The Lazy Aussie, of The Worst Of Perth has grabbed a screenshot from Perth MRA group the “Men’s Confraternity” today:
If you’ve ever read the West letters page, you will often have seen someone called Mark Ward boo hooing about how downtrodden men are by their evil feminist overlords. He is the convener for the Men’s Confraternity. For convener, read “plonker”. For confraterity read “losers”.
[text table is below the cut, for those who can't access the image.]
|
= |
|
|---|---|---|
| More die at birth & in early childhood | = | More die at birth & in early childhood |
| Less involvement in education; lower grades | = | Less involvement in education; lower grades |
| More are unemployed | = | More are unemployed |
| More are homeless | = | More are homeless |
| More are in our jails | = | More are in our jails |
| More suffer from alcohol & drug addiction | = | More suffer from alcohol & drug addiction |
| More suffer & die from preventable diseases | = | More suffer & die from preventable diseases |
| More commit suicide | = | More commit suicide |
| Their life expectancy is less | = | Their life expectancy is less |
| Conclusion | ||
| Aboriginals are disadvantaged in our society and are discriminated against | = | ? |
Fact picking! Almost as much fun as fruit picking! Honestly, I think it’s a good thing that men want to address the negatives of being male – it’s another good step towards gender equality. What I don’t like is the way that a large number of men’s groups seem to think that the way to do it is to whine about how badly treated they are in comparison to others then stop. There’s men out there who are forming mental health support groups and fathers’ playgroups, farming men with suicide prevention groups and men’s health clinics. That’s awesome. Whining about lack of privilege and deliberately omitting evidence of actual privilege is just lame.
That comparison is pretty fucking repulsive. Yes, let’s compare our cherry-picked problems to those that our hegemony has dispossessed! Let’s!
Here’s a gem from “scorpiolady” on their forum:
Raped by elves, again!
What gets me about that comparison is that the NT intervention initially flagged the idea all over media that abuse justifies mass state revocation of property & permit systems.
Even though there’s been debate in Aboriginal communities about that; the non-Aboriginal public’s response was in hugely supportive of it. Which contrasts dramatically to the resistance to DV interventions in other families where a man’s home is seen to be sacred, even if we can hear the kid’s screaming as he threatens to kill them.
If any women argued, comparably, that non-Aboriginal male abusers should en mass have any property they own seized by the state…can you image the outcry!?
I mean, that’s a shabby comparison & media spin & suicide really is a major issue ..but this approach is so creepy.
Thoughts on competitive victimhood & co-option here. For competitive victimhood to have any leverage, a group needs to have both;
- leverage over other groups with similar political grievances or agendas.
-the will to do them over, gain by making pain competition, rather than work as allies or maintain respectful relations at least.
So, what type of group “fraternity” are MRA’s promoting here?
One for people who may be vulnerable to issues like poverty, isolation and suicide. Ok.
But also people behind co-opting Aboriginal rights and attacking women & childrens rights to bring “gender wars” competition to sensitive, under-resourced mental health & social justice issues.
Which is tragic for all parties really, because it’s likely to exacerbate problems of violence all round not resolve them.
But a definite heirarchy of who they’d rather suffers in silence; since MRA’s hide their own members roles as perpetrators behind this victim wars stuff.
What Bene said @ #2. My first thoughts exactly, just not as coherent as that — the outraged spluttering got in the way.
My jaw’s still dropped over that comparison chart. Seems just a little “forgetful” of them not to note that Aboriginals are at the lowest socioeconomic levels in Australian society, while men as a class are not.
The “more in our jails” comparison is particularly odious. We know that the incarceration disparity with Aboriginals is due overwhelmingly to police charging them with petty public order offences that non-Aboriginals get away with. The rate of incarceration for other crimes is fairly similar to other men of similar socio-economic status.
Now where’s the disparity in male/female incarceration? Plenty of women go to gaol for petty offences and non-violent crimes, but the major disparity between male and female incarceration is violent crime. Very very few women commit violent crimes, so they don’t go to gaol for them. Now, most men don’t commit violent crimes either, but 99% of violent crimes are committed by men. There simply are not hordes of women out there getting away with violent crimes – they’re just not doing them.
I’m with lilacsigil – I am so over guys whose sum contribution to the actual, serious problems men can face is to use them as a stick to beat feminism with.
One day, I’m going to see an MRA who doesn’t draw his understanding of all civil rights movements from the most superficial understanding of those movements.
And then he’ll say, “Oh, wait, I’m not really all that oppressed.”
That comparison chart is the height of offensive. Disgusting, even.
“Men have rights too!” should be followed by “they are called human rights”.
Mary Tracy9s last blog post..Feminism By Any Other Name
Whatever grievances individual men might have – that kind of comparative activism is counterproductive and worse, its whiny.
If those blokes are feeling hard done by and worried about having a shorter life span, filling themselves with the level of angst they seem to be displaying is unlikely to improve things.
Why are they a “confraternity” and not just a “fraternity”?
Grendels last blog post..What the. . .!!!
These are famous Perth crackpots who have been doing everything possible to render whatever genuine grievances they may or may not have risible. They do everything they can to not advance their cause in any way.
That is worse than what about me. In fact it is pretty disgusting. There is no level that those MRA’s won’t sink to sell the false lie that men constitute an underprivileged group. This makes me ill.
Renees last blog post..Amen and Pass The Bullshit: Religion and The Obama Campaign
In addition to fact-picking, what I find most interesting (read: not really surprising but still noteworthy) is how they completely ignore that it is actually the privilege and actions of assholes like them that cause these disparities between the aboriginal community and society in general. It’s not only that they are comparing their “struggles” to that of a genuinely oppressed group of people, but that as Bene suggests, it’s their whining “stop giving them special treatment and start paying more attention to my much more important problems” bullshit that upholds this system.
But I don’t exactly think that’s an accident.
I absolutely hate that group and stumbled across that chart on their site a few months ago. I wanted to blog about it but gave up because the more I thought about it the madder I got and the less I could put my thoughts coherently. Glad someone else managed it.
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