Last September, WF Price of The Spearhead wrote a post about a Seattle area man named Josh Powell, widely suspected of murdering his missing wife. Price’s complaint? Powell’s two boys had been removed from his custody after his father (with whom he and the boys were living) was charged with voyeurism and possessing child porn. Price excoriated the authorities for what he saw as an abuse of their powers, and concluded his piece by saying that “[t]yranny has arrived in the guise of protecting women and children.”
In the comments, there was a lot more talk about tyranny. Natalia, meanwhile, worried about the children:
The kids are already dealing with the pain of missing their mom, and now they are taken away from their dad. How can anyone believe that’s better for the children?
On Sunday, as you are probably well aware, Powell killed these children, and himself. During a supervised visit, authorities say, Powell locked himself and his kids in his house, incapacitated them by chopping their heads and necks with a hatchet, then set the house (primed with gasoline as an accelerant) ablaze.
The regulars on the Spearhead don’t seem much interested in talking about Powell any more. But of the few comments that have been made, several have been rather telling. Responding to a feminist commenting on his original post, Price wrote:
Typical for a feminist to see this as a triumph. Josh Powell was hounded for years up to this point. If he didn’t kill his wife, and there’s still no evidence he did, does the court bear some responsibility for the outcome here?
That’s right. The court is to blame for trying to protect the children from the man who later murdered them.
And not a word of sympathy from him for the murdered children.
Meanwhile, another Spearheader seemed to suggest that the main problem was that Powell had picked the wrong people to kill:
Notice the upvotes. And the lack of a response; the regulars were too busy making jokes about domestic violence and the evils of the upcoming Valentines — sorry, Vagina — Day.
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to Kendra, Cloudiah, and Crumbelievable for pointing me to Price’s post and these comments. I should also note that there were a couple of comments from others at The Spearhead expressing sorrow for the murdered children. And to my knowledge no one in the MRM has hailed him as a hero, so that’s something, I guess.
EDITED TO ADD AGAIN:
Price digs his hole deeper. Responding to a critical comment by none other than Men’s Rights Activist Lieutenant, he writes, among other things:
If the cops knew he was capable of real violence, and they must have if they suspected him for murder, they bear some responsibility for provoking this.
So if the cops knew he was capable of real violence (which they clearly did) … they should have let him keep the kids? That he ultimately killed?
I’ve heard this argument before from MRAs. Essentially, if a man in a custody dispute threatens violence, or is thought to be violent, the courts should simply hand the kids over to him. So he won’t get mad. That’s the logic of an abuser, or at the very least of an enabler.
Reading that just made me feel ill.
You know, I see life through the lens of blogs, maybe too much. When there’s a new Cosmopolitan on the newsstands at the Wal-Mart, I nudge my wife and tell her there’ll be a new Cosmocking.
When I heard about this Powell guy, my very first thought was, “Oh, man, how are the MRAs going to spin this guy into some kind of hero?”
Based on that expectation, this is actually slightly positive. At least the guy criticized the father who murdered his children after (ALLEGEDLY!) murdering his wife.
Hooray.
Those poor kids. I really do not have any other words.
Why do the MRAs always act like any crime committed is some inevitable thing that the person couldn’t have helped but do (as long as the person is a man, if it’s a woman it’s all her responsibility but not for men). “If I was driven to that point…”
I.e. killing was going to happen, people were DRIVING the poor guy to that point.. he just used his killing spree on the wrong people… like having a limit break… it’s gonna happen, you just choose the target e_e
Is it not possible for them to just NOT talk about murders? Like if they aren’t going to talk about how wrong this is or condemn it (which they don’t have to because I don’t feel the MRM needs to apologize for fathers that kills kids, like feminism or women don’t need to apologize for mothers that kill kids), then maybe they should just … not say anything? You don’t HAVE to. As I always say “I’m not required to have an opinion on everything”. But whenever they choose to talk about mass murders like this, it turns into this victim blaming, protection-money kinda thing… and they try to usurp the tragedy into how this is feminism’s fault, or how it’s divorce’s fault or etc and it looks really unseemly. >_<
I felt the same way about Toysoldier and Jezebel both trying to usurp the Penn State tragedy to be about "why my side is right". v_v
Like Spearhead doesn't HAVE to talk about this, and for their own reputation (whatever's left) isn't it better if they just don't talk about mass murders? They always end up hanging themselves :
@Bostonian yeah 🙁 It’s v upsetting ;-;
Something about “the outcome here” just creeped the fuck out of me. When people euphemize stuff like that–“what happened,” “the unfortunate events”–that’s a giant red flag that they’re trying very hard to minimize it and divert all blame.
I mean, I guess the MRA response here isn’t as bad as it could have been. They’re not trying to make him into a Retroactive MRA Hero like Thomas Ball. I think shutting the hell up about this guy is the best they can do.
Donnie – Haha, it’s next up. I’m working on it.
@Ami:
I’ve noticed that as well. It’s disgusting. They’re also fond of preemptively defending all the future violence they claim to prophesize: see Elam’s vaguely threatening comment that men driven to extremes have “often beome violent” and Fideblogen’s insistence that whether or not the violence will happen isn’t even a question (I’m paraphrasing but I swear it was something that bad)
This is disgusting
@Holly @Donnie
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/p8jed/how_i_view_my_girlfriends_cosmo/
Somebody needs to show MRAs cosmocking so a) they know how wrong they are about how much feminism loves cosmo and b) how late to the party they are xD
It would be nice if MRAs admit that sometimes there is a reason for for some men to lose custody of the kids. Because they might be sociopaths.
One time at least?
Jesus, this is not a triumph. This is a fucking tragedy. How DARE they use the deaths of those poor babies to make a political point. How DARE they?
Just to be clear, I was responding to Price’s comment in the OP, not to whatever the feminist in question may have said.
The MRM is actually the abuser and rapist lobby. They have no real interest in actual Men’s Rights. You can see that by the fact that the entire movement is busy making up excuses for a man whose crime was *murdering two boys*.
To the MRM, apologia for a man going on a murder spree is fine, actually defending boys against real threats (rather than imaginary ones, like feminists and gays), well that’s not as important.
@Ami:
I am now going to imagine a little limit meter filling up pixel by pixel every time one of the trolls shows up for a rhetorical beating.
I may also have disturbing intrusive thoughts if I ever go back and play FFVII again.
And Neph takes this opportunity to miss the point by conflating murder and self-defense (“battered wife syndrome”).
@Nephrite- oh don’t you event fucking DARE. This is a guy whose children were removed from his home because he was living with someone who consumed CHILD PORNOGRAPHY. Also? He was not paying child support, because their mother was GONE, probably DEAD. AND NOW THERE ARE DEAD BABIES. What sort of creep are you that you have to make a political point about child support around DEAD BABIES?
Holly, I was also creeped out a bit by Price’s use of the euphemistic term “outcome.”
Price could have said something like:
“This was a tragedy; nothing excuses a man murdering his children (and possibly also their mother). But I believe that he was not given due process.”
That would have been understandable. But that’s not what he said. Instead he tried to blame the court for “hounding” a man which led to this “outcome.”
@ David: Thank you for expressing a calm and levelheaded way of having a nuanced conversation about tragedies like this. I am in Jewish Mommy Hulk SMASH mode, so I’m not at my most rational.
The MRA response is more subdued then I expected. I’m glad they didn’t say this guy was a hero for murdering his kids. It didn’t stop them from implicitly justifying his motive and saying that it was OK to kill, so long as it is judges instead of kids (1 begrudging point in their favor for at least not saying that killing their kids to save them from feminism was the right thing to do).
@Neph
Ignoring that this is the exact wrong time to conflate this tragedy with your delusions of feminisms evil, I’ll just ask you what I ask all the trolls here.
Where.is.your.evidence!
After that comment, which I deleted, Neph is now on moderation and is banned from commenting in this thread.
Nephrite go bye bye?
Goddammit, I missed what Neph said. I’m sitting in my environmental science class; I could have used some more disgust and fury to make my life interesting.
But yeah. I hesitate to say that there’s never a point where someone is “driven” to murder, but those are cases like extreme domestic violence. Not “I’m pissed off that I’ve been accused of murder and the courts, understandably, don’t want me to have my kids.” Just . . . HOW.
I think I’m glad I missed that.
What I find appalling is not that the MRM sees the murder of his kids as inevitable. They don’t. They are saying it’s the predictable, even understandable result of the court’s actions.
See, if the court hadn’t, “hounded” him (i.e. not tried to see what happened to his wife, whim it seems he probably murdered), if they hadn’t responded to finding child porn on his computer by restricting (not eliminating) his unfettered access to his children, then the kids would be alive.
But the meddlesome cops, and that activist judge, they are responsible.
After all, they could have just let it rest, but no, they had to treat her disappearance like it mattered, and now the guy has killed his kids, and it’s all their fault.