Mitch Brown opens up on Cats’ Mad Monday saga: ‘Let’s stamp out this behaviour’
The AFL’s first openly bisexual man Mitch Brown has doubled down on his criticism of Geelong, saying captain Patrick Dangerfield “should have stood up” over Bailey Smith’s infamous social media posts.
The AFL’s first openly bisexual man, Mitch Brown, has doubled down on his criticism of Geelong’s Mad Monday antics, saying the club and captain Patrick Dangerfield “should have stood up”.
Brown called out Bailey Smith’s Instagram story post, in which he was dressed as Brad Pitt’s character from Legends of the Fall making a Brokeback Mountain reference while holding hands with Dangerfield who was dressed as a cowboy. He wrote: “This is what losing a granny does to ya.”
Brown, who has been widely praised since speaking about his sexuality in August, took a swipe at Smith’s post: “Just for the record Heath Ledger’s way hotter”.
He then added: “In all seriousness, though, guys, do better.
“Last time I checked, losing a grand final doesn’t make you gay, but being homophobic definitely makes you a loser.”
Brown said he had received death threats in the wake of Geelong then cancelling future Mad Mondays after several controversial incidents.
He was also disappointed with the sexist and misogynistic inference towards journalist Caroline Wilson by Smith, who posted with Max Holmes dressed up as her.
Brown felt compelled to speak out about it after being contacted.
“That one with Caroline Wilson is pretty bad,’’ Brown said to Olivia Rogers on her Tell Me More podcast.
“Then I said to Lou, my partner … I don’t know how I feel about this.
“And secondly, it’s like, there’s some leaders around there, there’s Patty Dangerfield, there’s some other leaders there. Maybe if the journalists are calling me, there’s going to be, they’re going to know a reaction’s happened. Maybe the leaders, they’re good guys, maybe they will shut things down. And the hours kept going in the afternoon, nothing happened.
“The Caroline Wilson one was taken down, the Brokeback Mountain sort of caption one, that stayed up the full 24 hours on the Instagram story. I was most disappointed at the club. It was like that afternoon, I posted around seven o’clock, so it was quite a while from 11 o’clock. And I waited for all those mechanisms to surely kick into place. Maybe this is a chance for another men’s AFL player from another team to call out this behaviour.
“Maybe this is going to be the moment where we stop caring about the sensitivities of talking about other teams and stuff and going, no, this is not on. And let’s stamp out this behaviour, whether it’s so casual or not, never happened.”
Brown said he was copping abuse from people saying he’d cancelled Mad Monday.
“But once you start to rock this precious hyper masculine game, and then you go one deeper, the sacred Mad Monday, the hate came,’’ Brown said.
“Like it came in droves. And that’s when (the club) gave a two paragraph statement about cancelling effectively the current structure of Mad Monday.
“And it’s like, oh, thanks.
“It’s going to really throw me under the bus that one. And then after that statement, that next day, the death threats came.
“And that was all because, you know, I guess this burden that we talk about, it’s like standing up to something that, maybe Patty Dangerfield should have stood up.”
Originally published as Mitch Brown opens up on Cats’ Mad Monday saga: ‘Let’s stamp out this behaviour’
Bloody aftermath of reporter’s bird strike
