On Wednesday afternoon, according to reports, a man named Scott Dekraai walked into a salon in Seal Beach California and opened fire, killing eight people, including his ex-wife Michelle Fournier, his evident target. The two, who shared custody of their son, had been entangled in an acrimonious custody dispute. (Dekraai wanted to reduce his ex’s access.) Fournier had told friends she feared her ex would try to kill her.
It’s not, unfortunately, uncommon for angry or jealous exes to harass, stalk and in many cases actually kill the objects of their obsession. Usually the killer is a man, and the victim a woman, but women kill too, and same sex couples are hardly immune from this kind of violence.
I’ve been following this story – it’s a heartbreaking one — though I hadn’t planned to write about it. There’s no indication, at least based on what we know so far, that Dekraai’s shootings were ideologically driven, that he was anything other than a deeply troubled man, bitterly angry that he had to share custody of his son with a woman he hated. There seemed to be no clear connections between this story and the misogynist ideologues I write about on this site.
But then they started making the connections themselves, offering apologias for Dekraai’s violence and twisting the facts of the case to fit their ideological agendas. TRIGGER WARNING: Many of the comments I quote below are some of the most vile and vicious I have ever found in more than a year of writing this blog.
On In Mala Fide, Ferdinand Bardamu didn’t let the facts get in the way of his perverse ideological spin on the case, titling his post on the subject “Anti-Male, Anti-Father Divorce Laws Drive Man to Commit Heinous Rage Shooting Against Ex-Wife” and blaming feminism for “poisoning the relationship between men and women” in America.
Bardamu’s argument, such as it is, is utterly at odds with the basic facts of the case. Dekraai and Fournier had shared custody of the boy they’d had together; Dekraai was not fighting to see his child — he was trying to further limit his ex’s access.
As a local Fox News affiliate noted:
Dekraai’s former attorney, Don Eisenberg, told CNS that the two had a “typical” divorce, which was finalized on Dec. 28, 2007.
“This was not a remarkable case. It was a stipulated judgment and the parties agreed on these details,” Eisenberg said.
Under the shared custody agreement, Dekraai had the boy each week from Thursday through the weekend, and the mother had him Monday through Wednesday, the attorney said.
“It was almost an exactly equal split,” Eisenberg said.
There’s not much beyond the headline to Bardamu’s post; the real action is in the comments — many of which openly advocate violence and explicitly endorse Dekraai’s murderous rampage.
One anonymous visitor left this chilling comment:
[E]nough of this type of offensive action might just start making women and their supporters* think twice, especially if they also become targets. (* Divorce attorneys, child services workers and counselors, family court judges, and other enabling cogs in the feminist legal system)
Self-immolating Thomas Ball may have made a point, but the fact remains that he didn’t strike a blow, even as he advocated it.
Someone calling himself Remorhaz expresses a similar sentiment:
The only way this or any offensive action will make a difference is if it starts affecting the judges and lawyers. King John did not sign the magna carta because he was a kindly just ruler, he did it with a sword on the back of his neck while watching a grinning man holding an axe who was busy trying on black hoods. In Mexico entire police forces quit because a few officers go missing. If that started happening then the law becomes meaningless as there is no one to enforce it. …
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.
In a followup comment he railed against those who expressed disapproval of the shootings:
What options other than overt acts of physical violence are there for a man to deal with a shrew ex and corrupt family court system? To those who are horrified and surprised at this one question…. why? Isn’t the real question – “How come this isn’t a lot MORE common?”. And please avoid the “Well… nothing justifies killing blah blah blah” as we’ve all voted, supported, and tolerated governments who kill over parking tickets much less loss of children. And if keeping your children isn’t worthy of killing what is exactly?
- Raymond, meanwhile, directed his opprobrium at Dekraai’s ex-wife:
Hopefully one of the dead carcess was his wife. The son will be better off without any parents than to have been raised by a single mother who would have gotten her vindictive way. And to Scott, when you mess with a real man’s child, blood will be spilt. Most men will just lay down and be resigned to the state-enforced kidnapping and extortion plot, but some are made of tougher stuff and for you to whine about this dead ex-wife or that is inconsequential and no loss to humanity.
Presumably he will be pleased to learn that she was one of those killed.
Frank saw the dead as “collateral damage” in a just war; his only complaint was that Dakraai hadn’t gone after public officials.
This man went to war. He caused much collateral damage and casualties have piled. And the people whose first reaction is to cry “those poor, innocent people” are people who will never change anything. Death is the way of the world. Violence or the implicit threat of it is what causes change. Go ahead, make it clear that you don’t have it in you to destroy life. The enemy will breath a little easier, because you certainly aren’t going to make any changes.
That said, he should have gone after judges and legislators. There’s no justice like a dead “justice”.
Tweell hoped the shootings would frighten women out of challenging their husbands or ex-husbands in court:
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.
Meanwhile, on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, more moderate MRAs weighed in on the case. While no one explicitly defended the shooter’s actions, numerous posters said they understood the violence, and (completely ignoring the basic facts of the case) blamed it not on Dekraai but on a court system biased against men.
A poster calling himself TheRealPariah embraced Dekraai:
He is one of us. You cannot throw men struggling out simply because they do something you disagree with.
Bobsutan predicted (and came very close to endorsing) more violence,
violent outburst[s] like this will continue to happen so long as ‘kidnapping by court’ and ‘sold into slavery by court’ (via CS & alimony) keeps happening. … fix the family court system and these murders wouldn’t happen.
Moderator AnnArchist – we’ve met him before – agreed, arguing that
To prevent this in the future the solution is clear: Mandate 50/50 custody without any child support as the default
Another r/mr regular, carchamp1, took it a bit further:
I don’t condone what he did. No sane person would. But, I understand it. … You steal someone’s kids with the help of our so-called “family” courts you’re a pig. You have it coming. Period.
I think it’s high time we put a spotlight on these kidnappers. They are NOT innocent people. They are the scum of the earth. I couldn’t care less about their “welfare”. I care about the millions of parents, mostly fathers, who’ve had their kids stolen from them AND their kids.
When I pointed out in the discussion there that Dekraai had hardly been denied access to his child, AnnArchist changed the subject, suggesting that it was Fournier’s accusations against Dekraai in court that had pushed him over the edge. In fact, both had made numerous allegations about one another in court; Dekraai accused his ex-wife of phone harassment; she complained that he was abusive, mentally unstable and had threatened to kill her. Obviously she was right to have worried.
But according to AnnArchist, Fournier was wrong to bring up his instability in court. As he put it: “Poking the bear is dangerous.”
When I pressed him on this, he responded:
If you really think someone is nuts, you probably don’t want to be the one to call them out in open court because if they don’t go to prison they might kill you. Its tough to do with kids involved, but if she thought he was capable of something like this, using it in a custody dispute would be considered by many to be risky.
Astonished, I asked him if he was really saying what it looked like he was saying, that if you think your ex is dangerous, and literally insane, you shouldn’t challenge them in court when they try to get sole custody of your kid? His reply:
I didn’t know what to say to this bizarre argument, so I stopped responding.
I don’t know what to say to any of this. It is beyond appalling.
McD’s beating. Women should never have gone over the counter. Dude’s attack was justified until they were on the ground. The hit’s after they were down crossed the line. Whether he learned that behavior in prison or he’s just an unhinged freak makes no diff.
The shooting of the woman and 7 bystanders has no excuse. I commented on that over there. Anyone claiming that man as a hero or he’s in a war etc = loon.
Line I can’t leave without a retort:
“You can use the force needed to get away and keep yourself from being harmed. He did that; he walked away. He was no longer being harmed.”
> So we both agree then that battered wives syndrome should not be used as mitigation or cause for leniency when used as an excuse for shooting their partner in cold blood while they sleep correct?
Best Line of the whole thread:
“Gender differences never hurt. What hurts is unequal treatment before the law. Feminism is the cause of this unequal treatment. Until you celebrate the differences of men as fervently as you celebrate everything woman, you’re preaching hatred. That fact that men and women are genetically different doesn’t hurt anyone. The hurt comes from feminism misguided belief that there aren’t any genetic differences.”
> Couldn’t have said it better myself. Being told I’m a caveman or neanderthal because I’m biologically driven to enjoy looking at women and enjoy wanting to have sex often is a natural reaction to women, and men enjoying competitive sports and hanging with the boys is always derided as silly, stupid, etc. But there’s no shortage of ads or mouthpieces in the media rallying women with one voice to embrace and celebrate what it means to be a woman.
Feminism had it’s place when it looked for equality. It’s metastasized into something now unrecognizable from it’s original form. Superiority is the goal and an evisceration of masculine traits deemed ‘unworthy’ from the biological landscape. And it breeds causality. Cause and effect. It’s equal and opposite form in the violent MRA’s that preach a generalized view of women to fight against. They exist to cancel each other out. Pretending that one side has it all good and the other all bad is just asking for point counterpoint with no solutions. But while it would be nice to say wouldn’t it be great to work on both issues together, women’s issues are out in the public sphere, men’s are only on the internet and often ridiculed, mostly by women’s groups.
I followed feminism off a cliff. Since the 80’s when i grew up I bought it completely. I was kind and chivalrous, and was rejected throughout my teens and 20s for guys who enjoyed playing head games with women. I left an educational system that didn’t value me and put all it’s effort into educating women. I finally married the woman of my dreams in my early 30’s, supported her aspirations, helped pay for her education, payed off her debts. Then she pulled the old Eat Pray Love routine. Told me she wanted a ‘Tiger, not a cub’. Her words, not mine. She left me after all I did for her out of love, because I wasn’t ‘masculine’ enough in my treatment of her. Now where in the name of holy hell was I to learn what it meant to be ‘masculine’ enough to keep her in her place? I’m only learning now AFTER the fact, that Game Theory actually has real merit.
Had I grown up behaving like the ‘badboys’ and learning from other guys, had a father who took an active interest in my early life, not been pretty much raised by my mother alone and in a feminized educational system, and not made to feel ashamed of the qualities that ‘real’ men exhibit… perhaps my life would be much happier than looking forward to finalizing my divorce and reading about GAME in order pretend to be someone I’m not in order to get what I’m biologically driven to do (have sex) or to swear it off, become a monk and go my own way playing video games and listening to the peanut gallery talk about me not ‘manning up’ to go find someone to be with (because i’ve already traveled that burnt down bridge). I can’t just be ‘me’ because it’s not what women want. And I won’t ever trust in a system that is so heavily skewed towards woman, so it’s easy to say I will never get married again, EVER.
My best friend who is female btw, sees the bitterness in me and can’t blame me. She says the greatest tragedy in this is that I would have made an amazing dad had I been given the chance. That’s off the table for good now, I’m going to get a vasectomy to reclaim my reproductive rights just for the hell of it. I don’t have faith in humanity to want to bother continuing it. Not that it’s in any danger at almost 7 billion strong, but if a comet comes hurtling towards us, I will welcome it openly and cheer it on! Misogynists, Misandrists… I’m sick of this game, I want out.
I know alot of what I’ve said is off topic, but I just had to get it off my chest. I’m tired of us vs. them.
-looks at Toronto Mike’s comment –
“The shooting of the woman and 7 bystanders has no excuse. I commented on that over there. Anyone claiming that man as a hero or he’s in a war etc = loon.”
You mean misogynist. I’m sick of people trying to excuse this stuff by blaming it on mental illness when they have no fucking right to do that. Mentally ill =/= Violent. Maybe he just hated women, maybe he just had a fucked up sense of entitlement to them and what he felt owed to him due to a system of privilege and oppression, maybe he looked at women in a dehumanized way due to the same system that decides women are inferior and men are not. Maybe you should stop making excuses.
“So we both agree then that battered wives syndrome should not be used as mitigation or cause for leniency when used as an excuse for shooting their partner in cold blood while they sleep correct?”
Perhaps when (male) cops start giving proper attention to abuse cases instead of blowing them off or the general public actually supports real punishments against abusers instead of just being momentarily horrified and then forgetting about it (especially if the guy is a celebrity) then that will come about. But until then, I see no problem with women murdering an abuser who was a legitimate threat to their lives (and in this case, hunts them down even if they do get away from them because the cops couldn’t be bothered to actually care). That’s called self defense.
The gender differences MRAs have convinced themselves of are largely exaggerated and ridiculous. The gender differences which explicitly buy in a male supremacist mindset while marking women as inferior in all places that would have to do with status and power. Also, being attracted to women =/= Sexually objectifying women, constantly presenting women as fucktoys. There’s a difference, I bet I know which one you’ve actually been called a caveman for. Most of the boys club bullshit that is perpetuated by our media is that women ruin men’s fun times and should be kept out of male dominated subcultures except as sex objects. The mainstream media /hardly/ rallies women, what kind of fantasy world do you live in?
“Feminism had it’s place when it looked for equality.”
As if a privileged dude gets to say where feminism had it’s place. Please. And no, feminists and MRAs and are not at all equal, that’s such an ignorant comparison. Mainstream feminism isn’t full of violent rhetoric and oppressive language, mainstream MRAs certainly are, as demonstrated by this site’s many entries. Feminists react to the actual oppression of women that men have put them through, MRAs react to losing their unearned privilege and cry out about how they should ‘put those bitches back in their place’, below men naturally. Feminism doesn’t mark women as superior, it makes them as /equal/, but in your eyes that’s just as bad.
“But while it would be nice to say wouldn’t it be great to work on both issues together, women’s issues are out in the public sphere, men’s are only on the internet and often ridiculed, mostly by women’s groups.”
Hahaha. Yeah, which is why the majority of leaders in business, politics, media, and military are all women amirite? Gimme a break, women have to fight to even have their issues /acknowledged/ by the larger world and not dismissed as ‘my pet rock’ issues. Sorry feminism doesn’t have time to center men, but the entire rest of the world already does that by default and still considers men the more valuable person (women have a hard time even being treated as people half the fucking time). Women are not treated equally, still fighting for their bodily autonomy (while plenty of MRAs cry out about how men’s rights can only be secured if cis men get to decide whether pregnant people should remain pregnant or not… ugh), still fighting against an unfair wage gap (which MRAs either ignore or pretend doesn’t exist despite numerous facts), still being treated as inferior for simply existing (especially within male-dominated subcultures, and as MRAs such as yourself have made clear’feminized’ = inferior, masculinized is the superior way), still being raped and beaten to death by men (in the military, in the home, on the streets, in so many other places), still being slut shamed, still being objectified, still being victim blamed, and then getting that brushed under the rug.
You’re not sick of misogyny, you’re swimming in it. You’re a misogynist. The rest of your rant makes that /very/ clear, you don’t care about anyone else but your own satisfaction, you lament you didn’t treat women like shit more because maybe you would’ve got some fucking out of it. You pretty much perfectly envelop the Nice Guy Misogynist syndrome down, the idea that you’re entitled to women sexually and that they’re bitches for not fucking you and now you regret not ‘keeping them in their place’. You’re lamenting the loss of privilege, you’re not a victim, you’re a horrible person.
Lilith XIV–27 October,2011″@8:18pm
“…majority of leaders in business, politics, media and the military are all women…”
No, Lilith XIV, they aren’t and they don’t have to be! The fact that to a renegade male(?) mangina, they will all do feminist bidding, that is good enough! The larger society is still puked up with feminuttery, whether the so-called “leaders” are male or not!
Meller: No, Lilith XIV, they aren’t and they don’t have to be! The fact that to a renegade male(?) mangina, they will all do feminist bidding, that is good enough! The larger society is still puked up with feminuttery, whether the so-called “leaders” are male or not!
Why did all the men in the past, when women were fluffy, and adored their men, change things?
If women were all so happy, where did the feminists come from?
If women were all so happy, how did feminism take root?
Maybe it wasn’t like that.
Or, as my mother-in-law puts it, “Why do people say they want to turn the clock back to the 1950s? I was around in the 1950s, and it was horrible.”
Thanks to a variety of mutagens in the environment, a series of random genetic mutations eventually added up to create a cell that–
…oh, wait, sorry; that’s how cancer often starts. With all the talk of feminism “metastasizing” I got confused! ;p
Feminism got started because a lot of women were like hey, this whole getting beaten and sold and dying in my 10th childbirth thing? Not a fan. And some men were like, huh, upon further reflection you make a legit point; mistreating people because of their vaginas is wrong.
(At which point other men were like WAIT WHAT THE FUCK? If I can’t beat and sell and rape women then my rights are being seriously infringed on! and that’s how the MRM was born…)
I am sorry I’m not reading through the entire article or lists of comments. I was threatened — and assaulted — throughout a marriage, left it, was stalked through the courts and OUTSIDE the courts, although the father had weekly visitation and almost no child support, which I didn’t request of him – the county did, because I BRIEFLY took welfare shortly after filing to restrain him from further assault — via a kickout. During the marriage I was financially pimped and credit destroyed, and connections with people outside the home was allowed (if I’m going to financially support the family, he has to let me out of the home from time to time, right?) and in short no end of craziness.
Then he picked up a (needy, middle-aged, twice-previously married) woman at a church recovery group and thanks to her relative prosperity, he was able to survive without paying child support, ran up about $10K in arrears in a VERY short period, and proceeded getting help in making my and through weekend traumas, the children’s life hellish. They were taught to blame this on me, though I was the one who had to call police sometimes to get the children back after an overnight weekend. My family — formerly resented (as someone outside the home arena and too feminist & liberal) — were suddenly his friends when it became clear that between them and this church (bitch) they might get themselves some free kids to raise — without having to be screened through normal adoption process, or in fact going through kids that actually didn’t have parents.
So, the family law courts are absolutely guilty in regards of trafficking children for profit, and getting people killed through callous disregard for their safety. All of us, kids and the father, are still alive (in part because I separate from the guy), but pretty much everything else of value has been destroyed, along with my work life and most professional associates, who couldn’t stand the long-term heat.
I have four different versions of what happened next, and my own deduction on which is closest to truth. Neither daughter remembers what month or year the Dad moved out, and his version was, the woman kicked him out, the woman’s version (seeking sympathy) is he abandoned the family and one child’s version is, when he refused to marry her (which was obvious, he also refused to complete divorcing me — she kicked him out. This benefitted my relatives in ways I can’t detail here, and an ongoing issue.
Both children have now aged out of this system, but thanks to certain policies (involving federal grants as well) in the courts — their child support was cut off as they were just entering high school, and I was eliminated from their lives (being a mother) when the courts — refusing to give a legal and factual basis for this, when questioned in writing demanding one — for switching custody of kids to a person who’d just committed a crime against the state, called child-stealing. This is supposed to carry jail time and a fine — and I’ll bet if I’d tried it, it would’ve. I’m female.
Moreover, my kids have been lied to, lied about, used as bait, used to extort money from others, and finally ditched. As a means of silence, participation in criminal matters also works great, so while I talked about violence, and left it (or tried to), the culture of forced silence about it has been returned.
* * * * i was in the Seal Beach area (Generally) around the time of this killing, and could easily have been a customer in that salon. This is not the first salon broken up by a disgruntled ex, either, resulting in multiple killings, in California, either. After the news report came out, I was getting my hair cut, then it hit me.
So I cannot handle going through this topic in detail this fine (Monday) morning and still retain function. There’s a PTSD factor.
– – – – – Look at this quote from Donald Eisenberg, attorney — who happens to be an AFCC professional, was presenting at an AFCC conference during around 2007 — which seems to me, DeKraii had a short restraining order on for assaulting his stepfather too, when Eisenberg was representing him (factcheck yourself — I said “seems.”
“Dekraai’s former attorney, Don Eisenberg, told CNS that the two had a “typical” divorce, which was finalized on Dec. 28, 2007.
“This was not a remarkable case. It was a stipulated judgment and the parties agreed on these details,” Eisenberg said.
Under the shared custody agreement, Dekraai had the boy each week from Thursday through the weekend, and the mother had him Monday through Wednesday, the attorney said. “It was almost an exactly equal split,” Eisenberg said
The mother never had a weekend with her son, and he was school-aged. That’s not almost exactly equal – -in the least bit. Children go to school days, and are home evenings. (it also mentions nothing about holidays in the press). Meaning, she never had more than 24 hours to do anything with her son in an average month — he had weekends. . . .. Does this attorney have kids? Does he work 9-5, M-Friday? Everyone involved with families knows that weekends are valuable, and that was an unfair – not “almost exactly equal – custody ruling.”
Some parents and others in Scranton, PA recently began protesting their family courts on a forum called “Doherty Deceit” — and I recommend people get to the site before the end of the year. There have been mothers put in jail (what for, I”m not clear yet), and children in the custody of a convicted sexual molester, plus (from what I can tell), one woman whose husband DIED, his parents filed for custody — within days of the death, with a young son — and she was hauled back into court and is now forced to share with grandparents, a little boy who just lost his Daddy. What kind of character does that show of the grandfathers?
But the group began requesting financial statements from problematic court people, and next thing one knows, the FBI raided the courthouse, walking out with a lot of evidence. Because the forum moderator (who seems pretty gutsy, and doesn’t intimidate easy) suspected possible double-billing and requested evidence of payments, and got some. I came there tracking down a certain situation (same personnel in different states) and posted quite a bit of leads on the money trail in the courts for any interested.
Mocking misogyny is great — I do this too — but the sentiment some MRA’s quoted above shared – “that’ll intimidate future women” — is already a practiced legal technique, which AFCC has perfected over the decades, and also see Richard Warshak, who even markets a product teaching the FATHER’s attorney how to get to the MOTHER’s attorney and convince her that if she doesn’t share custody well (for example, this might be the case if there has been abuse of child, or her), they will certainly transfer sole custody to Dad — meaning, mothers can’t even trust their own family law attorneys in this system.
FYI, this is what has been happening. it just didn’t (yet) in DeKraii, and that’s not because his example was more extreme than any others.
Don’t know how this comment will come out, but more info on my blog. This whole deal is not just about fathers’ rights (or feminism) but the real back-story is how the court — and nonprofits around the court (which I investigate, with just a few others) know how to exploit this and profit from it. Child support Enforcement is $4billion a year; child protective services, I heard $12 billion. Diversionary programs from this are used to fund frivolous and/or incentive-based litigation, traumatizing the other partner, and sometimes completely setting the possibility for a murder, or mass murder.
Fournier’s brother should’ve figured out, if he was really up on this, how to get his sister out of the area, and through the courts. One can’t blame him, because once the fight is on, the clock is ticking fast; and it’s playing Russian Roulette which way each case might go.
See the blog. Lots of charts and reports on the matter; it’s a clear-cut pattern and scheme; MRA plays into it, but the other elements enable this.
ATTENTION ALL MEN: Let it go. You simply cannot win. Your voice is not going to be heard. You will be wrong here. Just understand this from the beginning. My suggestion to you is this: Go out and create something. Go forth and do something productive. Build something new. Be greater today than you were yesterday. Succeed. Conquer. Excel. Dominate. Exercise your will. WIN! Do something… anything other than arguing this point any further. Trust me, you’ll be better for it. Your brother, Uncontainable Spirit.
Breaking news for Uncontainable Spirit: you do not speak for all men. Noone elected you. and (you may wish to be sitting down for this) not all men think like you. Not all men are misogynistic, not all men wish to conquor or dominate. And most men are horrified by the kind of violence against women described in the original post.
If there’s anyone out there wondering what to buy Uncontainable Spirit for Christmas, may I suggest a decent thesaurus?
Or may be a nice decanter. For all that uncontained spirit.
ATTENTION ALL MEN: See how stupid the MRAs look on this thread? They really ARE that dumb. Do you want to be one of them? NO? Then stay the hell away from their “movement”; it is of the bowel kind, and once you step in that shit, you’ll have to wipe forever to get it off your shoes.
This has been your public service announcement for today. Thank you.
“The fact that to a renegade male(?) mangina, they will all do feminist bidding, that is good enough! The larger society is still puked up with feminuttery, whether the so-called “leaders” are male or not!”
Congratulations! Your conspiracy theory is just like the NWO, but with even less evidence!
“Dominate. Exercise your will.”
You mean like Dekraai did? The MRM really is the abusers’ lobby.
vaiyt — that was directed at DKM, who, yep, made NWO look tolerable sometimes. NWO at least managed to base his shit off real world speculation sometimes (e.g. news article says “I hope this doesn’t…” becomes “this did…”)