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Another day, another man kills his ex-wife, MRAs cheer

A man in California shot and killed his ex-wife and seven other people last week. The two were involved in a bitter custody dispute over their son. The story is incredibly sad, but men’s rights activists (“MRAs,” going forward) have again taken it as a lesson in the evils of both women and a legal system that promotes the ideal that both parents should have rights. American laws have evolved to reflect the fact that mothers are more than mere incubators to produce children for men, and MRAs are not so much on board with that. Divorce laws that give both parents custody of the children but that may limit custody when one parent is abusive or violent apparently “drive” men to shoot their ex-wives and seven bystanders. So, limiting custody when a parent is abusive or violent is “misandrist” (a word that is right up there with “reverse racism” in terms of usefulness or accuracy) because men aren’t really violent, bitches just lie to steal a man’s kids from him; but when men whose custody is limited because of accusations of violence proceed to act violently by killing their exes, their kids, themselves or innocent bystanders, well, bitches made him do it.

It’s worth noting that the shooter in the California case was in fact given an equal custody split with his ex; that didn’t seem fair, apparently.

Like David, I don’t know any details of the shooter’s ideology or politics, but the MRA reaction has been predictable (though nonetheless startling). MRAs are, quite simply, men who hate women. They especially hate feminists, or women with opinions beyond “Whatever you think, dear.” Because they believe men are superior, they also believe that men should have pretty much free reign to behave however they want towards their women and their children. They believe that violence is often necessary to maintain control, and that judges who declare that children should be placed in non-violent households are anti-male. They believe that violence is provoked by women who don’t know their place. Case(s) in point:

Essentially men need to tell feminism to shut the fuck up, give it a vigorous slap across the face thus reminding it who is the biological superior, then order it back into the kitchen/bedroom.

Gandi [sic] and MLK got what they were after via non-violent means, but they were dealing with people of conscience, people who would think about the issues they espoused and not just kill them. Non-violence only works when your opponent has moral character. …

I submit that women … are much more likely to pay attention when they’re being threatened. If it becomes obvious that claiming child abuse during divorce, withholding visitation and other such actions could result in their death, then they might think twice about such behavior.

You can read more at Man Boobz.


183 thoughts on Another day, another man kills his ex-wife, MRAs cheer

  1. Such humans (assuming they qualify) used to annoy me, but nowadays I don’t bother taking misogynists seriously anymore, unless they pose a legislative threat to human rights — and I don’t anticipate MRAs winning any legislative victories anytime soon. Cases like Topeka decriminalising domestic violence have nothing to do with MRAs exerting political power, as they have little if any.

    (Unless, of course, you qualify Michele Bachmann as an MRA…)

  2. For anyone more familiar with MRA writings and culture–how do they talk about their girl children? How do they explain wanting to spend time and have relationships with their daughters, while also believing that women are awful? Is there some point when their daughters grow up that they just click over from being the most precious people ever that fathers desperately need more contact with OR ELSE, to being evil harpies?

  3. You are lucky because one essentially cannot do anything to prevent these kind of killings thus I’m not going to argue that. But you should be careful. The recent riots in England demonstrate that if a large enough amount of people perceive to be mistreated even if it is objectively false can have dire consequences. Now you gonna say that violence is wrong, but that does not help you much if you are dead.

  4. chipchop:
    For anyone more familiar with MRA writings and culture–how do they talk about their girl children? How do they explain wanting to spend time and have relationships with their daughters, while also believing that women are awful? Is there some point when their daughters grow up that they just click over from being the most precious people ever that fathers desperately need more contact with OR ELSE, to being evil harpies?

    Not being familiar with MRA culture, my guess as to the answer would be: if the father gets his way and is allowed to raise his precious little girl, free from the contaminating influence of her evil mother, then the little girl will grow into a shining example of respectful femininity, perfect wife material who would never give her future husband any reason to beat on her or the kids. If, on the other hand, the father loses his battle with the feminist legal system and the little girl is raised by her mother, the daughter will inevitably be molded into a scheming harpy in her own right, and will someday need to be taught a lesson by the next generation of MRAs.

    So you see, they’re really pacifists in the larger sense. They just want to break the cycle of unfortunate but totally justified violence.

  5. Never getting married, never getting married ever..
    It keeps getting harder to believe with each passing day that guys who don’t want to rape and or kill women are out there, and that non-violent men exist.

  6. I fail to see how it is productive to give these views extra publicity here. Especially as it seems to be just some random nutty comments found on the net. (I even took the time to scan the blog indirectly linked to. As expected it sucked, but garbage opinion blogs are not that hard to find)

    Also: Isn’t using these people to demonize all MRAs in this categorical way rather childish? (It is not hard to find radical feminists with abhorrent views and use them to tar all feminists if this is the type of rhetoric we want to have)

  7. I fail to see how it is productive to give these views extra publicity here. Especially as it seems to be just some random nutty comments found on the net. (I even took the time to scan the blog indirectly linked to. As expected it sucked, but garbage opinion blogs are not that hard to find)

    Nothing to see here…

    Also: Isn’t using these people to demonize all MRAs in this categorical way rather childish?

    Let me get this straight, because I think I must have missed something. It seems you’re saying:
    1) MRAs are a generally good group of people.
    2) That these statements are not representative of the movement as a whole.
    3) Using these statements to indict the movement is unfair.
    4) More than that it is “childish,” with all of the connotation and context that comes with a man calling women immature in a discussion like this.

    Yeah, you’re totally not supporting Jill’s point with your rebuttal.

    It is not hard to find radical feminists with abhorrent views and use them to tar all feminists if this is the type of rhetoric we want to have

    But it is difficult to find radical feminists with abhorrent views who participate in actual violence against men. More to the point, the abhorrent views of some radical feminists grew in the context (theres that troublesome word again) of a significant lack of privilege. The abhorrent comments of MRAs occur in the context of a privileged group fighting against the loss of unearned privilege.

    But hey, I’ve got a solution that should work for everyone. If you’re worried about a woman taking advantage of you in a custody dispute and you do not currently have kids, go on out and have a vasectomy. The bitches can’t use your kids against you in court if you don’t have kids in the first place. Hell, you can even chuckle to yourself about your superior strategy in the ongoing battle of the sexes. I’d advise you to be as upfront about this as possible, so as to let them know that you’ll take no shit. Perhaps when you meet a woman in a bar you can say something like “just so you know, when we fuck tonight I’ll be shooting blanks so don’t even think about trying to milk me for child support because I’m so much smarter than you’ll ever be.”

    I’d be willing to wager Real American Dollars that everyone could breathe a sigh of relief in that situation.

  8. “Well, if I was anti-Semitic, I might say she was being a Jew.” “Well, if I was homophobic, I might say she was gay.” See how you sound like a dick if you subbed in any other marginalized group? I get that the big joke on this site is about how sensitive people are about ableism, but FFS.

  9. Isn’t using these people to demonize all MRAs in this categorical way rather childish?

    Find me an MRA group that doesn’t espouse or advocate something awful, misogynist, or just plain wrong.

    You are lucky because one essentially cannot do anything to prevent these kind of killings thus I’m not going to argue that.

    Don’t be silly. Of course one can do something to prevent these kinds of killings. One could dedicate money and time to discover and spread awareness of warning signs that someone is going to stalk, harass, and kill his/her ex, and screen all divorcing parents. One could take women’s complaints of such men’s behavior seriously and put some teeth into harassment laws and restraining orders. One could make child custody contingent on not threatening the physical safety of the child’s other parent/guardian. One could dedicate money to outreach campaigns delegitimizing male violence against women.

    But you should be careful.

    How, precisely? Just as I cannot control the actions of a rapist with my clothing, I cannot control the actions of a murderous possessive asshole, and attempting to appease such a one is not only unproductive, but too much to ask.

    The recent riots in England demonstrate that if a large enough amount of people perceive to be mistreated even if it is objectively false can have dire consequences. Now you gonna say that violence is wrong, but that does not help you much if you are dead.

    Actually, working-class and poor people in England are mistreated, just as they are in other countries.

    But it is funny how nobody raises this kind of concern when it’s women who are being mistreated, isn’t it? Why aren’t you scared that we’ll riot and kill men if we continue to be the targets of this kind of violence?

  10. Gandi [sic] and MLK got what they were after via non-violent means, but they were dealing with people of conscience, people who would think about the issues they espoused and not just kill them. Non-violence only works when your opponent has moral character. …

    What the actual fuck? Never mind that MLK was actually killed. Certainly there were countless Indians and African Americans being killed by these ‘people of conscience, people who would think about the issues they espoused and not just kill them.” Umm has lynching been erased from the history books?

    I submit that women … are much more likely to pay attention when they’re being threatened. If it becomes obvious that claiming child abuse during divorce, withholding visitation and other such actions could result in their death, then they might think twice about such behavior.

    Yes, and they might think twice about going into a salon in case someone who has committed such behavior might be in there. Like those people weren’t someone’s children. What about advocating for the rights of the 8 men who will never see their daughters because they were killed by this nutcase? I think ‘Men’s Rights Advocates’ is far too nice a term for these people. ‘Mindless heartless pricks’ is too nice a term.

    You can read more at Man Boobz.

    Thanks, but I’m nauseated enough already.

  11. PrettyAmiable:
    “Well, if I was anti-Semitic, I might say she was being a Jew.” “Well, if I was homophobic, I might say she was gay.” See how you sound like a dick if you subbed in any other marginalized group? I get that the big joke on this site is about how sensitive people are about ableism, but FFS.

    I knew it was douchey comment the moment I pressed submit…and it wasn’t about people being sensitive to ableism. It was me being temporarily insensitive and valuing a joke about initials over people’s sensitivities, and I apologize if I offended anyone.

  12. anon23:
    You are lucky because one essentially cannot do anything to prevent these kind of killings thus I’m not going to argue that. But you should be careful.

    Actually there are. Not legitimizing it with the kind of talk thrown out at MRA forums would be one. There are other methods too, but they are bound to be controversial.

  13. Stories like this are part of why I don’t trust men and never really have (the other part is that I’m transsexual and I know what men are like when they think there are no women around, and it’s not a pretty picture).

  14. It’s at times like this that I think gender separatism, problematic (ha!) as it is, really isn’t the worst idea in the world come to think of it.

  15. EG
    But it is funny how nobody raises this kind of concern when it’s women who are being mistreated, isn’t it?Why aren’t you scared that we’ll riot and kill men if we continue to be the targets of this kind of violence?

    You can’t even find people willing to call this violence what it is: a hate crime. Remember George Sodini? A dictionary definition hate crime, yet men (and women) bent over backwards to explain that no, he was mentally ill, he was misunderstood, and do you understand how hard it is to live with “involuntary celibacy”? To this day there are acquaintances I don’t really feel comfortable around, because of what they said about this (I also lived in Pittsburgh when it happened, it was a big deal at the time which is why everyone I knew had an opinion). Why isn’t this a hate crime equivalent to what happened to James Byrd, Jr. or Matthew Shepard? Because women don’t matter, and we’ve heard that so often we believe it ourselves. Some of the people saying “I bet he was a nice guy at heart” were indeed women.

    But, no, I guess we should just bend a little bit more if we don’t want the mens to revolt, which extends to fucking and/or being in relationships with men we find loathsome. After all, George Sodini wasn’t a terrible person or anything, he only just hated women.

  16. Politicalguineapig and Erica: while you should be allowed – in fact encouraged – to live your life exactly as you want to, I think it might be a shame to give in to fear. There’s no guarantee that you’ll find a guy worth marrying of course, and maybe a female-only town/country/continent/planet would be great for you! But otherwise, why let these assholes win? I realize your comments may have been hyperbole, it just seemed unfortunate that you can’t feel safe without sequestering yourself. I will say one thing though: if you all leave, then I’ll be stuck here with the MRA guys! I think that counts as cruel and unusual punishment. =(

  17. MRA nut quoted in OP:

    I submit that women … are much more likely to pay attention when they’re being threatened. If it becomes obvious that claiming child abuse during divorce, withholding visitation and other such actions could result in their death, then they might think twice about such behavior.

    anon23:
    You are lucky because one essentially cannot do anything to prevent these kind of killings thus I’m not going to argue that. But you should be careful. The recent riots in England demonstrate that if a large enough amount of people perceive to be mistreated even if it is objectively false can have dire consequences. Now you gonna say that violence is wrong, but that does not help you much if you are dead.

    This is an interesting juxtaposition.

  18. Yep, that’s the same sick reasoning people use to dismiss reports of armies and rebels resorting to mass rapes during war. “So what? Both sides are doing it to each other.” No, you moppet, only one side is doing it to the other — men against women and girls.

  19. Both MRA and feminists are wildly radical, although I think both will die away. Human nature simply does not allow such radical fanaticism to continue. Most women, be they in Yemen or the United States, aren’t mulling over the supposed mysogny of a Superbowl ad or some random guy filming “hot chicks” at OWS. Most men don’t care about the alleged ‘feminization’ of cartoon characters.

    People are busy with important things.

  20. Human nature simply does not allow such radical fanaticism to continue.

    Have you ever read any history at all?

  21. Junaid:
    Both MRA and feminists are wildly radical, although I think both will die away. Human nature simply does not allow such radical fanaticism to continue. Most women, be they in Yemen or the United States, aren’t mulling over the supposed mysogny of a Superbowl ad or some random guy filming “hot chicks” at OWS. Most men don’t care about the alleged ‘feminization’ of cartoon characters.

    People are busy with important things.

    Feminists are an extremely broad group, encompassing nearly every woman I know personally. Most of whom don’t care about misogyny at the Super Bowl or the ‘hot chicks’ blog. But if you’re going to do a blog from a feminist perspective, what the fuck else are you going to write about? Have you seen the number of posts Jill makes? She’s got to talk about something even if you may find it trivial.
    Most people don’t care about the national debt, but it is still important.

    On the other hand, MRA-holes (as I shall now be referring to them) are a very specific group of people who are so fucking stupid that they think men’s rights are being threatened in this country.

  22. Junaid:
    Both MRA and feminists are wildly radical, although I think both will die away. Human nature simply does not allow such radical fanaticism to continue. Most women, be they in Yemen or the United States, aren’t mulling over the supposed mysogny of a Superbowl ad or some random guy filming “hot chicks” at OWS. Most men don’t care about the alleged ‘feminization’ of cartoon characters.

    People are busy with important things.

    ‘Wildly radical’? Like the radical notion that women are people that feminism holds? The radical notions I tend to hear out of MRAs are violent rhetoric and that men are superior to women and deserve privileges above them as they constantly try to justify it.

    Most people in general don’t mull over the many levels of oppression and discrimination in our system. That doesn’t suddenly make it unimportant or useless to analyze, criticize, and call out as messed up. If you don’t see an issue with the fact that an overwhelming amount of our media, for example, presents women as sex objects, then I do believe you are yet another reason why feminism is still needed.

  23. William: Let me get this straight, because I think I must have missed something. It seems you’re saying:
    1) MRAs are a generally good group of people.
    2) That these statements are not representative of the movement as a whole.
    3) Using these statements to indict the movement is unfair.
    4) More than that it is “childish,” with all of the connotation and context that comes with a man calling women immature in a discussion like this.

    1) I did not say this. I would say that MRAs in general is much better than the guys referenced here. (which is an extremely low bar).
    IME MRAs includes different sub group such as for example
    – One issue activist who are focusing on divorce courts and child custody.
    – Conservative ideologues who want to “return” to some kind of mythical 1950s world with traditional gender roles.
    – Fairly reasonable critics of extreme feminists

    From my point of view it might be a valid comparison to use Republicans instead of MRAs here. This is a group I disagree vehemently with, but not all of them share the positions of their extreme right wing.

    2) Yes, I did mean this. Do you really think it is?
    If these statements were in fact representative, then my point would immediately fall (since the referenced statements are just disgusting).

    3) Follows from 2

    4) What? How did you get to a misogynistic dismissal from that word choice? To start with the OP is based on an article from Man Boobz and written by David, who is male (unless I have missed something).

    William: But it is difficult to find radical feminists with abhorrent views who participate in actual violence against men.

    Has any of these MRAs participated in actual violence against women? They seem to “just” be arguing for violence, which is certainly something that has been seen in feminism also (SCUM etc).

  24. “From my point of view it might be a valid comparison to use Republicans instead of MRAs here. This is a group I disagree vehemently with, but not all of them share the positions of their extreme right wing.”

    You.. mean like televised republican supporters who constantly speak violent rhetoric (Glenn Beck). Or republican party members who make maps of opponents with bullseyes on them (Sarah Palin)? You mean the party that hardly ever actually calls out or directly criticizes their own members who do take part in this kind of rhetoric, which legitimizes it and lets it go on? The same things MRAs do when instances of misogyny and gendered violence like this come up? Or, yeah, they just cheer it on.

    Yes, I’d say the comparison to republicans is very apt, but not in the way you think it is.

  25. @SephONE: Yes, exactly. Finding abhorrent views among Republican party members is not difficult. But should we really see these people as representative for a significant portion of the US population?

  26. @Matlun: But my entire point was these are not fringe members of the republican party. Not ‘random nutty’ people either. But instead are influential members, movers and shakers. My point is that it’s never called out and that in fact, it’s dismissed as unimportant or someone makes an attempt to justify it. Due to this, and due to the fact republicans leaders are pretty gung ho about restricting the bodily autonomy of women and other pregnant people with the legislation they’ve been pushing for, I actually do think of the GOP in general as pretty horrible people.

    It’s not demonizing when the members with the most power are shining examples of everything you’re pointing out wrong, that it’s all across the spectrum. It’s.. pointing out the obvious. MRAs are a group of misogynists with exceptions to that rule, not people being unfairly maligned by Jill.

  27. @SephONE: Ok, nowadays the extreme elements among the Republicans have largely taken over the party, so this might have been a bad example.

    To return to my post to William it all turns on the question: Are these opinions representative?

    If Yes, then my argument falls.
    If No, then it stands.

  28. Matlun/William, the killing described in the OP is not some kind of isolated incident, it’s a pattern. As any shelter or emergency room worker or policeperson will tell you, a woman’s greatest risk of being murdered or seriously injured by her partner is at the point where she leaves or makes her intention to leave clear. Accordingly, you can take your “but most MRAs are really nice guys!” and “extreme feminism” and shove it.

  29. @matlun: In my experience, while even I have to admit those comments in the OP lean toward a more extreme side, they do represent MRAs to me. Because I’ve met so many MRAs like that or seen comments from them that other feminists point out that come very close to that or outright say it. The denial of male privilege, the justification for certain aspects of gender essentialism (generally the parts that reinforce male supremacy) , the downplaying of women’s oppression. Even MRAs who have come across as very genuinely concerned with the state of men and how they’re treated have said things like how they’d support the idea of (cis) men being able to legally have power to decide if (cis) women would have abortions or not.

    Certainly my experience is not universal, but I have hard time believing these just random nutters, isolated incidents, when my encounters with MRAs have been largely skewed toward rhetoric just like that.

  30. @Helen: The actual killer here was not an MRA (right?). Instead the news was used as jumping off point for a disgusting opinion piece (+comments) that was exposed at Man Boobz and then here.
    (Also: William was arguing against me. IOW he is on your side in this discussion).

    I agree with you that this kind of violence is part of a wider pattern, but isn’t that a separate discussion (and a very well established one at that).

    @StephONE: Ok. My reaction to the views were that they were so absurdly bad that no one could take them seriously (ie very unrepresentative for any reasonable position).

  31. William: Perhaps when you meet a woman in a bar you can say something like “just so you know, when we fuck tonight I’ll be shooting blanks so don’t even think about trying to milk me for child support because I’m so much smarter than you’ll ever be.”

    I have been told it is much smarter to not tell the woman about the vasectomy and keep them trying for longer. I know a man that exercised his reproductive choice in this fashion.

  32. @StephONE: Ok. My reaction to the views were that they were so absurdly bad that no one could take them seriously (ie very unrepresentative for any reasonable position).

    matlun

    MRAs got the ear of our former (Australian) PM and the result that legislation was put into effect to make 50-50 custody a rebuttable presumption, with punitive provisions for women deemed to be “unfriendly” towards their husbands. Children have already died as a result, it has been recognised as a policy disaster but now like you we are looking at another rightwing government following the next election.

    So I do take them seriously.

  33. Helen: MRAs got the ear of our former (Australian) PM and the result that legislation was put into effect to make 50-50 custody a rebuttable presumption, with punitive provisions for women deemed to be “unfriendly” towards their husbands. Children have already died as a result, it has been recognised as a policy disaster but now like you we are looking at another rightwing government following the next election.
    So I do take them seriously.

    @Helen in Australia biological mothers account for about 35 per cent of all filicides while biological fathers account for 29 per cent.
    http://www.mensrights.com.au/Family_Violence_Statistics-Child_Abuse_Australia/Women_who_murder_their_Children-Australian_Statistics.aspx

    In Canada again biological mothers account for more filicides than do biological fathers.

    http://www.canadiancrc.com/Infanticide-Women_Who_Kill_Their_Babies.aspx

    So perhaps children are safer with their fathers.

  34. Helen: MRAs got the ear of our former (Australian) PM and the result that legislation was put into effect to make 50-50 custody a rebuttable presumption, with punitive provisions for women deemed to be “unfriendly” towards their husbands. Children have already died as a result, it has been recognised as a policy disaster but now like you we are looking at another rightwing government following the next election.

    So I do take them seriously.

    Here in the US as well, in family court. There was a woman who was forced to take her kids to prison to visit their father (her ex) who was in prison for beating and raping her. The kids did not want to go, and the judge forced her to take them (the ex took the matter to court, going on and on about his rights, because abusers love to control their targets and I’m sure this filthy rapist puke got off on putting his family through this).

    Women will be prosecuted and/or lose custody if they don’t protect their kids from abusers/don’t leave, BUT if they bring up the fact that their ex was/is abusive, a lot of the time she’s accused of trying to alienate the kids from their father. So you cannot win.

    Also? Killing a bunch of people in a shooting spree really shows your fitness as a parent. :::rolls eyes:::

  35. If the shooter had actually cared about the kids, he wouldn’t have left them (ultimately) orphans. How does a child handle living without both parents because one of them was a murderer.

  36. Has any of these MRAs participated in actual violence against women? They seem to “just” be arguing for violence, which is certainly something that has been seen in feminism also (SCUM etc).

    SCUM neither precipitated nor came in the wake of a series of ongoing attacks by women on men. Men actually do attack and kill their partners. Not just one guy, either. But on and on.

  37. A man in our area killed his “estranged” wife and their 11-year-old son. That’ll show THEM, amirite?

    A man from Louisiana decapitated and sliced up into pieces the body of his disabled son “because he didn’t want to take care of him anymore.” He also left the boy’s head on the side of the road for his former wife to see. Furthermore, the photograph accompanying the article I read shows evidence the boy was beaten – head wound, marks on his throat.

    The poor father has been judged not fit for trial because he didn’t understand that what he did was wrong.

    This stuff happens EVERY DAY. Every single day. It is greeted with yawns and tsks by many people.

    Men are the ones committing most of the violence – against women and children, whom they consider their property. Women commit violence, too, but not in these record numbers.

    Poor MRAs. Just decent guys trying to threaten their bitches into treating them with the respect they deserve!

  38. Echo Zen:
    No, you moppet, only one side is doing it to the other — men against women and girls.

    Yeah!

    Obviously there is absolutely no defence for someone who would resort to that level of violence. None either for a defence of such violence.

    There certainly are plenty of men who are despicable either before or during relationship breakdowns. There are also plenty of women who are abusive, or will vindictively use deceit to prevent a decent man from having access to their children.

    It doesn’t really matter which is more common. Are we prepared to say it is right that 10 good fathers shouldn’t be allowed access to their children (who want to see them) to prevent one decent mother from being harmed? Are we prepared to think it right to allow 10 good mothers to be harmed so one decent father has access to their children? Are we really prepared to say that physical harm (possibly death) is always worse than emotional harm (possibly suicide)?

    I don’t know what the answer is. People lie for their own benefit or out of vindictiveness. I’m not sure it is a problem that can ever be completely solved given the way damaging relationships tend to be isolate, making witnesses hard to find. About the only thing I’m pretty sure of, is that a fixed gendering of the problem isn’t that constructive.

  39. tinfoil hattie: Men are the ones committing most of the violence – against women and children, whom they consider their property. Women commit violence, too, but not in these record numbers.

    And again biological mothers commit filicide more frequently than biological fathers do. I can’t think of a much more heinous crime than killing your own children so am very surprised that women do more of it than men.

    http://www.mensrights.com.au/Family_Violence_Statistics-Child_Abuse_Australia/Women_who_murder_their_Children-Australian_Statistics.aspx

    http://www.canadiancrc.com/Infanticide-Women_Who_Kill_Their_Babies.aspx

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19930581

    Most defenses for this rely on the mental incapacity of the woman at the time.

    I think a lot of men faced with divorce have very difficult mental issues to deal with too.

    Have you ever considered what might stop violence against women at divorce time is some extra support for the men? They are usually not the ones that instigated the divorce and are frequently have no idea what to do. Early intervention with some support might actually help them get through it with some more appropriate behaviors and with better parenting outcomes.

    Helping women can sometimes mean helping men. I really can’t help believe that some professional help for the man in this case might have avoided a terrible disaster.

  40. Hi This is awful.

    We need an estrategy to defuse them. Before hate grows to the level of making imposible the feminist vision of an equal partnership between the multiple genders. We will get only dominance: Either female or male.

    In the other hand the MRAs are taking traction. The question is: Why?

    I believe that normal people are starting to listen to them due to the big gab between our (as a group) perspective and most people’s including women.

    People see violence as an individual act. We see it as a social construct.

    In a women criticizes feminists or says I am not a feminist most of us (not me) immediately goes in the femobot mode: You pour little thing are brain washed by the patriarchy. A men does and he become inmediadly a misogynist. Even when the critique is valid, or just based on the wrong information.

    Male privilege is used to justify or dismiss violence agains men (in reality is just one of the reasons violence by men agains women is more common than the other way).

    We see “feminists” justifying even the more extreme cases of violence. Not like “its ok” but like infantilizing female criminals as victims.

    This hate group (MRA) got traction with the “paternity fraud” cases.
    Some times the injustices were so evident that I can’t understand how some warp up feminist as a justification of the extreme cases.

    Finally power is not something attached to some one. If X is abusing Y, X is the one with power in that particular situation.

    I say it before: Lesbian feminists have to fight like crazy to have domestic violence in lesbian relationships discussed, Black women have to build there own movement before mainstream feminist accepted (some don’t do today) that white women benefit from black people oppression including that of black men.

    Even today some people don’t accept that police hostility and abuse from early age is one important factor on the level of incarceration of black men. That white women are better than black men in that aspect etc.

    The final stone is the press. If Carla burns her partner alive because he when out with it’s friends and 2000 feminists say this is not ok and 1 feminist say : We have to see the level of indifference he show to her when leaving. The press will publish the outrageous comment. Simple put outrageous sales.

    Love,
    Avida

  41. Yes, men rape other men during wartime.

    That has nothing to do with the gendering of these kinds of crimes, the overwhelming majority of which in involve an abusive man attacking and/or killing his children and/or his (ex-)wife. Pretending that these crimes aren’t gendered is going to do nothing but obscure what’s happening.

  42. Fat Steve: What the actual fuck? Never mind that MLK was actually killed.

    So was Gandhi.

    matlun: I would say that MRAs in general is much better than the guys referenced here.

    I’m not aware of the shooter identifying as an MRA. When the news broke, MRAs rushed to claim him. They don’t seem to think the MRM is better then that.

  43. I. . .look, fathers get custody when they push for it. Even when they are abusive. Even if there is a paper trail of charges for the abuse. To frame this as something that is happening to all “good” fathers is beyond fucking ridiculous.

  44. I was deeply upset by this story when I first heard it on the radio. This man was obviously a violent jerk who blamed his problems on his ex-wife and all women in general. “MRA’s” (a term I didn’t even know existed!) who defend this asshole need to step back and acknowledge that what he did was MURDER and shoot seven others who were not even involved in his life! How can anyone argue that that’s somehow OK?? It is obvious to me that giving a child to this scumbag was clearly not an option for the court. I guess MRA’s would say the family courts are “biased” against all males, which makes absolutely no sense!

  45. I’m not sure why several commenters here are convinced that girlfriends are never subject to violence. That’s incorrect, by a long shot.

  46. 1) I did not say this. I would say that MRAs in general is much better than the guys referenced here. (which is an extremely low bar).

    Lemme get the popcorn…

    – One issue activist who are focusing on divorce courts and child custody.

    So, best case scenario, guys who lost in court and are now willing to cozy up to overtly violent activists in order to win their fight? I suppose a sore loser with an axe to grind and so low a bar for allies that he’s willing to group in with violent misogynists isn’t necessarily a bad guy but, you know, I’m just not interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I’m just being judgmental. God knows I’ve been pretty feminized just by being a regular here…

    – Conservative ideologues who want to “return” to some kind of mythical 1950s world with traditional gender roles.

    Because nothing says “not violently misogynistic” like people who long for the days of wives who cannot divorce their husbands, legalized marital rape, and a lack of domestic violence laws!

    – Fairly reasonable critics of extreme feminists

    There are a lot of really good reasons to criticize elements of the Israeli nationalist lobby in the US. If you’re doing it from Stormfront, though…

    2) Yes, I did mean this. Do you really think it is?
    If these statements were in fact representative, then my point would immediately fall (since the referenced statements are just disgusting).

    You’re talking about the Men’s Rights Movement. A movement predicated on the belief that men need special rights to be protected from discrimination and oppression by women. A group that uses the phrase “misandry.” You’re talking about a movement of privileged people in positions of relative power who are campaigning against the loss of their sense of entitlement. Thats disgusting enough without adding violence. History, however, suggests that violence is all but a guaranteed part of any movement of the powerful against the powerless.

    What? How did you get to a misogynistic dismissal from that word choice?

    You’re one of those people who doesn’t get why “hysterical” is a coded message, aren’t you?

    Has any of these MRAs participated in actual violence against women?

    …really?

    Ok, let me break it down for you. Why don’t you go out and collect every instance of a woman raping, seriously beating, stalking, or murdering a man during a divorce or custody dispute. We’ll measure them up against the opposite.

    A feminist using violent rhetoric is a different thing from an MRA because in our society there simply isn’t the same baseline epidemic of violence against men as there is for violence against women.

  47. SephONE: ‘Wildly radical’? Like the radical notion that women are people that feminism holds? The radical notions I tend to hear out of MRAs are violent rhetoric and that men are superior to women and deserve privileges above them as they constantly try to justify it.

    Most people in general don’t mull over the many levels of oppression and discrimination in our system. That doesn’t suddenly make it unimportant or useless to analyze, criticize, and call out as messed up. If you don’t see an issue with the fact that an overwhelming amount of our media, for example, presents women as sex objects, then I do believe you are yet another reason why feminism is still needed.

    It’s hilarious how your first paragraph directly contradicts your second. It has that, “…yes, but we’re not the same” tone to it, which I’m sure I’ll find in an MRA web-site as well.

    How many people in the world care about what Scott Adams wrote in a blog, what Guy Fieri may or may not think about women or the ration of women to men in Two and a Half Men.

    Feminism and the MRA movement are essentially groups with too much time on their hands. The average human being is busy. They don’t think about these sorts of things. Women don’t think their male friends are oppressing them, and neither do the men think the women have an unfair advantage due to gender.

  48. SamanthaB: I am aware that girlfriends face violence too, but it’s a little bit easier to leave when there’s no legal stuff and no children involved.
    Jon: I don’t think seperatism is practical, really. But on the street, I find it safer to totally and completely ignore men. Considering the economic times, I find it easier to just not date; not only is it easier on my wallet, it’s a good way to avoid being subjected to violence. Men are conditioned to react to stress by being violent, and in this economy, everyone’s stressed. Thus we get crimes like Mr. Sodini’s and this guy out in Califiornia.

  49. @William: What people do you group into the MRA category?
    You are likening the movement to Stormfront and classifying them as “overtly violent activists”, “violent misogynists”, etc.

    If a person is working for Men’s Rights (for example by addressing issues in custody law) I would classify that person as an MRA. You seem to have some other definition (?)

    We seem to have some kind of communication breakdown here.

    1. @William: What people do you group into the MRA category?
      You are likening the movement to Stormfront and classifying them as “overtly violent activists”, “violent misogynists”, etc.

      If a person is working for Men’s Rights (for example by addressing issues in custody law) I would classify that person as an MRA. You seem to have some other definition (?)

      We seem to have some kind of communication breakdown here.

      I’m not William, but most of my experience with MRAs is in online forums where men self-identify at Men’s Rights Activists. I’m sure there are many men working in men’s rights off-line, but I don’t know if they take on the title “MRA.” I’m perfectly fine saying that I believe MRAs are toxic and misogynist, because I have literally never visited an MRA forum that has not been toxic and misogynist. If one exists online, I haven’t found it. It’s not a matter of cherry-picking — yes, there are some comments that are worse than others, but it’s unusual to find conversations on MRA sites that aren’t somehow steeped in misogyny. MRAs also don’t seem to do any sort of inter-community policing or questioning. I mean, I don’t want to get too into this here because I simply don’t want to give them any public acknowledgment, but there are entire MRA websites dedicated not only to destroying the reputations of feminist bloggers (saying that we’re false rape accusers, etc) but actually searching for our home and work addresses and our routes to our offices and our daily routines so that our information can be posted online and we can be taught a lesson. Requests for that information are on the same websites that talk about how violence against feminists is now a legitimate solution to all the problems we’ve caused. I’m not talking about fringe websites here — I’m talking about some of the more popular MRA bloggers. And you know, the other MRAs who claim to be non-violent and not misogynist? You don’t hear a peep from them. So yeah, I feel pretty ok at this point saying fuck ’em all.

  50. Junaid: How many people in the world care about what Scott Adams wrote in a blog, what Guy Fieri may or may not think about women or the ration of women to men in Two and a Half Men.

    Oh, I fucking hate this line of shit. Don’t read fucking blogs if you don’t want to hear this type of comment about popular culture. Read the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal and shut the fuck up. End of.

  51. matlun:
    @William: What people do you group into the MRA category?
    You are likening the movement to Stormfront and classifying them as “overtly violent activists”, “violent misogynists”, etc.

    If a person is working for Men’s Rights (for example by addressing issues in custody law) I would classify that person as an MRA. You seem to have some other definition (?)

    We seem to have some kind of communication breakdown here.

    Addressing issues in custody law so that they are more equitable, does not make you an MRA-hole, addressing issues in custody law so that they favor the father does.

    It’s like saying people who advocate for the right to ban black people from restaurants are ‘addressing civil rights issues.’ Utter nonsense.

  52. Fat Steve: Addressing issues in custody law so that they are more equitable, does not make you an MRA-hole, addressing issues in custody law so that they favor the father does.

    I should perhaps have qualified that a bit.

    My view: If you are working from the perception that the current system is misandrist and needs to be fixed, then you are very likely an MRA. If you are a self proclaimed member of the “Father’s Right Movement” then you are definitely one.

    Whether I would classify a specific activist as an MRA is admittedly based on somewhat fuzzy criteria. For example I have heard feminists criticizing some of the very same problems from the POV that they are based on gender stereotypes with the woman seen as the natural carer.

    Anyone have a better and more stringent definition?

  53. A feminist using violent rhetoric is a different thing from an MRA because in our society there simply isn’t the same baseline epidemic of violence against men as there is for violence against women.

    Especially given the fact that most of the violent rhetoric emanating from some so-called radical feminists isn’t even directed at men. At least, not at anyone who actually is a man.

    And especially given the fact that abhorrent and violent (or at best near-violent) rhetoric seems to me to be very much mainstream in the “MRA” movement. It certainly isn’t among feminists, and, insofar as violence is concerned, never was.

  54. @Jill: Self identification could perhaps work, but I feel that would let a lot of people off the hook. For example it is not clear whether the author of the piece which started all this actually calls himself an MRA.

    (From the about page of the blog: “[we are] counting among our numbers men’s rights activists, hedonists, Christian patriarchs, white nationalists and other marginalized groups.” Clearly a charming forum)

  55. Jill: I’m not William, but most of my experience with MRAs is in online forums where men self-identify at Men’s Rights Activists. I’m sure there are many men working in men’s rights off-line, but I don’t know if they take on the title “MRA.” I’m perfectly fine saying that I believe MRAs are toxic and misogynist, because I have literally never visited an MRA forum that has not been toxic and misogynist. If one exists online, I haven’t found it. It’s not a matter of cherry-picking — yes, there are some comments that are worse than others, but it’s unusual to find conversations on MRA sites that aren’t somehow steeped in misogyny. MRAs also don’t seem to do any sort of inter-community policing or questioning. I mean, I don’t want to get too into this here because I simply don’t want to give them any public acknowledgment, but there are entire MRA websites dedicated not only to destroying the reputations of feminist bloggers (saying that we’re false rape accusers, etc) but actually searching for our home and work addresses and our routes to our offices and our daily routines so that our information can be posted online and we can be taught a lesson. Requests for that information are on the same websites that talk about how violence against feminists is now a legitimate solution to all the problems we’ve caused. I’m not talking about fringe websites here — I’m talking about some of the more popular MRA bloggers. And you know, the other MRAs who claim to be non-violent and not misogynist? You don’t hear a peep from them. So yeah, I feel pretty ok at this point saying fuck ‘em all.

    Well, I’d be willing to bet all of them claim to be non-violent and misogynist, but that’s a different matter.

    I’d just like to add something which you didn’t mention, probably because it wasn’t relevant to the comment you quoted, but is relevant to the piece. If MRA-holes cared about ‘gender equality’ the all Men’s Rights Activists would be feminists as well. I am an atheist, for one simple reason, I don’t believe in a supreme being. I believe that I should be able to meet with other atheists (though I aren’t actually attended any skeptic/atheist meetups because I find that kind of shit boring,) and that I should be free to practice my Athiest/agnostic/humanist beliefs without government interference. This is why I argued so vociferously for the “Ground Zero’ mosque.

    Similarly, advocating for equality for women should come natural to
    a man who thinks it’s so important for their gender to have equal rights. Until I see that I will keep calling them MRA-holes.

  56. Jade:
    If the shooter had actually cared about the kids, he wouldn’t have left them (ultimately) orphans.How does a child handle living without both parents because one of them was a murderer.

    I have one anecdote about this – in a group home with troubled kids, the only visitor a stepmom. Grim.

  57. matlun: Whether I would classify a specific activist as an MRA is admittedly based on somewhat fuzzy criteria. For example I have heard feminists criticizing some of the very same problems from the POV that they are based on gender stereotypes with the woman seen as the natural carer.

    Anyone have a better and more stringent definition?

    Douches.

  58. llama: And again biological mothers commit filicide more frequently than biological fathers do. I can’t think of a much more heinous crime than killing your own children so am very surprised that women do more of it than men.

    http://www.mensrights.com.au/Family_Violence_Statistics-Child_Abuse_Australia/Women_who_murder_their_Children-Australian_Statistics.aspx

    http://www.canadiancrc.com/Infanticide-Women_Who_Kill_Their_Babies.aspx

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19930581

    Biological mothers are more often the primary caregiver than Biological fathers. Could the numbers perhaps correlate with custody? If more men were primary caregivers don’t you think there’s a possibility of those numbers being reversed?

    Let’s not genderize a crime if other factors are likely at play.

    Have you ever considered what might stop violence against women at divorce time is some extra support for the men? They are usually not the ones that instigated the divorce and are frequently have no idea what to do. Early intervention with some support might actually help them get through it with some more appropriate behaviors and with better parenting outcomes.

    1) NOT shooting your child’s other parent is not a ‘better parenting outcome’.

    And I’m willing to bet that these guys that advocate violence against ex-wives in custody battles were likely controlling and abusive as fuck during their marriages, so in such cases I don’t consider the wife leaving such a situation as ‘instigating’ a divorce.

    Keeping in mind, I have seen guys get fucked over by custodial systems before, and I agree that the system DOES favour mothers over fathers, and YES, there are women, just as there are men, who use their children as pawns in their own fucked-up plots for vengeance, but fuck sake… how does ANYONE think that someone who would shoot up a salon or self-immolate and leave their child essentially parentless is a shining example of why more men need custody? The rhetoric spewed out by the MRA movement seriously makes my stomach turn.

  59. I’ve been working with interviews with men and women regarding the family court, and one women mentioned cases like these and said they’re missing an important point: in most of these cases, the women DID have restraining orders against their exes, and the police fail to enforce them. Not to play the old “teh system is corrupt!” card, but it is awful how women who do the right thing and try to get help are sometimes getting ignored. Do we need to give these crazy exes GPS ankle bracelets? Change enforcement of restraining orders?

  60. PrettyAmiable:
    Thanks, FS. I appreciate it.

    Also, unrelated to FS, I would like cookies for comment 1!

    If you think cookies are unrelated to me, then clearly you haven’t tried my lemon macarons (I make the lemon curd from scratch.)

  61. Llama, I’m familiar with that MRA talking point. Female filicides occur mostly in the context of postpartum depression and are overrepresented precisely because men don’t take equal responsibility for looking after very small children and newborns. Male filicides occur in a very different context – they are about control and “revenge” killings (Family annihilation becoming increasingly popular with these men.)

    MRA websites are not a good source of statistical data and unbiased truth.

  62. I think it was Chipchop who brought this up way up top:

    If you sift through Manboobz you should find this–there was a post detailing what men thought about their daughters (or hypothetical daughters). As I recall, someone said it would be better to kill her, since she’s going to end up being a slut anyway.

    Here it is … the quotes aren’t in the body of the text, but you find them in the link and quoted in the comments: http://manboobz.com/2011/09/03/oh-reddit-must-you-be-so-so-creepy/

  63. I am aware that girlfriends face violence too,

    “too”? TOO? WTF? How many women stalk, beat, rape, maim, and/or kill their boyfriends/ex-boyfriends?

    it’s a little bit easier to leave when there’s no legal stuff and no children involved.

    Tell that to the THOUSANDS of women who have been murdered by their ex- and current boyfriends.

  64. Let’s cut to the chase: MRA’s are not needed because males have most of the power in the USA. They use this power to subjugate women and control them. Violence is the outcome of this kind of subjugation, as we see with this lunatic who killed his ex-wife and seven others.

  65. Early intervention with some support might actually help them get through it with some more appropriate behaviors and with better parenting outcomes.

    You know what? No. Just, no. If men are collectively so unhinged that we need to provide special social supports in order to help them “understand” that attacking and killing their exes is not an “appropriate behavior,” then they are not responsible adult human beings and should not enjoy the rights and privileges that accrue to human adults. What do you do with a violent, unpredictable dog? Tie him up and put a muzzle on him whenever he goes out in public.

    Christ. I never thought I’d be using my father as a shining example of how men behave during a divorce, but I’m quite sure he never once entertained the notion of attacking my mother, because he’s not a total asshole. And that is not a high bar to set. If men are having a hard time attaining it, if they are having a hard time following one of the most basic rules of life in a society–don’t kill other people–then they don’t get to be treated like responsible adults within that society.

  66. All this being said, I’m pretty sure I have the best ex-husband ever. Not awesome enough that I ever want to be married to him ever again, mind you, but as far as exes go, he’s a good one.

  67. What people do you group into the MRA category?
    You are likening the movement to Stormfront and classifying them as “overtly violent activists”, “violent misogynists”, etc.

    If a person is working for Men’s Rights (for example by addressing issues in custody law) I would classify that person as an MRA. You seem to have some other definition (?)

    We seem to have some kind of communication breakdown here.

    Words mean things. MRA, or Men’s Rights Activist, is a label which applies to a specific movement. Its self applied. I can’t call someone an MRA any more than I can call someone a Feminist or a homosexual; its an identification which must be claimed. So when I say “MRA” I’m referring to the kinds of people who show up in threads about MRAs here and call themselves MRAs, I
    m talking about MRA blogs, I’m talking about the fathers of patients I have who use MRA rhetoric and self-identify as MRAs the moment their children and ex-wives are out of earshot. Without exception, I’ve found these people to have either an admitted history of violence, a support of violence, or violent rhetoric combined with both a significant amount of privilege and rage at a perceived loss of entitlement.

    My view: If you are working from the perception that the current system is misandrist and needs to be fixed, then you are very likely an MRA.

    Because, honestly, thats what the Men’s Rights Movement is. It is a group of privileged people who have lost a tiny share of their unfair advantages and are now in a position to face the consequences of oppressing women and children. Even today courts are far more likely to side with abusers than to punish them. You can argue with those assertions all you’d like, but for every example of a guy treated poorly by the courts I can bring three or four examples of women who begged for protection and were told that a child needed contact with a violent father. The reason why I compare MRAs to members of hate groups is because the Men’s Rights Movement bears more similarity to the Klan barking about reverse racism and the dilution of the right race or Evangelical Christians barking about homosexual agendas and saying “if they want to marry so bad they can marry someone of the opposite gender” than it does to Stonewall or Civil Rights. Because men have not been in a position to be systematically oppressed but have rather been the systematic oppressors in virtually every historical precedent one might offer. There isn’t a lot of room for conciliation here. The powerless simply do not oppress the powerful.

    So no, we do not have “some kind of communication breakdown here.” What we have is your seeming willful inability to meaningfully engage with history or context. What we have is an enormous amount of unexamined privilege and the deep sense of entitlement that comes with it. What we have is a man who believes that somehow, despite being the absolutely overwhelming percentage of victims in every category of intimate or domestic violence, women have too much power and use it to take advantage of men.

    Still, in the interest of clarity, let me be absolutely clear: I believe you are not only factually incorrect but morally wrong and intellectually bankrupt. I do not believe that your back peddle away from an implicit support of MRAs is in good faith. I invite you, with all sincerity, to go fuck yourself. Try autoerotic asphyxiation, maybe we’ll all get lucky and you’ll be as good at that as you are at history and context.

    No, I’m not a nice guy. No, I don’t feel bad. No, you can’t take me seeing you as a piece of shit as a moral victory. I’m done with you.

  68. @Jill: “And you know, the other MRAs who claim to be non-violent and not misogynist? You don’t hear a peep from them. So yeah, I feel pretty ok at this point saying fuck ‘em all.”

    That made me laugh. That was awesome and I fully agree!

  69. zuzu:
    Oh, noes!How will men survive unless we stop women from “instigating” divorce?

    That is completely sideways. Women instigating divorce is not the point of what I was saying. What I am suggesting is that many men find themselves out of their depth quickly their whole world changes. If more early intervention using qualified counselors was to take place then a lot of the heat could be taken out of these situations. The main thing I hear is the need for more punitive measures for men that do the wrong thing. I Just think more support for men could stop things escalating to begin with. Instead of some guy sitting alone wondering what has happened and getting angry somebody takes the effort to explain “this is not the end of the world” and how the best way to deal with it is.

  70. Helen: Llama, I’m familiar with that MRA talking point. Female filicides occur mostly in the context of postpartum depression and are overrepresented precisely because men don’t take equal responsibility for looking after very small children and newborns. Male filicides occur in a very different context – they are about control and “revenge” killings (Family annihilation becoming increasingly popular with these men.)

    This is probably the case. The point is that we think it appropriate to support women that are not in a good place emotionally and try to avert these terrible thinks from happening. Clearly the men in these cases are in emotional crisis too. All I am suggesting is that if early counseling and support measures where taken we could have better outcomes. Even if the man was not going to cause physical harm there are lots of issues between separating couples that could be managed better. Even if you consider this pandering to an already privileged group surely you can see the point of having a professional keep an eye on what is happening? Prevention is much better than cure.

    MRA websites are not a good source of statistical data and unbiased truth.

    Only one of the three links came from a mans right site and the numbers at that site are easily verified at the Australian bureau of statistics. The other two links are from academic studies.

  71. EG: You know what? No. Just, no. If men are collectively so unhinged that we need to provide special social supports in order to help them “understand” that attacking and killing their exes is not an “appropriate behavior,” then they are not responsible adult human beings and should not enjoy the rights and privileges that accrue to human adults. What do you do with a violent, unpredictable dog? Tie him up and put a muzzle on him whenever he goes out in public.

    @EG the point of posting the links to data that show biological mothers kill more of their own children than biological fathers is to give some context. Women get in bad emotional places and harm their own children. Nobody is suggesting this is because they are collectively bad and I don’t think anybody would suggest we shouldn’t try to provide them with support in advance (where we can see it coming) to avoid this sort of thing happening. All I am saying is that separation can lead men to emotionally bad places and having a professional keep an eye on them and help them through it would probably lead to better outcomes. If the professional senses something bad is going to happen they could even get the guy committed. Which has to be a better outcome than people getting hurt.

  72. llama: @EG the point of posting the links to data that show biological mothers kill more of their own children than biological fathers is to give some context. Women get in bad emotional places and harm their own children. Nobody is suggesting this is because they are collectively bad and I don’t think anybody would suggest we shouldn’t try to provide them with support in advance (where we can see it coming) to avoid this sort of thing happening. All I am saying is that separation can lead men to emotionally bad places and having a professional keep an eye on them and help them through it would probably lead to better outcomes. If the professional senses something bad is going to happen they could even get the guy committed. Which has to be a better outcome than people getting hurt.

    Except women who kill their children, as noted above, are doing so when in the grip of post-partum depression. They by and large do not shoot up groups of random strangers in the process; they by and large do not mutilate the bodies of their children in order to “punish” their exes; they by and large do not have bunches of people on the internet cheering them on and saying that that’s what those horrible infants get for not shutting up and doing as they’re told. There is no evidence that these men are suffering from mental illness.

    Divorce is an emotional hardship for everybody involved (interestingly, it is disproportionate a material hardship for women, despite what MRAs like to claim about child support). But women do not shoot down groups of people because they don’t get exclusive power to make decisions about their kids’ medical treatments. Again, if men are so very delicately balanced, then they are clearly unfit to be trusted in larger society.

    And, by the way, you cannot commit someone because you “sense something bad is going to happen.”

  73. EG: And, by the way, you cannot commit someone because you “sense something bad is going to happen.”

    Qualified health professionals in this country can if they think the person is a danger to themselves or others.

  74. llama: That is completely sideways. Women instigating divorce is not the point of what I was saying. What I am suggesting is that many men find themselves out of their depth quickly their whole world changes. If more early intervention using qualified counselors was to take place then a lot of the heat could be taken out of these situations. The main thing I hear is the need for more punitive measures for men that do the wrong thing. I Just think more support for men could stop things escalating to begin with. Instead of some guy sitting alone wondering what has happened and getting angry somebody takes the effort to explain “this is not the end of the world” and how the best way to deal with it is.

    You know, I’ve had many, many occasions in my life when I have found myself out of my depth quickly, and oddly enough, my response has never been to kill my entire family.

  75. EG: Divorce is an emotional hardship for everybody involved

    Exactly and many men clearly don’t deal with it as well as women (otherwise we wouldn’t not have these horrific things happen). What is wrong with trying to help them deal with it in a way that avoids violence?

  76. zuzu: You know, I’ve had many, many occasions in my life when I have found myself out of my depth quickly, and oddly enough, my response has never been to kill my entire family.

    So perhaps you would be a good councilor, you clearly have coping strategies that you could share.

  77. EG: Except women who kill their children, as noted above, are doing so when in the grip of post-partum depression. They by and large do not shoot up groups of random strangers in the process; they by and large do not mutilate the bodies of their children in order to “punish” their exes; they by and large do not have bunches of people on the internet cheering them on and saying that that’s what those horrible infants get for not shutting up and doing as they’re told. There is no evidence that these men are suffering from mental illness.

    Even if there were, this article is not (primarily) about the man who did the killing. It’s about the disgusting defenses given by the MRA-holes. If all this mass murderer’s defenders were merely being sympathetic to mental illness, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

  78. Fat Steve: It’s about the disgusting defenses given by the MRA-holes. If all this mass murderer’s defenders were merely being sympathetic to mental illness, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

    And if we where more careful about handling mental illness especially the sort that leads to this sort of crime then perhaps a lot of these MRA-holes would not exist.

    I believe a lot of those men on MRA sites are suffering from mental illness which for many seems to have been started or exacerbated by relationship breakdown.

  79. Yeah, llama.. Steve’s got a point.. this is not about guys being unable to cope with divorce.. it’s about a group of men saying that guys who gun down their exes over custody issues ARE TOTALLY JUSTIFIED IN THEIR ACTIONS and that it’s WHAT THE EVIL EVIL FEMINISTS HAVE COMING TO THEM.

    The gunman in this case *may* have been one dude with some serious coping issues (although I’d be more willing to say serious control issues) and if it was an isolated incident (and he didn’t already have joint custody of his kids, so it’s not like he was being deprived of time with his kids) I could almost, possibly, maybe have some sympathy and say ‘yeah, maybe the guy could have used some support’ (even though it looks like the court probably already had his back to a certain extent this case, re: custody)

    but the bigger picture is that there are groups of so-called Men’s Rights Activists – probably better named Defenders of Unearned Privilege – that are lauding this guy FOR GUNNING DOWN HIS EX-WIFE AND INNOCENT BYSTANDERS as though they are merely collateral damage in a war that we (ie the EVIL EVIL FEMINISTS) have somehow waged by simply demanding to be treated as people with the same value and rights as men.

  80. andie: but the bigger picture is that there are groups of so-called Men’s Rights Activists – probably better named Defenders of Unearned Privilege – that are lauding this guy FOR GUNNING DOWN HIS EX-WIFE AND INNOCENT BYSTANDERS as though they are merely collateral damage in a war that we (ie the EVIL EVIL FEMINISTS) have somehow waged by simply demanding to be treated as people with the same value and rights as men.

    I don’t see how this is the bigger picture. The bigger picture is stopping the violence. These extremist groups would have nothing to cheer along if the violence is removed.

  81. llama: Qualified health professionals in this country can if they think the person is a danger to themselves or others.

    This is a lot harder than you seem to think.

    llama: Exactly and many men clearly don’t deal with it as well as women (otherwise we wouldn’t not have these horrific things happen). What is wrong with trying to help them deal with it in a way that avoids violence?

    Because you have no evidence that these acts of violence are caused by heartbreak or loss of emotional support or what have you. You are assuming that men are committing these acts because they have no choice or have lost control or don’t know any other way to behave. I see no evidence of this.

    But if you think that’s what’s going on, then indeed, nothing is preventing men from banding together to address their own emotional needs. Start support groups. Research anger management methods and spread awareness of them. Create community centers in which men can learn basic social skills, like not killing women just because they didn’t get their own way. Men as a group have access to far more resources than women as a group, and not all that long ago, women pulled together to create support groups (“consciousness-raising groups,” they were called) and to generate the funding they needed to begin helping themselves. If MRAs were actually operating out of anything other than misogyny, they could do this to assist with men’s emotional needs as well. But they’re not. And neither are the murderous assholes they’re cheering for.

    But it’s not my job to look after the hurt feelings of men who are upset that their women won’t just obey them. Women have long been expected to be nursemaids and punching bags for men in order to help them deal with their feeeeeeeelings. I’m not going to be a punching bag, and I’m not going to be a nursemaid, either. We’ve got problems of our own to tend to.

    llama: So perhaps you would be a good councilor, you clearly have coping strategies that you could share.

    Yeah, well, I can’t speak for Zuzu, but I call them “having a basic sense of morality,” “understanding the world does not exist in order to do my bidding,” and “having empathy/not being a sociopath.” If these men have managed to reach the age of majority without having acquired such skills, I don’t think a few court-mandated sessions with a counselor are going to cut the mustard.

    llama:

    I believe a lot of those men on MRA sites are suffering from mental illness which for many seems to have been started or exacerbated by relationship breakdown.

    You can believe that, but unless you have evidence for it, it’s a rather unconvincing belief. Being an asshole is not a mental illness.

  82. EG: Being an asshole is not a mental illness.

    IMO Killing people is a pretty good indicator of mental illness. Do you think it is possible to be a violent murderer and not be mentally ill?

    I can see you think it a poor idea to provide support to the mentally ill so they don’t do harm to others or themselves. I prefer to lie in a society that helps the mentally ill.

  83. llama: IMO Killing people is a pretty good indicator of mental illness. Do you think it is possible to be a violent murderer and not be mentally ill?

    I can see you think it a poor idea to provide support to the mentally ill so they don’t do harm to others or themselves. I prefer to lie in a society that helps the mentally ill.

    Actually, most mentally ill people don’t act out violently. I think it’s perfectly possible to be a violent murderer and not be mentally ill.
    Straight men, as a whole tend to be deficent in empathy and they don’t bond as strongly with their significant others. Their male friends tend to matter to them more than their wives or girlfriends, and the wives and girlfriends are only useful to them as ways to score points with their friends.

    Tinfoil Hattie: I think you’re misreading my comment a bit. That ‘girlfriends too” was a nod to SamanthaB’s response to me, when zie noted that I’d apparently forgotten about them. I was talking about girlfriends of straight cis men.

  84. llama: I don’t see how this is the bigger picture. The bigger picture is stopping the violence. These extremist groups would have nothing to cheer along if the violence is removed.

    So get on that.

    Why you asking women to clean up men’s messes?

  85. Qualified health professionals in this country can if they think the person is a danger to themselves or others.

    As a qualified mental health professional with the power to write petition and certifications, you need a lot more than a “sense.” You need evidence. Even in states that allow you to commit based on patterns of previous behavior (something which, personally and professionally, I think is enormously ableist and open to incredible abuse) you need to document a pattern of previous behavior. Generally, you need a credible threat to self or others. That means verbalization of intent. Hospitalizing someone because you have a “sense that they might be dangerous” is malpractice.

    I believe a lot of those men on MRA sites are suffering from mental illness which for many seems to have been started or exacerbated by relationship breakdown.

    A lack of respect for the lives and feelings of others is not madness, its evil. Mad persons are not bad people, and bad people are not mad because they behave in ways which disturb you.

    IMO Killing people is a pretty good indicator of mental illness.

    You’re wrong. I’ve worked with people who killed because they were mad. I’ve worked with people who killed because they just didn’t give much of a shit about other people. I’ve worked with people who killed because they had no other option. Lots of people kill for lots of reasons. Madness doesn’t make people violent anymore than cows made me fat.

    Do you think it is possible to be a violent murderer and not be mentally ill?

    Its absolutely possible. I’ve seen it. Violence and madness are not related. Saying that they are excuses the violent and stigmatizes the mad.

    I can see you think it a poor idea to provide support to the mentally ill so they don’t do harm to others or themselves. I prefer to lie in a society that helps the mentally ill.

    Parapraxes aside, what you’re talking about is the oppression and control of mad persons in order to create the illusion of security for people who would like to imagine that caging all the lunatics will stop murders. Other human beings should not have to suffer for your illusions.

  86. llama: IMO Killing people is a pretty good indicator of mental illness. Do you think it is possible to be a violent murderer and not be mentally ill?

    Yes, yes I do. People kill for all kinds of reasons. Money. Jealousy. Most importantly, feeling like they have the right to. The many, many white people who participate(d) in lynchings were not mentally ill; they were/are racists. Being mentally ill is not the same thing as having a value system I find repellant. It is not the same thing as committing acts I find repellant.

    Are you seriously suggesting that all killers just need the right kind of therapy/meds? And do you have any actual evidence from anybody in the mental health field?

    I can see you think it a poor idea to provide support to the mentally ill so they don’t do harm to others or themselves. I prefer to lie in a society that helps the mentally ill.

    You…do realize that I have a mental/emotional illness, yes? That I, actually, am mentally ill? I think it’s a good idea to provide treatment for people with mental illnesses for exactly the same reason it’s a good idea to provide treatment for people with non-mental illnesses: in order to prevent them from suffering.

    MRAs aren’t suffering anything from anything other than a loss of privilege.

  87. Ah, thank you, William. I was hoping you would comment soon. You both have a much firmer and more detailed grasp of the relevant info than I am working with.

  88. Politicalguineapig: Straight men, as a whole tend to be deficent in empathy and they don’t bond as strongly with their significant others. Their male friends tend to matter to them more than their wives or girlfriends, and the wives and girlfriends are only useful to them as ways to score points with their friends.

    Where dis you get that idea from? I am straight so are the bulk of my male friends they all put there significant others before our friendships. I don’t think for a second any of them would want it any other way.

  89. zuzu: So get on that.
    Why you asking women to clean up men’s messes?

    I am not asking women to clean up men’s messes. I am suggesting society clean up its messes.

  90. Actually, you are somewhat incorrect. Research shows that in adolescents, cis women tend to “dump their friends” as it were, while males tend to keep their friends and not be so invested. Obviously not all people fall into this system but the data gathered supports this theory. Anecdotally my experience contravenes yours, as much as personal experiences in a small social circle can be used to gather general truths, which isn’t so much. However I do object to the characterization of guinea pig that men lack in empathy and only use them as a way to score points with friends. I could write a few pages on text on that, but it may be considered a derail.

    llama: Where dis you get that idea from? I am straight so are the bulk of my male friends they all put there significant others before our friendships. I don’t think for a second any of them would want it any other way.

  91. William: You’re wrong. I’ve worked with people who killed because they were mad. I’ve worked with people who killed because they just didn’t give much of a shit about other people. I’ve worked with people who killed because they had no other option. Lots of people kill for lots of reasons. Madness doesn’t make people violent anymore than cows made me fat.

    Why would you be working with these people if they are not mentally ill?

    Surely it is a waste of qualified mental health professionals time to work with people that are not mentally ill?

  92. In general I agree with everything William said. His characterization of some people as evil and not mentally ill is somewhat incorrect, unless he is referring to chemical imbalances. Sociopaths and other people who seem to lack empathy are in fact products of damaging environments, but in a different way from people conventionally considered “mentally ill”.

  93. Matt:
    Actually, you are somewhat incorrect. Research shows that in adolescents, cis women tend to “dump their friends” as it were, while males tend to keep their friends and not be so invested. Obviously not all people fall into this system but the data gathered supports this theory. Anecdotally my experience contravenes yours, as much as personal experiences in a small social circle can be used to gather general truths, which isn’t so much. However I do object to the characterization of guinea pig that men lack in empathy and only use them as a way to score points with friends. I could write a few pages on text on that, but it may be considered a derail.

    That’s interesting, because from what I understand, by middle and old age, that pattern has reversed. My mother, a social worker who has worked with elderly people for many years, tells me that widows tend to recover from their losses more quickly than widowers, and one theory to account for this has to do with the fact that older women are far more likely to have emotional support in the form of friend and family networks, while older men are more likely to have left the emotional labor of staying in touch, etc. to their wives, and thus, when they lose their wives, also find themselves ignorant of how to reach out to people for support.

  94. Politicalguineapig, I APOLOGIZE sincerely. I certainly did misread you. I am pretty spring-loaded in the pissed-off position when I read claptrap from MRAs and their apologists.

    A thousand “I’m sorry” offerings.

  95. Matt: Research shows that in adolescents, cis women tend to “dump their friends” as it were, while males tend to keep their friends and not be so invested. Obviously not all people fall into this system but the data gathered supports this theory. Anecdotally my experience contravenes yours, as much as personal experiences in a small social circle can be used to gather general truths, which isn’t so much. However I do object to the characterization of guinea pig that men lack in empathy and only use them as a way to score points with friends. I could write a few pages on text on that, but it may be considered a derail.

    Studies may show this amongst adolescents, but I am far from being adolescent at 49. Also studies at adolescence don’t determine how people conduct their entire lives. Guineapig’s characterization of men not generally being capable of empathy is plain wrong. I am sure somebody will explain why I am wrong about the way men feel empathy.

  96. Why would you be working with these people if they are not mentally ill?

    Surely it is a waste of qualified mental health professionals time to work with people that are not mentally ill?

    YEAH, William!!! Why do you have to EVALUATE people and TREAT people who aren’t crazy?

    Why should I have sent my son to a psychologist to deal with being molested? He wasn’t crazy, just molested, so why did I waste that poor doctor’s time? The nerve.

  97. tinfoil hattie: YEAH, William!!! Why do you have to EVALUATE people and TREAT people who aren’t crazy?

    @Tinfoil my point exactly. If violent crime is not an indicator of mental illness then it would be pointless to have people who commit violent crimes evaluated. Hence as mental health professionals do evaluate the people that commit violent crime then the profession must recognize some association between violent crime and mental illness.

  98. William:

    A feminist using violent rhetoric is a different thing from an MRA because in our society there simply isn’t the same baseline epidemic of violence against men as there is for violence against women.

    Men are the overwhelming perpetrators and victims of violence in societies across the globe. I’m not sure where you went from “men are the majority perpetrators” to “women are the majority victims”.

    and someone up above mentioned mass rapes in war. Which happen primarily to women. However, there’s also a thing in war called “dying” and men do the majority of that as well. As far as I’m concerned (and you know, maybe I’m a crazy MRA douchebag for caring about things like this), nobody wins when atrocities occur. What the man in the article did was absolutely unconscionable, but I don’t think any kind of political haranguing by feminists or MRAs is going to “make it better”.

  99. Tinfoil Hattie: Tis okay. Things are getting spring loaded around here, so I’m not surprised I’ve accidentally tripped a few people’s triggers.
    llama: Oh, just all the variations on ‘bros before hos’ that may be found around the internet, frat dynamics and various amatuer anthropological observations. I’m guessing that you, llama, are somewhere around 40 and have at least one kid, and that most of your friends are the same. Before 35, men tend to believe that women are more or less interchangable but their friends are forever.
    Matt: Oh, I’ve seen that too. It helped reinforce my belief that my high school classmates had been replaced by aliens or that their hormones shut down their brain. I’ve also seen it happen in newly-married twenty-something women. But with the twenty-somethings, I see no sign that hubby is as invested in the nesting process as they are. Also, the wife tends to be assimilated into the husband’s group, but the husband may never meet some of his wife’s friends.
    Another point: yes, some people are just evil without being sociopathic or having any organic thing wrong with them. Some people actively harm others, some just fantasize about it. Some get warped by their environment, others could be raised in the best environment possible, and think that if things don’t go their way, violence is an acceptable punishment.

  100. What was that headline again? “Another Day…”

    http://jezebel.com/5851591/man-kills-wife–two-children-friends-suggest-shes-at-fault-for-belittling-him

    You know what? I have no idea whether or not this woman was emotionally abusive to her husband/murderer. I do know that Joel Steinberg was violently physically and emotionally abusive to his former wife, and that, in my opinion, that still didn’t make it OK for her not to call 911 when their daughter lay dying. So all the whining in the world about how emotionally abused this guy may have been isn’t going to win any points with me, given that he shot his children.

  101. llama: @Tinfoil my point exactly. If violent crime is not an indicator of mental illness then it would be pointless to have people who commit violent crimes evaluated. Hence as mental health professionals do evaluate the people that commit violent crime then the profession must recognize some association between violent crime and mental illness.

    No. It means that his finding has some significance to the legal profession. Not at all the same thing. And the fact is that an evaluation by a professional is in order, not just a spot judgment of “Oh, you killed someone? Must be crazy, then.”

  102. EG:
    What was that headline again?“Another Day…”

    http://jezebel.com/5851591/man-kills-wife–two-children-friends-suggest-shes-at-fault-for-belittling-him

    You know what?I have no idea whether or not this woman was emotionally abusive to her husband/murderer.I do know that Joel Steinberg was violently physically and emotionally abusive to his former wife, and that, in my opinion, that still didn’t make it OK for her not to call 911 when their daughter lay dying.So all the whining in the world about how emotionally abused this guy may have been isn’t going to win any points with me, given that he shot his children.

    My only point in all of this is simply a belief that if this man had been involved in some procedure that provided him with support and supervision then the chance of this happening must be reduced. I am simply suggesting preventative medicine.

  103. And, I have to say, that if I am laying bets as to who the abuser was in the marriage of Asshole #2 (comment 112), I’m going to put my money on the asshole who murdered his children.

  104. llama: My only point in all of this is simply a belief that if this man had been involved in some procedure that provided him with support and supervision then the chance of this happening must be reduced. I am simply suggesting preventative medicine.

    And I must again ask, evidence? Expertise in the mental health field?

  105. llama: Tinfoil Hattie was being sarcastic. I don’t think that’s the point she was trying to make.
    EG: I repeat my first comment.

  106. A lot of that can be attributable to social conventions, and has nothing to do with inherent problems in men. Basically, if parents and society inculcate the same values in little boys as girls, they will behave similarly later. A lot of male social problems are based on training that men don’t cry and what not, hate to be so simplistic but what can you do. As for friend groups I’ve seen it both ways really. But then, the people I interact with are a particular subset of people. Honestly I feel like, parents ownership of their children would really get in the way of the most effective ways to properly socialize children.

    Politicalguineapig:
    Tinfoil Hattie: Tis okay. Things are getting spring loaded around here, so I’m not surprised I’ve accidentally tripped a few people’s triggers.
    llama: Oh, just all the variations on ‘bros before hos’ that may be found around the internet, frat dynamics and various amatueranthropological observations. I’m guessing that you, llama, are somewhere around 40 and have at least one kid, and that most of your friends are the same. Before 35, men tend to believe that women are more or less interchangable but their friends are forever.
    Matt: Oh, I’ve seen that too. It helped reinforce my belief that my high school classmates had been replaced by aliens or that their hormones shut down their brain. I’ve also seen it happen in newly-married twenty-something women. But with the twenty-somethings, I see no sign that hubby is as invested in the nesting process as they are. Also, the wife tends to be assimilated into the husband’s group, but the husband may never meet some of his wife’s friends.
    Another point: yes, some people are just evil without being sociopathic or having any organic thing wrong with them. Some people actively harm others, some just fantasize about it. Some get warped by their environment, others could be raised in the best environment possible, and think that if things don’t go their way, violence is an acceptable punishment.

  107. Darque: Men are the overwhelming perpetrators and victims of violence in societies across the globe. I’m not sure where you went from “men are the majority perpetrators” to “women are the majority victims”.

    and someone up above mentioned mass rapes in war. Which happen primarily to women. However, there’s also a thing in war called “dying” and men do the majority of that as well. As far as I’m concerned (and you know, maybe I’m a crazy MRA douchebag for caring about things like this), nobody wins when atrocities occur. What the man in the article did was absolutely unconscionable, but I don’t think any kind of political haranguing by feminists or MRAs is going to “make it better”.

    Solution: preemptive detention of men. Really, it’s the only way to prevent that kind of victimization of men.

    You’re welcome.

  108. EG: And I must again ask, evidence? Expertise in the mental health field?

    From my own personal experience. I have persuaded a couple of men in the throws of divorce out of doing things they might later regret. None of them at the murder level but things like going and punching the new boyfriend.

  109. Are you kidding me with this, llama?

    No. Not the same thing. Not even close.

    Big talk about punching your ex’s new boyfriend that you can be talked out of by friend is simply not comparable to murdering your wife, kids, and any bystanders. No. For one thing, it’s not gendered. You may find this shocking, but women, too, entertain violent fantasies about their romantic rivals, and they like to tell their friends about them, and then their friends calm them down. It has absolutely nothing to do with killing one’s ex and children.

    That’s like saying “Oh, I know how to prevent child abuse, because a few times I helped out my friends who were real frustrated with trying to get their kids to do their homework.”

    Or, “I know how to help women who stalk their exes obsessively because, this one time, right after a bad break-up, when I’d had a couple glasses of wine, my best friend was totally able to sit with me and talk me out of going to his place at midnight and banging on the door and begging him to give me one more chance.”

    Unless your friends had a history of abusing their wives, made concrete plans, had misogynist beliefs about their “right” to control women, and were acquiring weaponry, no. It’s not a difference of degree. It’s a difference of kind.

  110. EG: Are you kidding me with this, llama?
    No. Not the same thing. Not even close.

    I already told you these where not at the murder level. But people do get talked out of murder too. That is why the police employ negotiators. You can refuse to believe that intervention and support would make any difference to how men that are emotionally unstable behave. But since you are not a man and never will be your opinion to its efficacy without first conducting a controlled experiment is only an opinion. I at least have been involved in defusing highly emotionally charged situations that involve male responses to relationship breakup.

  111. tinfoil hattie: @llama: You have no understanding of the mental health profession. Nor of sarcasm.

    And you deduced this because I ignored your weak attempt at sarcasm? Great work!

  112. zuzu: Solution: preemptive detention of men. Really, it’s the only way to prevent that kind of victimization of men.
    You’re welcome.

    Even in jest this sort of comment is approaching extremism. It is just the sort of comment that wankers of the MRA type feed off.

  113. There are always portions of privileged or formerly privileged groups that experience the transition to equality as some kind of over-compensation or injustice. In most cases, though not all, this injustice is imagined. Be they people espousing “post-feminism” or people railing against affirmative action, their discourse is generally pervaded by a sense of loss, as though somehow in the idyllic past things were “as they should be”.

    As a white male, I am of course fully aware that things were “eaiser” for people like me in the 1950’s (or even 1980’s) because they only competed on a playing field comprised of people like them. My strong beliefs in the values of egalitarian humanism prevent me from feeling any sort nostalgia for that period in our history, but I do have some understanding of the impulses that generate such feelings. I would take issue with one point made by the author, however. Misandry does exist. Even if certain groups misuse the term to advance their agenda, that does not make it entirely devoid of meaning (this would be like saying misogyny has no descriptive value because it is commonly used by “biased” feminists”).

  114. Why would you be working with these people if they are not mentally ill?

    Surely it is a waste of qualified mental health professionals time to work with people that are not mentally ill?

    Ahh, ya got me!

    Seriously, though, I work with a lot of people for a lot of reasons at a lot of points in their lives. But hey, I’ll bite. I had a patient not too long ago who was suffering from PTSD. They were in their 40s and had been the victim of a violent crime just a few months earlier. It landed them in the hospital, they had nightmares, flashbacks, dissociative episodes, some of the paranoia that can come with PTSD, mood dysregulation. During therapy it came out that they had killed someone in cold blood in their 20s. The patient wasn’t mad in their 20s, they were a criminal and things got out of hand. They were mad in their 40s, but it was unrelated to the murder they had committed.

    If violent crime is not an indicator of mental illness then it would be pointless to have people who commit violent crimes evaluated. Hence as mental health professionals do evaluate the people that commit violent crime then the profession must recognize some association between violent crime and mental illness.

    Have you ever been arrested and processed through a county jail? If you’re a man, there comes a point where a doctor takes a long, dry cotton swab and jams it into your urethra. It hurts a lot, but not as bad as it hurts when you next have to urinate. The doctor then sends the swab off for a variety of STD tests. Does the clap have an association with violent crime? Not all evaluation comes down to cause.

    And, not to beat you with my credentials or anything, but do you have a doctorate to back up your assertions about what the profession must or must not do? Any clinical experience whatsoever? Research experience? Anything?

    My only point in all of this is simply a belief that if this man had been involved in some procedure that provided him with support and supervision then the chance of this happening must be reduced. I am simply suggesting preventative medicine.

    Psychological assessment isn’t like a prostate exam, psych meds don’t work that way, and therapy only works if a person is actively engaged. What you’re talking about is confinement of suspicious persons based on an observation that they might be dangerous. That isn’t a job for psychologists, its a job for police. Just because inpatient units and prisons both have locks on the doors doesn’t mean they’re interchangeable.

    If you want preventative medicine you need the kinds of large educational, cultural, and social programs designed at reducing the rationalizations available for violence against women that MRAs tend to chafe at. You want preventative medicine for family annihilators? Thats called feminism. The way to get men to stop killing women is to teach men to see women as human beings. A Rorschach isn’t going to help with that.

    From my own personal experience. I have persuaded a couple of men in the throws of divorce out of doing things they might later regret. None of them at the murder level but things like going and punching the new boyfriend.

    So have I. Oddly, it never counted towards coursework, clinical training, or research requirements. This is probably due to misandry.

  115. In general I agree with everything William said. His characterization of some people as evil and not mentally ill is somewhat incorrect, unless he is referring to chemical imbalances. Sociopaths and other people who seem to lack empathy are in fact products of damaging environments, but in a different way from people conventionally considered “mentally ill”.

    I’d argue theres two problems with that. First, not all sociopaths are the product of damaging environments. Theres a small but really fucking terrifying percentage of them who just seem to be wired that way. One of my training cohort worked with a 7 year old from a good home with no trauma and healthy siblings who loved the sight of blood enough to be downright dangerous. Granted, they’re a minority, but they’re out there.

    Second, a lot of people come from damaging environments and don’t become sociopaths. I strongly believe that there is an element of choice involved in the decision to become a predator. I think its vitally important to mad persons not to confuse immorality with madness. The vast majority of violent people choose to be violent, it only hurts mad persons to medicalize immorality.

  116. llama: Even in jest this sort of comment is approaching extremism. It is just the sort of comment that wankers of the MRA type feed off.

    Gee, you’re right. How should we best present ourselves so as not to upset the delicate sensibilities of MRAs?

    Oh, wait. I don’t give a shit.

    I already told you these where not at the murder level. But people do get talked out of murder too. That is why the police employ negotiators.

    And I told you that upset dudes fantasizing about punching out their romantic rivals is in no way, shape, or form anything like controlling, abusive men planning out and then committing several acts of murder.

    Police employ negotiators in hostage situations, not as preventative mental health care. The mental health of the hostage-taker is not their concern.

    You can refuse to believe that intervention and support would make any difference to how men that are emotionally unstable behave.

    What I am refusing to believe is that “homicidal misogynist” is the same thing as “emotionally unstable.” I’ve known quite a few emotionally unstable men in my time, even some I’ve felt a great deal of affection for. Not one of them has ever considered killing a woman he was involved with. You are the one making an evidenceless assertion.

    But since you are not a man and never will be your opinion to its efficacy without first conducting a controlled experiment is only an opinion. I at least have been involved in defusing highly emotionally charged situations that involve male responses to relationship breakup.

    Having a penis is not a prerequisite for having a basic understanding of issues regarding mental health.

    What, by the way, is your rationalization for why William disagrees with you? He is both a man and a mental health professional.

  117. You can refuse to believe that intervention and support would make any difference to how men that are emotionally unstable behave.

    I really think that this deserves attention on it’s own. Emotionally unstable men, like emotionally unstable women, are more likely to hurt themselves than someone else. Suicide is a far more common reaction to loss than homicide by orders of magnitude. Even if we are going to talk about typically male responses to trauma and loss, self-destructive behaviors are the flavor of aggression you tend to see in highly masculine, cis-gendered males with poor coping skills. Men and women tend to process loss differently, this is true, but the stereotypically male responses aren’t violence against an intimate partner. We drink, we cut off emotions, we throw ourselves into work, we overcompensate, we become mildly aggressive. Those are the ways in which emotionally unstable men steeped in western masculinity tend (although if theres one thing clinical experience teaches you its that gender role variance is the norm rather than the exception) to behave. Abusers, on the other hand, hurt their partners.

    There is a context and a nuance here that I think is very often missed. I’m a big guy, I perform a lot of masculinity, I struggle with depression, I even get aggressive when I’m at particularly low points. Thats part of who I am and I recognize it when its happening. When I’ve gotten in fights they have generally been enactments, I look for trouble. What I have not ever done, even when the reason I was pissed off and looking for a fight had to do with a romantic relationship, is hit a partner. Men, even when we are emotionally unstable, have agency and are responsible for our own actions. Men who hit women, in my experience, are not unstable or sad but rather willing to hurt others in order to maintain control over them. There is a difference between depression and abuse.

    One of the reasons why I feel it is vital to draw a bright line between madness and criminal violence is because to conflate the two is to excuse abusive behavior. When we say “oh, he was unstable, he needed help” what we are really doing is saying that a man who beats or murders a woman wasn’t responsible. We’re saying that there were other factors at play rather than his oppressive violence. When we say he was unstable because of a relationship ending we are saying that the woman bears some share of the responsibility for his violence against her because she shares some share of the responsibility for an interpersonal relationship ending. This is not acceptable. It is simply not acceptable to, in one comfortable illusion, excuse the violence of abusive men and further stigmatize mad persons by perpetuating the meme of the violent madman. It hurts the powerless and shields the powerful.

  118. erm…cut and paste fail.

    There is a context and a nuance here that I think is very often missed.

    should read

    There is a context and a nuance here that I think is very often missed. Men engage in a lot of violence but men who engage in violence against women are engaging in a specific kind of violence. Getting in a barfight with someone your size who hits back does not have the same antecedents or psychological factors as beating a partner who is likely smaller than you and has been socialized not to fight back. Being a bully is different from being irritable.

  119. One of the reasons why I feel it is vital to draw a bright line between madness and criminal violence is because to conflate the two is to excuse abusive behavior. When we say “oh, he was unstable, he needed help” what we are really doing is saying that a man who beats or murders a woman wasn’t responsible. We’re saying that there were other factors at play rather than his oppressive violence. When we say he was unstable because of a relationship ending we are saying that the woman bears some share of the responsibility for his violence against her because she shares some share of the responsibility for an interpersonal relationship ending. This is not acceptable. It is simply not acceptable to, in one comfortable illusion, excuse the violence of abusive men and further stigmatize mad persons by perpetuating the meme of the violent madman. It hurts the powerless and shields the powerful.

    Bolding the whole thing for extra point-making power.

    Thank you, William.

  120. Matt: I’m talking about teens and young adults here. Parents have virtually no influence during those years. The only influence in those years is that of peers.

  121. @llama: I was saying you have no understanding of how the mental health system works because you DON’T. Tell me what it is about a small child that is “crazy” or “mentally ill” because s/he was the victim of sexual abuse? By your reasoning, s/he should not get any professional help dealing with it, because credentialed mental health practitioners like William should not waste their time with people who are not mentally ill.

    The sarcasm thing? Yeah, I still maintain you don’t get it.

  122. tinfoil hattie: @llama: I was saying you have no understanding of how the mental health system works because you DON’T.

    And you seem to think a knowledge of the US metal system gives you universal knowledge. I can assure you the universal healthcare we have here in Australia makes quite a difference.

    tinfoil hattie: The sarcasm thing? Yeah, I still maintain you don’t get it.

    I take it your trying for irony now.

  123. @William you miss the point entirely. The question is simply this:

    Do you believe that even if you had regular contact with the sort of men that might go on to commit these crimes that you would not be able to help avert such disasters? even averting one disaster out of many is a win in this situation.

    I am suggesting preemptive action not excusing people after they have committed the crime.

    You and others seem to think that getting involved and attempting to avoid very bad situations is somehow pandering to violent men. Perhaps that is because your country doesn’t have the mindset of universal healthcare? and support or treatment or both is somehow a special gift.

    Here in Australia we would consider wanting to kill a spouse and children as unhealthy and would see this as something needing treatment and/or management.

    Your question about being imprisoned was telling. The answer is “no I haven’t been in gaol” and it is unlikely I know anybody who has been. Prisons breed brutality, sending more people to prison breeds more brutality. Societies that work on avoiding crime avoid falling into this trap. The US has 25% of the worlds prison population yet only 4% of the worlds population. Have you not ever considered why violent crime rates in the US are so much higher than in equally developed countries? even though you have 4 times per capita the number of criminals locked safely away than other developed countries.

  124. Ok, so I can’t see the brilliance of your plan because I am a woman. William can’t see the brilliance of your plan, despite being a man and a mental health professional, because he’s an American.

    But you still haven’t actually provided any supporting evidence for it beyond the fact that you talked a couple of friends out of taking a swing at their exes’ new boyfriends, which bears about the same relationship to stalking and killing their exes as splashing somebody in a kiddie pool out of immediate frustration does to premeditating and then carrying out a plan to drown somebody else in a river. Oh, excuse me, the same relationship as talking about splashing somebody in a kiddie pool.

    No evidence. Perhaps you can find some support from a male, non-American mental health professional? You can keep on saying that we just don’t understaaaaaand your brilliant plan, but that doesn’t actually address the issue, which is that we think it’s incorrect.

  125. People who want to shoot up their families will not be checking themselves in for a mental health intervention, so I’m not sure there is a practical way to implement this harm reduction strategy. If anyone other than the shooter is aware of his intention to murder people, they should call the police. (Good luck expecting police to take anything DV-related seriously, but that’s a whole other issue.) By the time shit has escalated to that point, no amount of intervention aside from detainment is going to do jack to prevent crimes.

    Preventing people from turning into abusers is a much more difficult and complex task than making counselling available to people who have been dumped. Not that it’s a worthless effort by any means, but it’s not that simple.

  126. Do you believe that even if you had regular contact with the sort of men that might go on to commit these crimes that you would not be able to help avert such disasters? even averting one disaster out of many is a win in this situation.

    No. What you’re doing is putting the focus on violent people and abusers rather than their victims. You’re suggesting that, on the off chance that I might be able to stop one family annihilator, I should spend all of my time seeking out men who might commit crimes instead of treating human beings hurt by oppression and circumstance. More to the point, contrary to popular belief, my job doesn’t involve convincing mad folks to be sane. I don’t persuade people into being less crazy so their symptoms don’t bother you.

    Put another way: I could waste all of my time trying to convince criminals from being criminals because one might decide not to hurt someone and the police cannot be bothered to do their damned job, but I’d rather help several hundreds (maybe thousands) of the kinds of people I’m actually trained to work with over the course of my career. Because, you know, psychologists treat patients and police arrest criminals.

    I am suggesting preemptive action not excusing people after they have committed the crime.

    I’d really like to see your preventative treatment model which manages to stop violent abusers from abusing that doesn’t involve not raising them in homes where they learn that violent abuse is how to get what one wants. Until you bring a workable model to the table though, one with at least a cogent theoretical framework, I’m not terribly interested in your uninformed opinion.

    You and others seem to think that getting involved and attempting to avoid very bad situations is somehow pandering to violent men.

    Yes, yes I am. That is exactly what I am saying. Abusers are not mentally ill, they are opportunistic violent oppressors. The only way to convince them not to engage in abuse is to either train them young so that they do not become the kinds of people who hurt others for personal gain, or to buy them off. The kinds of prevention you’re talking about will ultimately boil down to giving violent men more privilege so that not abusing produces a greater gain than abusing. We don’t give muggers therapy and preventative action, we put them in prison.

    Perhaps that is because your country doesn’t have the mindset of universal healthcare? and support or treatment or both is somehow a special gift.

    Well, to the personal attack: fuck you.

    As for the content you couldn’t seem to be bothered to actually argue…the problem you have with preventative therapy for abusive men is that therapy works for people who are engaged. Education doesn’t work because abuse doesn’t stem from ignorance. Therapy is unlikely to work because theres no motivation for change. Other primary interventions are unlikely to be effective because they lack the contact necessary to affect characterological change.

    Here in Australia we would consider wanting to kill a spouse and children as unhealthy and would see this as something needing treatment and/or management.

    No, you would see that as unhealthy and needing treatment because you’re not a psychologist and you clearly have virtually no grasp on any of the major streams of psychological theory or on the realities of psychiatric diagnosis. The management you’re talking about ought to come from the criminal justice system. I assure you, regardless of your delivery model, clinical theory in Australia isn’t different from clinical theory in the US or UK. Maybe mainland Europe, but thats mainly a product of Behaviorism being a primarily English-language phenomenon.

    Your question about being imprisoned was telling. The answer is “no I haven’t been in gaol” and it is unlikely I know anybody who has been.

    Creepy class judgements on display aside, a lot of people who have never been convicted of any crime get processed through a county jail after being arrested. Again, you betray not only your ignorance but your sentiment.

    Have you not ever considered why violent crime rates in the US are so much higher than in equally developed countries?

    Nope, never crossed my mind. You’re probably right though, its probably because we don’t think of criminality as mental illness. I’m sure it has nothing to do with a long history of oppression and calculated poverty based upon race, class, and gender. A racially motivated war on drugs which makes up the lions share of not only the prison population but criminal behavior in general is likely also a red herring. But no, I trust that Australia’s medical establishment has managed to stomp out muggings and spousal battery. I’m sure the journal articles just haven’t been translated from your language into mine. That must be why I haven’t seen the paradigm changing research pop up in any of the internationally circulated and peer reviewed journals I subscribe to. Australian presenters I’ve heard speak at conventions have, I’m sure, simply forgotten to mention their unprecedented victory.

    Schmuck.

  127. You can keep on saying that we just don’t understaaaaaand your brilliant plan, but that doesn’t actually address the issue, which is that we think it’s incorrect.

    There comes a point where the politeness of saying “we think it’s incorrect” actually becomes a detriment to further discussion. I think our charming Aussie is wrong about his theory in the same way I think people evolved from apes, having sex with a patient would be clinically damaging, and that the All Blacks are clearly a superior team to the Wallabies. I mean, I can’t exactly prove my point but…

  128. William: As for the content you couldn’t seem to be bothered to actually argue…the problem you have with preventative therapy for abusive men is that therapy works for people who are engaged. Education doesn’t work because abuse doesn’t stem from ignorance. Therapy is unlikely to work because theres no motivation for change. Other primary interventions are unlikely to be effective because they lack the contact necessary to affect characterological change.

    I need this on a big banner, something with lights. Or you could just come to court with me everytime I have a D.V. case…which ever you prefer.

  129. therapy works for people who are engaged.

    Indeed. For therapy to work, the person in therapy has to actively be participating, in my experience (and even then, it often takes quite some time). Someone will actively participate only if they feel like it is a good and justified idea. MRAs and their ilk do not see anything wrong with their misogyny, so they are not going to actively participate in any effort to change that misogyny via mandatory therapy. It’s not like holding someone down and injecting him with an antidote. It actually requires his participation.

  130. William: There comes a point where the politeness of saying “we think it’s incorrect” actually becomes a detriment to further discussion. I think our charming Aussie is wrong about his theory in the same way I think people evolved from apes, having sex with a patient would be clinically damaging, and that the All Blacks are clearly a superior team to the Wallabies. I mean, I can’t exactly prove my point but…

    Heh. For the purposes of translating from “all sports other than baseball” to “something EG can understand,” I’m going to replace “All Blacks” with “Yankees” and “Wallabies” with “Mets.” And then I co-sign!

  131. William:
    Creepy

    William:

    “Perhaps that is because your country doesn’t have the mindset of universal healthcare? and support or treatment or both is somehow a special gift.”

    Well, to the personal attack: fuck you.

    Yes, because a statement about a whole country is a personal attack.

  132. William: Creepy class judgements on display aside, a lot of people who have never been convicted of any crime get processed through a county jail after being arrested. Again, you betray not only your ignorance but your sentiment.

    There is no creepy class judgement. Men here just have a lower chance of having been in gaol. Arrest in Australia does not necessarily lead to gaol, it is more likely to lead to a visit to the police station for questioning laying of charges then immediate police bail. The ignorance is yours in assuming that it is somehow my class that makes me unaware of police procedure rather than the simple fact that police procedure in my country does not follow the same model as in your country. As for betraying my sentiment, if you managed to grasp that I don’t think throwing every person who is suspected of some small crime in goal is a good idea, then yes I betrayed my sentiment. If you didn’t get that then perhaps our cultural differences are too great for you to understand.

  133. William: There comes a point where the politeness of saying “we think it’s incorrect” actually becomes a detriment to further discussion.

    Well feel free to disengage! or do you feel a desperate need to correct everybody who is wrong on the internet?

    As you think my suggestion has no merit, you might provide an alternate, clearly the status quo isn’t working. From your previous comments I can see you would like more police involvement and perhaps more gaol. All of which have been proved to work so well, not.

  134. EG: And I must again ask, evidence? Expertise in the mental health field?

    Finally I am bored so here you go:-

    Does Batterer Treatment Reduce Violence? A Synthesis of the Literature
    Robert C. Davis Bruce G. Taylor

    Summary. This paper reviews three questions based upon the research literature on group treatment programs for batterers: (1) Does treatment reduce violence relative to the absence of treatment, (2) Do some forms of treatment work better than others, and (3) Does treatment work better for some batterers than for others? While there exist several dozen evaluations of batterer treatment programs, few have employed methodologies which are appropriate to addressing the issue of whether treatment is effective. However, among the handful of quasi-and true experiments there is fairly consistent evidence that treatment works and that the effect of treatment is substantial. Regarding the second question, we have little evidence to date that one form of treatment is superior to another or that longer programs turn out less violent graduates than shorter ones. Regarding the last question, there are bases for hypothesizing that some batterers may fare better in treatment (or fare better in certain types of treatment) than others. However, empirical verification has been highly limited to date. The paper concludes with lessons drawn from the literature on designing future research.

    So yes according to the authors of this peer reviewed paper batterer treatment does work.

    I find myself more inclined to accept the credibility of this work than some random internet guy claiming to be an expert in the area. Perhaps sweet William has published something for comparison?

  135. So yes according to the authors of this peer reviewed paper batterer treatment does work.

    I just looked up the abstract of this paper, and here is what it says:

    “…only defendants assigned to the 26-week group showed significantly lower recidivism at 6-month and 12-month post-sentencing compared to defendants assigned to the control condition. The groups did not differ significantly at either 6 months or 12 months after sentencing in terms of new incidents reported by victims to research interviewers. Findings suggest that batterer intervention has a significant effect in suppressing violent behavior while batterers are under court control, but may not produce long-term change in behavior.

    So not the must convincing, no.

  136. EG: I just looked up the abstract of this paper, and here is what it says:

    “…only defendants assigned to the 26-week group showed significantly lower recidivism at 6-month and 12-month post-sentencing compared to defendants assigned to the control condition. The groups did not differ significantly at either 6 months or 12 months after sentencing in terms of new incidents reported by victims to research interviewers. Findings suggest that batterer intervention has a significant effect in suppressing violent behavior while batterers are under court control, but may not produce long-term change in behavior.

    So not the must convincing, no.

    You do not have the correct article. You seem to have the abstract for “Does Batterer Treatment Reduce Violence? A Randomized Experiment in Brooklyn” which you can download the full text of at http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/180772.pdf

    The article for which I posted the summary from the publication is this one:-

    Women & Criminal Justice
    Volume 10, Issue 2, 1999
    Does Batterer Treatment Reduce Violence?
    DOI:10.1300/J012v10n02_05
    Robert C. Davis MSa & Bruce G. Taylor PhDa
    pages 69-93
    Available online: 22 Sep 2008

    The summary was exactly as I presented it, it was not labeled as an abstract in this publication but as a summary. I do have the full text too but it seems you can view most of it with

    http://books.google.com.au/books?id=89a0PObRvDUC&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=Robert+C.+Davis+batterer&source=bl&ots=nkmFfXsaTs&sig=c8fTOr0RH6ASI2oFj4dtK1UatfY&hl=en&ei=dp-hTvnVAumeiAfcve3IBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Robert%20C.%20Davis%20batterer&f=false

    It is clear that others are convinced that this is worth trying.
    I found we have a number of such programs here in Australia. such as http://www.mrs.org.au/ it seems to be reputable as it is linked to by a government web site http://familyseparation.humanservices.gov.au/family_violence/support_for_me.php I get that you can’t make people change, I just think it is worth giving people the chance to change.

  137. I strongly suspect that, just as there are multiple types of rapists and multiple types of child molesters, there are multiple types of spousal abusers, and some types are more easy to rehabilitate than others.

    I believe that some men beat their wives because of a patriarchal dominance model that tells them that they must maintain total control of “their woman”, and since total control is not possible of another human being, they lash out. I believe that some men beat their wives because they enjoy having someone helpless under their control. I believe that some men beat their wives because their lives are miserable, and they have been taught that women are weaker and have less power than they do and therefore it is acceptable to take out their frustrations on women, in the same way that some women beat their children because their lives are miserable and the children are weaker and can be vented on. And I believe that some men attack their wives because they feel threatened, that perhaps a history of being beaten by their mothers (or even other men, such as fathers or bullies) leads them to have a hair-trigger reaction to other people expressing loud verbal anger at them, where they actually think *they* are threatened.

    You could help the men in the last category, who are probably themselves PTSD sufferers, by treating their PTSD and helping them make more rational threat assessments. However, these are not the guys who kill their wives, their kids, and themselves; these guys are violent for self-protection. (They do, in fact, have a mental illness that can be addressed; their violence doesn’t come out of a *rational* threat assessment, so helping them with the mental illness that produces an irrational threat assessment is probably going to do the most good there.) Women who beat men also probably largely fall into this category.

    Men who beat women because their own lives are miserable can be helped, if they choose to be helped, by cognitive therapies that help them better identify the locus of control and the source of their pain, and better manage their anger and unhappiness. They might also be helped by treatment for depression. There are probably a small number of women who fall into this category as well (typically women do not assume that men are weaker than they are and therefore can be abused, but in a specific circumstance where that happens to be true, or where the man never responds to provocation with violence, or where the woman believes that *she* is so much weaker than the man that her physical attacks on him aren’t really hurting him, women might do this.)

    The guys who batter out of adherence to the patriarchal model probably cannot be helped. You’d have to train them out of the patriarchal model, and good luck with that. Those are the guys who feminism prevents from existing in the first place. *They* are the ones who kill their children, their wives and themselves. You cannot save a guy like this once his personality and opinions have formed, most likely. For obvious reasons there are no women in this category.

    The guys who batter because it’s fun and they enjoy it can’t be saved either. I have no idea whether there are women in this category or not.

    So, I would suspect that in theory, you could in fact treat many men who had committed domestic violence, and help them from doing so in the future. But first, you’d have to try to get at what their reasons are. And in the meantime, you can’t be telling women “Oh, there’s a good chance therapy can fix him” because there’s a good chance it can’t, and *she* is safer not having illusions that the relationship can be saved… even if it can be, because the whole time you’re trying to fix the guy, his wife is still in harm’s way if she’s still with him.

    So, I strongly suspect that there are some mental illnesses, in particular, that *can* lead to a person committing abuse, and *can* be treated… but you can’t unilaterally say “Oh, domestic batterers just need therapy,” because a whole whomping lot of them are *not* mentally ill and *won’t* respond to therapy. You’d have to develop protocols to determine which ones can be helped and which ones fall into categories where you’d be wasting your time.

  138. As a person who probably believes that people are less in control of their behavior than you do, seeing as I don’t believe in conscious will but merely mathematical interactions producing all human thought and action, I think that you have provided no reasonable solution to the problem of negative environments. Yes, ideally we would firstly try to prevent people from being in an environment that would lead to certain behavior. Then we would try to help people interested in changing said behavior after already having problems. But the only question that matters is how. And you don’t have an answer. And since this thread isn’t about finding an answer, stop derailing please.
    Also, yes prisons create problems. There are a lot of solutions to deal with prison issues, although they mostly focus on the illogical classifications of some crimes, and also putting all different types of offenders together, as well as oversight of guard staff and what not. Plus, blatant isms in the justice system. Your ideas are illogical, somewhat incoherent, don’t seem to involve significant amounts of thought on your part, and have 0 information of funding and implementation. Spend less time wasting other people’s time, and more time actually filling out your ideas.

    llama:
    @William you miss the point entirely. The question is simply this:

    Do you believe that even if you had regular contact with the sort of men that might go on to commit these crimes that you would not be able to help avert such disasters? even averting one disaster out of many is a win in this situation.

    I am suggesting preemptive action not excusing people after they have committed the crime.

    You and others seem to think that getting involved and attempting to avoid very bad situations is somehow pandering to violent men. Perhaps that is because your country doesn’t have the mindset of universal healthcare? and support or treatment or both is somehow a special gift.

    Here in Australia we would consider wanting to kill a spouse and children as unhealthy and would see this as something needing treatment and/or management.

    Your question about being imprisoned was telling. The answer is “no I haven’t been in gaol” and it is unlikely I know anybody who has been. Prisons breed brutality, sending more people to prison breeds more brutality. Societies that work on avoiding crime avoid falling into this trap. The US has 25% of the worlds prison population yet only 4% of the worlds population. Have you not ever considered why violent crime rates in the US are so much higher than in equally developed countries? even though you have 4 times per capita the number of criminals locked safely away than other developed countries.

  139. EG: Heh. For the purposes of translating from “all sports other than baseball” to “something EG can understand,” I’m going to replace “All Blacks” with “Yankees” and “Wallabies” with “Mets.” And then I co-sign!

    But the All-Blacks wear shorts! And have muscular thighs!

  140. EG: Heh.For the purposes of translating from “all sports other than baseball” to “something EG can understand,” I’m going to replace “All Blacks” with “Yankees” and “Wallabies” with “Mets.”And then I co-sign!

    A better translation would be the Yankees and the Blue Jays…there’s a nationalistic element involved with the All-Blacks- Wallabies rivalry.

  141. @llama: No, I am talking about the science of mental health. You keep changing the goal posts. First, only mentally ill people need to waste the time of mental health professionals. Then, I don’t know what I’m talking about because I don’t have universal health care as you do in Australia.

    You still haven’t answered my question about how small children who get therapy for abuse situations are “mentally ill” and thus deserving of therapy in the “llama” model.

    That’s because you are a non-credentialed average llama who doesn’t know anything about the science of mental health and treatment.

  142. @politicalguineapig, be of good cheer. Our kids are still very much influenced by what we say and think. Anecdata, to be sure, but there you go. Two teen-ish kids (11 and 15) in America who still care about what their parents think.

    Don’t ask me if this is still true next week, though – LOL.

  143. Llama:

    The study isn’t a bad one, but it doesn’t exactly show (or purport to show) the things you seem to think. First, this is not preventative treatment. This is court mandated treatment. That means that these men encountered treatment after offending. While it is true that murder is not generally the first action of an abuser, you still have to contend with the fact that this is not a model for preventative treatment.

    Now, to the meat of the study.

    Our completion rate with victims was
    50% for the first interview, 46% for the second interview, and 50%
    for the third interview

    We need to be careful with findings because you’re looking at some serious attrition here. The study starts with 376 participants. The study has a fairly significant flaw in that it does not report the number of cases assigned to the control group (although you can infer through table 5 that there were 190 participants in the experimental condition). You had a roughly 50% (p. 34) attrition rate at each interview step for victim interviews and three steps, suggesting that only ~12.5% of beginning experiment respondents actually completed the process. Interviews with batterers were very successful for the first interview, but dropped off sharply after that, suggesting only ~9% of batterers completing the study.

    Table 5 shows a second problem. Actual graduation rates for the intervention are low. The longer form intervention had only 34 of 129 participants complete the training. The shorter form had 40 of 61 complete. Attrition in both treatment and interviews is substantial.

    Table 6 seems to show that the interventions had some influence on criminal justice incidents involving the same victim and perpetrator. That would mean Man A being again arrested for abusing Woman B. This is promising until…Table 8, which shows pretty much no effect in violence reported by victims. You’re looking at a treatment with poor completion rate, poor response rate, low numbers, and ultimately a finding of being successful at keeping men from being again arrested but not from again abusing.

    QED indeed…

  144. William, nice. Dude has no clue what he is talking about. He is part of a classification of pseudo intellectual liberals, who either generate ideas and then look for studies to support them, or are told some general ideas and then think they can change the world. Also known as college kid taking their first gen psych class. I mean, obviously he is 49 or w/e so that’s probably not the case, but there are certainly parallels.

  145. Fat Steve: A better translation would be the Yankees and the Blue Jays…there’s a nationalistic element involved with the All-Blacks- Wallabies rivalry.

    Wouldn’t “Red Sox” be better than “Blue Jays,” then? The nationalistic rivalry between the Yankees and the Sox is far more bitter. I mean, lifelong Yankee fan, and I had no idea we were supposed to even notice the Blue Jays.

  146. EG: Wouldn’t “Red Sox” be better than “Blue Jays,” then?The nationalistic rivalry between the Yankees and the Sox is far more bitter.I mean, lifelong Yankee fan, and I had no idea we were supposed to even notice the Blue Jays.

    Completely as an aside. If Australia is going to be beaten at rugby then to be beaten by New Zealand is not a bad outcome. You have to remember this was a country that had nearly every top job political filled by women up until recently.

  147. tinfoil hattie: You still haven’t answered my question about how small children who get therapy for abuse situations are “mentally ill” and thus deserving of therapy in the “llama” model.

    The llama model of health care provides universal health care for all. Therapy for anybody that needs it is covered in this model.

  148. MN Twins vs. Blue Jays, maybe? Except for the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Detriot Tigers, they’re our closest rivals, and there was a bit of a grudge match in the early ’90s.
    (Yes, I know you’re all going ‘who?’ now. And for the record, not a sports fan, just an anthropological observer.)
    Tinfoil Hattie: Lol.

  149. William: QED indeed…

    @William please see my post #152. The study you have analyzed is from a similarly named paper by the same authors as the one I quoted from. The article that I cut and paste the summary of is a meta analysis of a number of studies enough information to find it is found in post #152.

    Regardless of the fact we are talking about different papers many of the same points you make about this other paper are true for each of the studies in this meta analysis. Completion rates not as high as we would like, follow up to check outcomes is not always possible, etc.

    The fact the research in this area continues is sufficient evidence that there is no final answer on this matter.

  150. Matt: Your ideas are illogical, somewhat incoherent, don’t seem to involve significant amounts of thought on your part, and have 0 information of funding and implementation. Spend less time wasting other people’s time, and more time actually filling out your ideas.

    I really don’t need to put much thought into the idea when eminent academics in the field are already undertaking research in the area. Perhaps you can tell them their ideas are incoherent? A minute or two on Google scholar should give you a few hundred names to begin with.

    Funding is not such an issue in countries that have more of a socialist take on providing services that benefit society in a positive fashion. How much do you think it costs to keep someone in gaol?

    Wasting other peoples time? Haven’t you noticed the internet is a pull medium? One great tip for saving time is to avoid engaging internet users who you don’t agree with.

  151. @William please see my post #152. The study you have analyzed is from a similarly named paper by the same authors as the one I quoted from. The article that I cut and paste the summary of is a meta analysis of a number of studies enough information to find it is found in post #152.

    Nope, followed your link. You are, again, factually incorrect. The study contains both a meta-analysis of existing literature and an experiment. I confirmed by pulling the actual text from the journal to verify that it was the same you had linked too because, you know, some of us aren’t just googling and grasping onto old research we don’t understand but actually have database access and know what we’re looking at.

    Regardless of the fact we are talking about different papers many of the same points you make about this other paper are true for each of the studies in this meta analysis. Completion rates not as high as we would like, follow up to check outcomes is not always possible, etc.

    You….don’t seem to understand what a meta-analysis is. There is no completion rate for a meta-analysis, a meta-analysis is a pooling of results. Completion rate problems might exist for the studies being composited but not for a meta-analysis itself. What you’re talking about is the observation in the discussion of existing literature that virtually all attempted studies in this vein have severe attrition rates. More to the point, if you cannot check and outcome you cannot test your hypothesis.

    The fact the research in this area continues is sufficient evidence that there is no final answer on this matter.

    Again, you’re shifting goal posts. When challenged by a woman you’re right because you’re a man. When challenged by a professional you’re right because Australia’s UHC. When thats deflated you’re right because of old research. When you fail to find research that supports you and someone points that out you’re right because where theres smoke theres fire. Funny how your style of argument is roughly equivalent to MRA arguments about why “it wasn’t really abuse” or “the bitch must be lying.” Evidence be damned, you’re right because you are!

  152. William: Nope, followed your link. You are, again, factually incorrect. The study contains both a meta-analysis of existing literature and an experiment. I confirmed by pulling the actual text from the journal to verify that it was the same you had linked too because

    You are clearly not pulling the same document. Here is what I provided to find the document I refer too.

    Women & Criminal Justice
    Volume 10, Issue 2, 1999
    Does Batterer Treatment Reduce Violence?
    DOI:10.1300/J012v10n02_05
    Robert C. Davis MSa & Bruce G. Taylor PhDa
    pages 69-93
    Available online: 22 Sep 2008

    Note pages 69-93! so why did you write in post #159 “You had a roughly 50% (p. 34) attrition rate” i.e., you reference page 34, (I thought possibly you might have looked at whatever page in the document your viewer was reporting but this document is only 24 pages long so even that doesn’t work).

    William: some of us aren’t just googling and grasping onto old research we don’t understand but actually have database access and know what we’re looking at.

    Unless you are also an academic I suspect that you have far less access to journal databases than I have. Googled links were provided for the benefit of others.

    But now you have assured me you have proper database access I can be assured you have access to the actual paper I referenced.

    William: You….don’t seem to understand what a meta-analysis is. There is no completion rate for a meta-analysis, a meta-analysis is a pooling of results.

    I have a couple of bits of parchment on the wall that confirm I know what meta-analysis is. But hey lets run with it for a while.

    In post #164 I wrote “Regardless of the fact we are talking about different papers many of the same points you make about this other paper are true for each of the studies in this meta analysis.”

    i.e., I am talking about the studies which are the subject of this meta analysis (sure I could have been slightly more precise but this is the internet). Even a psychologist should have sufficient statistics to know the first step in a meta-analysis is to determine if the data/methodology is sufficiently compatible to allow pooling. To do this you need to look at each of the studies involved. To check that the authors had made reasonable assumptions I inspected the statistics provided for each study and drew the conclusion that each of these studies had similar issues to those you pointed out in the experiment you refer to in post #159. i.e., I agreed with you.

    William: Again, you’re shifting goal posts. When challenged by a woman you’re right because you’re a man. When challenged by a professional you’re right because Australia’s UHC. When thats deflated you’re right because of old research. When you fail to find research that supports you and someone points that out you’re right because where theres smoke theres fire.

    My point paraphrased was “I can’t help but think support and treatment for the men involved might help avoid such bad situations”

    The challenges from you and EG basically said no we disagree. Then after some initial prat like behavior you eventually supplied reasoning in post #141.

    These reasons where in your opinion sufficient to mean that it was not worth even attempting. Yet others in your field feel that it is worth investigating. Regardless of my understanding of your field this is sufficient evidence to suggest that it was not as you suggested an imbecilic idea from the outset.

    The comment about UHC stems from your idea that treatment gives privilege. Why would someone in a country with UHC ever consider the need to have treatment as being anything but negative? In this case it isn’t a sign of wealth or class that you can afford the treatment it is simply an indicator that there is some problem that needs fixing.

    As for relying on old research, the paper I referred to is simply one of the first studies in the area. With modern citation databases this is a good starting point to find later work, of which there is a lot.

    What I find somewhat surprising is that you told me that support/treatment of these men was a waste of time, yet there are literally tens of such programs running in your country at this time. Not only is the idea old, it is being used. I can only assume that you are either ignorant of these programs or have been arguing in bad faith all along.

    William: Funny how your style of argument is roughly equivalent to MRA arguments about why “it wasn’t really abuse” or “the bitch must be lying.” Evidence be damned, you’re right because you are!

    Even though you have made a number of offensive assumptions, I have been relatively polite with you. Thus your attempt to associate me with the MRA movement is unnecessarily offensive.

    I am not however surprised, it is clear from your previous comments (post #141) that you cannot deal with the frustration of somebody not agreeing with your worldview.

  153. You forgot the bit about spending four or eight hours or “a reasonable period” (depending on state or territory) in a holding cell.

    A police holding cell is not gaol, many people end up spending some time in a holding cell but this is not the same as spending time in gaol.

  154. sorry mis-clicked

    I think there is a class factor here, because even under our system, by presuming no-one you know has ever been to gaol, you’re presuming that if anyone you know has ever been charged with anything they’ve been able to afford to front their bail money.

    Here in South Australia at least police want only a guarantor they do not actually have to have any money on hand to provide bail. Yes this does discriminate against people who are socially isolated.

  155. You’re also making it fairly clear that your peer group is not predominantly Indigenous, sex working, or any other marginalised group subject to overpolicing

    You are correct I am not Indigenous (approximately less than 2.5% of the population are) or sex working (again a small portion of the population overall and an even smaller population is male). So what you are saying is that my experience is more likely aligned with the bulk of the population?

    I agree these two groups are mercilessly targeted, I see it regularly (I live near Hanson road if you know Adelaide you will know that this is one of the few places where we have women working on the street).

  156. I prefer to live in a society that provides actual support to people with mental illness, not one that stigmatises us and treats us all as if we’re about to kill someone. Which is what you’re proposing.

    My proposal concerned the people (overwhelmingly men) that pose a risk to their partners and children.

  157. He’s currently being denied his antipsychotic medication by the penal system.

    What the fuck, US penal system? Would they deny a diabetic his meds in prison?

    You know what, though? I’m now remembering that back in the day, when AIDS activists were regularly being arrested for civil disobedience, it was common practice not to allow them access to their HIV meds while in jail.

  158. I will concede that eminent academics are considering it because that’s not relevant to my point. You said do this do that, but you did not quote or link to funding or implementation when you did it, and you also did not mention it yourself. Yes I could go on GS and try to locate all this information myself, but you didn’t make that necessary. You addressed only a slight portion of my post, but internet so w/e. Either way I am addressing YOUR ideas, not those of other people. I could go and find a coherent consistent belief system from a well known academic, who preferably also put some of their ideas into practice and got the expected results, but how do I know that you are in agreement with that person? If you want to direct me to a specific person whose ideas are the same as yours, I could check that out.

    llama: I really don’t need to put much thought into the idea when eminent academics in the field are already undertaking research in the area. Perhaps you can tell them their ideas are incoherent? A minute or two on Google scholar should give you a few hundred names to begin with.

    Funding is not such an issue in countries that have more of a socialist take on providing services that benefit society in a positive fashion. How much do you think it costs to keep someone in gaol?

    Wasting other peoples time? Haven’t you noticed the internet is a pull medium? One great tip for saving time is to avoid engaging internet users who you don’t agree with.

  159. llama: A police holding cell is not gaol, many people end up spending some time in a holding cell but this is not the same as spending time in gaol.

    That is complete and utter hair-splitting.

  160. llama: I prefer to live in a society that provides actual support to people with mental illness, not one that stigmatises us and treats us all as if we’re about to kill someone. Which is what you’re proposing.

    My proposal concerned the people (overwhelmingly men) that pose a risk to their partners and children.

    Your proposal put this concern ahead of the severe negative effects that it would have against the mentally ill while conflating the two.

    Then you set up the argument so that only male academics from UHC countries who’s experiences align with the majority of the population (lets take a guess …. white, able-bodied, neurotypical, middle class or higher?) are allowed to participate because everyone else is just not getting some vital cultural context that’s necessary to truly understand your argument. If nobody understands your argument because they “aren’t you” … well, the common denominator here seems to be you, your proposal, or your communication skills. Pick one and work on it.

  161. llama: The llama model of health care provides universal health care for all. Therapy for anybody that needs it is covered in this model.

    Care to explain your comments in post #105 (asking William why he would be work with anyone who wasn’t mentally ill), and your post at #111 where you repeated your statement that it would not make sense to EVALUATE or TREAT someone who was not mentally ill to the parent of a sexually abused child?

    You do realize that a great deal of the flack you have been receiving is because after appearing to play the “men are delicate flowers who need extra hand holding in order to not do things like that” card, you moved right into a mess of ablism when you conflated mental illness and violent crime, followed by confusing preventative treatment and rehabilitative treatment, followed by setting yourself up as the ONLY expert in the room who was allowed to weigh in.

  162. llama: Women & Criminal Justice
    Volume 10, Issue 2, 1999
    Does Batterer Treatment Reduce Violence?
    DOI:10.1300/J012v10n02_05
    Robert C. Davis MSa & Bruce G. Taylor PhDa
    pages 69-93
    Available online: 22 Sep 2008

    12 year old meta-analysis of even older studies?

    I can’t read past the summeries, but here we have:

    2005, meta-analysis of court mandated batterer intervention. Mean effect of official statistics shows improvement. Mean effect of victim reporting shows zero effect. http://www.springerlink.com/content/k084l5220g6qw286/

    2010, Does judicial monitoring as a deterrent, yes/no? Answer: not really. http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/14/2/185.short

    2010, does the length of batterer therapy effect outcomes? Answer: only about as long as they are in treatment. No long term effects. http://www.springerlink.com/content/qk014x5117538w1v/

    Should people have an opportunity to change? Sure. Just not at the expense of their partners and certainly not at the expense of mentally ill people as an entire class.

    Also, these are adults. Therapy requires effort on their part and a WILLINGNESS to change. Should they have access to therapy IF they want to figure out why they are behaving like this and WANT to change it? YES x10000 (which, yes, does mean places like the US need something like UHC, but we already needed something like that anyway). But given that this REQUIRES them to be committed to change for it’s own sake and not just for the sake of avoiding future arrests, mandating it is not likely to produce the results you are looking for.

  163. Llama: In the wider society, no. But you’re pretty much alone here. At least two commenters who’ve lived or worked with people who are mentally ill are saying you’re wrong. I’ve lived with depression a fair amount of my life, and I’m giving this the side-eye too. Any reputable medical publication will tell you that usually, people with mental illnesses hurt no one but themselves.
    Also, therapy? It kinda sorta works, depending on the degree of cooperation from the patient. I think it’d be great if the US made therapy and other treatments more accessible, but that doesn’t always mean that people will take advantage of those services.

  164. Because if intimate partner murder and homicide are down to mental illness, then we don’t have to look at other things, like power.

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