutality? For the overwhelmingly white Men’s Rights movement in the United States, this is apparently too alien a concept to think about — that is, unless a woman is the villain. (There are several posts up about the white woman who called police on a innocent black birdwatcher in Central Park.) The Men’s Rights subreddit has more than a quarter of a million subscribers; apparently, not one of them thinks Floyd’s killing is worth bringing up as a men’s rights issue. (Either that or the subreddit’s mods have been deleting threads on the topic, for what reason I cannot imagine.)
Meanwhile, the only mention of Floyd in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit is a copy-pasted racist diatribe from Rush Limbaugh on how whites aren’t “permitted” to be victims any more, just black people
Amazing job, guys.
EDITED TO ADD: I added the bit about the Central Park case.
UPDATE, Saturday afternoon: After nights of protests and non-stop coverage of the Floyd case on cable news, the Men’s Rights Redditors have finally started discussing the subject. A little late, bros.
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You’d think Gush Dumbcrap would be spending his time looking for a long shot cancer cure instead of continuing to flap his gums.
I’m actually really shocked that they aren’t upset about this.
I thought for sure they’d be defending Chauvin.
Err, I found one. It’s a cross-post from r/PublicFreakout and doesn’t mention George Floyd by name in the post (but the original PublicFreakout post does).
https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/gsso5o/please_continue_to_share_this_video_so_everyone/
Unfortunately the top comment is Very Concerned about property damage:
ETA: having read more comments, there is a lively debate about why this is a men’s rights issue!
@ POM
Ironically, some of the owners of the buildings are being far more understanding of why it happened.
Have you considered that the men of the Men’s Rights Movement understand that it’s perhaps not their place to mouth off willy-nilly about the death of a black man? That they would like to do more than empty virtue-signalling?
That sounds about right. The only time MRAs don’t erupt in outrage is when there’s actually something to be outraged about.
I wonder if the Hotep groups have anything to say? I could look but I suspect I’d have a more pleasant and relaxing time hammering toothpicks under my big toenails.
I’m super enjoying the evolving debate in that r/MensRights thread. It’s definitely worth a read if you have a bit of time. There’s one user there who is eviscerating the usual rationale for why MRAs don’t give the first shit about black men. That user (carefulthistime) is on fire.
I did see a couple of MRAs on Twitter post about it. As in, they claim the murder is directly caused by feminists using the hashtag #killallmen… True to their usual style, they only care about men’s issues if they can blame feminists for them.
@Johanna
Seems reasonable to me. Everyone knows the police look to Twitter hashtags to see what to do next, which is why they killed all men on the scene and then themselves, too.
Or is “killallmen” supposed to men “just one here and there, as long as they aren’t white?”
I saw that too.
I guess for both the recent posts to be true, feminists convinced a cop in Minneapolis to kill a man in order to spark nationwide protests just so that feminists would have an easy way to find looting Tyrones to mate with.
Pretty crafty!
So in the end they do talk about it… very slightly and obliquely… and EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL femoids (or any other of their dumb slurs for women) are the cause and the property damage from the riots is more important than the root cause of said riots (i.e. a murder in broad daylight before a crowd of horrified witnesses). Gotcha.
And I know I’ll probably regret it, but… what’s this “Hotep” thing Nequam referred to?
@Paireon
As I understand it, hotep is a sort of mystical variant on Black nationalism with some occult and conspiracy theory themes. Unfortunately, it also often has some issues with homophobia and misogyny (especially misogynoir) and as a result has featured on WHTM before (see this post and the first page of comments).
Note: I am white and might be missing some nuance or details, please correct me if I am wrong or leave anything out.
@No Quarter to MansVoice
No, it hadn’t occurred to me. What exactly are they doing?
No Quarter to Manginas:
Ah so it’s not your place. I see. So all these other issues you make up are super important, But when actual men are actually victimized suddenly it’s not your place. Interesting distinction.