When I published my book Penny Cavalier a year ago, I figured its release would essentially mark the end of my personal involvement with - and coverage of - the Real-Life SuperHero movement. I had no desire one way or the other to continue or discontinue writing about the global phenomenon of anonymous masked citizenry, and as other projects came up on my itinerary, Penny Cav tucked itself into a corner and essentially went into hibernation.
So imagine my surprise this morning as I awoke and found myself so compelled by an incident in their community to dust this blog off and compose a new entry. I think given my past with the RLSH it's partly my responsibility to try to lay out the facts in a straight line and make sense of this situation involving their subculture.
An RLSH named Bee Sting has been arrested in Burton, MI - that link has the most concrete story I've found besides comments from other RLSH on FaceBook shedding some light on the incident. Details are sketchy at best right now, so please take even my report with a grain of salt, let alone what you read elsewhere, but I've come to understand something to this effect between all the sources I've read. Last night in the vicinity of a mobile home neighborhood, Bee Sting came across a motorcyclist who he believed was making enough noise to warrant intercession - I believe the man's motorcycle was the source of the noise. At some point, Bee Sting is said to have drawn a shotgun during his discussion with the man. The shotgun went off - whether intentionally or accidentally has yet to be proven, so no judgments can be made on its fire - and the shot hit a nearby vacant trailer. The police arrived and took Bee Sting into custody; I was unable to find information on the motorcyclist's whereabouts after the confrontation.
Since a hundred questions remain (Why bring the gun? Why brandish it? How did it fire? What did the conversation sound like?), I can't speculate on why or how it happened, nor how differently or similarly it should have happened. I've always made it my practice to use as few opinions as possible regarding the RLSH as a whole or as individuals, and will do my best to continue to do so today. Why? In researching Penny Cavalier, I had the privilege of speaking with many anonymous citizens who opened up to me despite unfavorable media coverage on their lifestyle before and since, and their open mind regarding my position as a writer convinced me further to treat them the same, whether we agreed or disagreed with one another's practices from time to time.
New Orleans private activist Captain Black has written an opinion piece on the Bee Sting incident and raises some interesting points. For example, Black points out that the Trayvon Martin / George Zimmerman scandal in the news has caused the nation to rouse debates on everything from gun rights and neighborhood watches to Florida's self-defense laws and contemporary racial stereotypes. While Zimmerman awaits trial, a news story involving an RLSH brandishing a firearm on patrol couldn't possibly come at a worse time. Clearly the incidents are very different in circumstances and outcome, but a 21st-century scandal-happy news industry can and will connect the dots if the Bee Sting story continues to grow. After all, the Martin/Zimmerman case has already caused Fox to pull and revise its campaign for the upcoming Ben Stiller comedy Neighborhood Watch, in which four concerned citizens on patrol end up battling aliens who land in their neighborhood.
The media blowout awaiting Bee Sting - and the RLSH community, who will surely face some collateral damage - raises plenty of questions by itself. Primarily, how can a number of people judged and grouped in the public's eye largely by their physical appearance shake the social stigma attached to them whenever one individual sharing that appearance acts in a publicly unfavorable manner? I touched on this issue in a chapter of Penny Cavalier, in which a celebrity stalker had made several claims of being involved directly in the RLSH community - though in my research, even his conversations with any other RLSH were tenuous at best, much less resembling an acquaintanceship. Without that research, though, what image does that paint of the RLSH? An answer may have come from Michigan today.
In the case of Bee Sting, his involvement with the community is more tangible. He was at least called a member of a Midwestern group called the Michigan Protectors, started a year ago by a masked citizen known as Arsenul - in the interest of being forthcoming, I want to note here that Arsenul has added me on FaceBook since the publication of Penny Cavalier, though I have not spoken with him directly in at least a month or two and this piece is being written without the direct involvement or knowledge of any RLSH. As soon as Arsenul caught word of the story about Bee Sting last night, he publicly denounced Bee Sting's actions and, according to the MLive article linked to earlier, has kicked him out of the Michigan Protectors. It's my opinion that this is a step in the right direction in the interest of damage control. That's not to mention that there is no evidence suggesting that Bee Sting's carrying a shotgun on his patrol is because of or in accordance with the usual practices of the Michigan Protectors. So unless verifiable reports to the contrary come in, Arsenul's public disapproval of Bee Sting's actions can be reasonably taken as honest - if the public gives him that chance. Each member of their community is now faced with the decision of continuing his or her personal and professional relationship with Bee Sting, and that brings about another point raised by Bee Sting's course of action last night.
When acting as a representative of a group, where does one's responsibility to that group end, and is every member prepared for that accountability? The actions of each RLSH have the potential to reflect upon them as a whole in open view, and it's as much the media's job to report on newsworthy RLSH activities fairly and objectively as it is for the RLSH to act in a manner that serves their global image. When either side fails to meet that task, the watching world is presented with an unjust account of these anonymous citizens. What i mean is, it disheartens me that many people will likely look at the circumstances regarding Bee Sting this week as a great reason to assume that any human dressed "like him" (e.g. in a symbolic outfit but not legally-recognized law enforcement or medical aide) must obviously "act like him" (from what these people have read, a citizen patrolling a neighborhood with a shotgun he is able and ready to brandish). This assumption can and will boil down, to some, as "all these superhero types must be dangerous." I actually know for a fact that's not the case, and will continue my habit of taking each person in a group at face value, but many people don't know that. Basically, it's up to every RLSH to decide what his or her responsibility is in their efforts of altruism, and he or she must consider what each action for which s/he performs will "say to the world" about "all of them."
In light of this event, regardless of which details come to light about Bee Sting's run-in with the police, the only assumption I believe we should make is that we can't make any assumptions. If you want my personal findings about the individual's rights to stand up for his or her community and what the consequences are, I spent about a year researching it and wrote a book. In regards to this situation in particular, I've done my best to separate fact from stereotype and speak from my experience. I hope this has been a call to reason for anyone on the fence on this issue and to remind anyone reading this to make your opinions based on facts and empirical evidence - as well as in individual cases - rather than conjecture or large-scale general critiques, even though anonymous masked citizenry is such a new and unfamiliar topic to much of the population that our limited experiences with it are easily confused with representative actions of a culture.
Note: It was not my aim in authoring this piece to approve or disapprove of Bee Sting's actions, nor those of the RLSH on the whole. As I discovered in researching Penny Cavalier, there are nearly as many types of people in their community as there are people in their community.
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