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.
The things feminists *might* say seem to be held to a higher standard than the things MRAs *did* say.
I have no desire to defend all the things I “probably think, I just know you do.” I’m happy to defend the things I actually think, but I don’t get the opportunity to do that much here.
(I’d suggest that it would be funny to demand the MRA trolls to defend hilariously evil things, but they kinda already do. Can’t really have much fun with “I bet you want all women illiterate and enslaved to men at puberty!” when there are multiple guys here who will smile and nod.)
Quackers, that makes sense. Some male judges, probably especially the older ones, are more lenient with the ladies because of misplaced chivalry. Someone like Judge Judy, though, she slapped down the gals just as hard as the guys. 🙂
People – NWO is a troll, an MRA Troll – just ignore him,
MRAs like to see themselves as “soldiers” – he will truly believe he is fighting a war by writing on a blog – JUST IGNORE HIM.
Seriously – JUST IGNORE HIM. He loves every minute of this. If men weren’t getting oppressed, he’d have to make it up so that he got this attention. Oh, wait, he does…
@NWO – you are the ultimate pseudo cultural Marxist. You *want* to be oppressed so that you can justify your modus operandi – getting attention for your extremists beliefs. You, and the MRM, are the ultimate “MOPEs” – Most Oppressed People Ever.
JUST IGNORE HIM – DON’T FEED THE TROLL
Him, and AntZ brag about their antics on here on other blogs, trust me. They are nothing but trolls;
IGNORE THEM – ALRIGHT PEOPLE? JUST IGNORE THEM.
On a different, and rather obvious note. The McDonald’s employee clearly went too far with the ferocity of his counter attack – but as a former service industry employee, I have some empathy. There is hot oil right where they came at him and that guy had probably had nothing but abuse the whole day from people. It’s got nothing to do with gender, it’s got everything to do with some scumbag customers abusing people and then taking it too far. I think the police have got it right with the charges that they levelled – but I think that the McDonald’s employee should have a lot of mitigating circumstances considered when he is sentenced (providing he has no previous)
I have a close friend whose parents divorced when she was quite young. We have never truly discussed it, but I gather he didn’t want a kid, though getting pregnant has been his idea mostly. The dude moved to another country, didn’t say hello for almost 7 years and then tried to gain full custody on my friend because, I shit you not, he wanted to receive the money as being a single parent in that country. This is something that even I knew, though I have been just a kid then as well.
I am so glad he didn’t receive the custody, because it’s wrong to want your kid simply for the money.
So I think that more investigation in the parents will do only good, for both fathers and mothers, because if one of the parents is unfit (or both), this to be reflected).
I don’t get Owly and his friends, really… if there was no feminism ever, they would never receive full custody on the sexist ground that men suck as parents yet they constantly bash the idea that argues that people are not only their gender.
I truly, do not understand that. One can fight the good fight without hating a whole gender. But they don’t really care or simply something is not ok with them. I can’t understand why else they would try to justify the murder of innocent people by some psycho.
Last… are we still stuck on “communism is evil” moment? Do you even know what communism means as an idea? Me, personally, I find if a naive idea that is not going to work but at least I understand it, I presume Owly gained his knowledge about it solely on Bond movies.
NWO, the battered wife defense is just a popular way of describing self defense, a plea that both men and women can make in court. If a woman is beating her husband and his life is in danger, he can also kill in self defense and use the same defense in court. A woman can’t just kill her husband or boyfriend for any reason. He has to be a threat to her. What other options does a woman have if her abusive husband threatens to kill her if she leaves, but she’s also in danger if she stays? Is she supposed to just allow him to beat her to death? I know in MRA Land, that never happens, but in the real world it happens all too often.
The woman has to prove in court that her actions were in self defense. It probably takes more than mere accusations for her defense attorney to convince a jury to acquit. They’ll need evidence showing the history of abuse, like hospital records, pictures of injuries from the abuse, and sometimes eye witnesses of the abuse. It’s up to the jurors how much evidence they need to acquit or convict.
By the way, NWO, the actual topic of the OP was Dekraai going on a rampage and killing eight people. I guess it’s better for you to try to change the topic than to admit that the man was a murderer and then MRA’s came out in full force to condone his actions.
Sorry, Anti-MRA, you’re right that I should just ignore him but sometimes it is just to much for me to just ignore. I also hope that countering him might be helpful to any lurkers that might read his bs and be confused. Heaven knows he’ll ignore everything I said or take it out of context to feed his own persecution fantasies.
I’m guessing the beating in the McD’s is the result of him having been in prison for the past 10+ years, where one of the ways to avoid being even more brutalised is to respond to any aggression with overwhelming force.
It’s not the rules of civilised society (though NWO seems to think it ought to be), but it’s a set of rules which are hard to dispose of. He probably felt really threatened (they had jumped the counter) and he did what he had been socialised to do.
And, as if often the case, sheer speed/violence, will overcome numbers. They didn’t expect that level of response, and weren’t ready for it. He’d been trained to respond that quickly, as well as to be ready for it all the time.
I hate to say it, but the Spearhead people are right about one thing: if the genders were reversed, everyone would be cheering for the female cashier who handed out the beatdown. But because a man did it, he is being portrayed as the bad guy. Did he go too far, absolutely. But some people already paint him as the aggressor, and the women who actually attacked him as the victims. I dunno, I wish people would react in the same way to a case like this no matter who was involved, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.
Yes, because as we know majority of physical attacks are from women to men and women are overwhelmingly bigger in size than men, so any attack pose a real threat for harm/death, so… oh… no, actually it’s the other way around… so any theorysing on the matter is utter bullshit, because we don’t believe in that world.
Oh, well.
I actually stuffed the article in Regender to see if it really sounded more sympathetic with the genders reversed:
“A McDonald’s cashier with a manslaughter rap was caught on camera savagely beating two men with a metal bar inside the Greenwich Village franchise on Thursday, police said.
“Rayon McIntosh, 31, beat down the male customers after they attacked her following an argument over the veracity of a $50 bill inside the W. Third St. restaurant, police said.
“She can be seen in the video repeatedly striking the men, who had jumped behind the counter, even after they were on the ground, as horrified customers’ screamed and pleaded for her to stop.”
Um, this still sounds unbelievably brutal. The tiny amount of money involved and the screaming, horrified customers don’t really make for a heroic picture.
Also, I can’t believe I missed this: “But some people already paint him as the aggressor, and the women who actually attacked him as the victims.”
Broseidon, the point of the story isn’t that he hit back (which would be justified because the women attacked first), but that he hit back with an entirely disproportionate amount of force, and kept hitting them even when they were down.
Actually, women can and do use physical violence on men quite often, in my experience. I wouldn’t say the majority, but it’s probably close to 50-50. It’s just that generally they don’t cause serious injuries, that and most guys who’ve been on the receiving end don’t talk about it for fear of ridicule.
Molly Ren: Well, like I said before he went too far and will be paying for it. My point was that some people were ready to forget that he’d been attacked and provoked beforehand. It’s this way, right now everyone is saying the fault is mostly his, whereas if a woman had fought back like this against two male customers everyone would be saying the fault was mostly theirs. I’m not talking about the commenters on this blog, but people in general.
Broseidon wrote, “Actually, women can and do use physical violence on men quite often, in my experience. I wouldn’t say the majority, but it’s probably close to 50-50. It’s just that generally they don’t cause serious injuries, that and most guys who’ve been on the receiving end don’t talk about it for fear of ridicule.”
I feel like this whole paragraph sums up why the idea that only one gender can really commit violence is screwed up. Guys who *have* been injured are refusing to get help because a woman beat them? Yeesh.
Pecunium, I totally agree. And thank you for showing that there is a way to view the situation with empathy for the cashier, without reaching the ludicrous moral of “And that’s why women better watch out when dealing with men.”
Gosh, if only there were a movement out there focused on equality that’s concerned about EVERYONE affected by violence, so that no one would be afraid to come forward…
Feminist blog acknowledging arrest of women for sexually attacking men:
http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/women-arrested-for-sex-attacks-on-men/
Link in blog lead to CNN article.
I hesitated about posting this though because of how much it would feed the MRA paranoia that women are out to steal their sperm. However, it’s good to know how a SINGLE incident might then become the focus for a full blown paranoia of “all teh wimminz” variety that they are so prone to.
You keep repeating this “fought back” thing — that’s not the part people are upset by. No is saying he’s at fault for hitting back, they’re saying he’s at fault for repeatedly hitting a person lying on the ground with a piece of metal; did I miss the memo where everyone is totally cool with women attacking helpless men with weapons? That seems like a memo I would’ve noticed.
Because in reality I’m pretty sure no one is gonna be like “ex-felon beats the crap out of two people lying on the ground with a chunk of metal while bystanders beg the attacker to stop? Oh no! …Oh wait, it was a woman doing that? Eh, sounds legit. Flirtatious, even! ^^”
@Happy Anti-MRA
But we (or at least I) like feeding the trolls. It’s so fun watching Owly explicitly agree with that stuff and then flounce off complaining about our “hatred.” The fact that Antsy and Owly brag about their exploits on other blogs just cements how pathetic they are. Dear god, the number of times we’ve corrected Antsy’s blatant stupid errors, and he goes off and brags about it? Brilliant!
I know none of you care how I feel one way or the other but I feel compelled to applaud the appropriate nature of the reactions of most (not all) comments about the McD violence …
I am both surprised and grateful that many members of this community appear to have responded to the McD incident with balance and fairness:
“… sheer speed/violence, will overcome numbers. They didn’t expect that level of response, and weren’t ready for it. He’d been trained to respond that quickly, as well as to be ready for it all the time …”
Correct. His response to the violence of two drunken female customers was disproportionate, but understandable (if not FULLY justifiable) given how this nation treats its prisoners.
“I hate to say it, but the Spearhead people are right about one thing: if the genders were reversed, everyone would be cheering for the female cashier who handed out the beatdown.”
Correct. Media bigotry and double standards, which MRAs are fighting to end.
“Actually, women can and do use physical violence on men quite often, in my experience. I wouldn’t say the majority, but it’s probably close to 50-50. It’s just that generally they don’t cause serious injuries, that and most guys who’ve been on the receiving end don’t talk about it for fear of ridicule.”
Female violence peppers my past, and the past of many men I know. It is extremely common, and men rarely report it because law enforcement and the media immediately make a joke out of any man who reports abuse by a woman.
I’m sorry to hear that, Antz. No, I don’t generally care how you feel, but no one deserves that.
Believe it or not, this is something we want to change. It really is. When feminists say patriarchy hurts men, this is what we’re talking about.
For those talking about “self-defense” or “fighting back” in the McD’s assault, this might be a useful resource. Basically, the situation stopped being self-defense when he escaped danger, then became felony assault when a) he picked up a weapon and b) they hit the ground. That would have been the case regardless of who was involved.
Also note that the women are getting charged for their crimes, too. Where is the Pussy Pass?
This thread isn’t about the incident at McD — this thread is about a man with a long, but fairly concealed history of violence and and upbringing which consisted of getting his own way in everything, killing his ex-wife and seven random people because he was upset over having to share custody of his son. This thread is also about the MRA’s overwhelmingly praising him and admonishing women that men have the right to butcher them if they don’t get what they want. The issue of some other women in some other place attacking some other man is completely irrelevant, unless the argument is that because some woman somewhere slapped a guy, men everywhere are now entitled to have an open season on all women they don’t like, regardless of the reason or the circumstances.
Broseidon: Woulda, shoulda. Are you a rational person? In other words, did you base that opinion on actual facts? If so, let’s have those facts — give me some examples of women being praised for butchering a man in response for a far lesser degree of aggression.
Hell, even self-defense books by and for women make it very clear that hitting someone on the ground does not constitute self-defense, and if you do it then you should expect to get arrested if/when the police show up because that’s assault. You do not try to continue to hit or kick your attacker once ze’s down (not only is that illegal but it’s also dangerous) but you instead should GTFO and get help if possible.
Broseidon: What happened was unconscionable.
If the genders were reversed I’d say the same thing. So long as someone is actually attacking, you have the right to defend yourself. No one has the right to leave, get a weapon, come back, intiate an attack, and call it self-defense.
If it had been a woman who did it, same story.
The women who attacked him are also being charged, and rightly so.
But what he did wasn’t fighting back. He was able to leave the scene. At that point he was no longer defending himself. When he came back he initiated a new attack.
Antz: Correct. His response to the violence of two drunken female customers was disproportionate, but understandable (if not FULLY justifiable) given how this nation treats its prisoners.
Nope. not justifiable at all. That I understand how he got to the place he got doesn’t justify it.
Seraph: I was thinking about linking to Marc’s stuff (he’s a friend of mine. Back in the day we used to be fairly close [ before he moved to Colorado]. I taught him to shoot, did the photography for his first book. He taught me knife fighting, and how to make a hasty “knife” from a beer bottle. Good times, if somewhat atavistic).
Pecunium – Good to have someone I know vouch for him. His advice seemed solid, which is why I linked to it, but you know how the internet is. Anyone can claim to be an expert at anything, and everyone has at least one person calling them a fraud.