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.
I might be a little late to the game, but…
You either attend a Super Bowl Party with people or you stay home and watch it by yourself. Some will chitter-chatter and gossip the entire game, some during the halftime show, some during the good commercials, and at some points they will have their eyes silently glued to the screen (which is hugely problematic). Sometimes some of them will tell you or others to shut up.
The quote above really do show a classic abuser mentality (as do many MRA quotes). OK, let’s pretend for the sake of argument that the man didn’t murder his wife and we know that for sure. In that case, the courts made a bad decision. How does he get from there to “I must kill my kids”? In what flow of logic does that make any sense? Also, if he’s arguing that he didn’t murder his wife, how does murdering 2 other family members help convince people of that? To any rational person, if someone who’s accused of murder then murders 2 more people, that makes the first murder charge look like it was probably true. To MRAs…I’m not sure if the murder of the children somehow proves his innocence in their eyes (scary, in that no rational person would think that way) or if it’s just that who cares if he killed his wife, she was his wife so he has every right to kill her if she pisses him off (scarier).
And actually, even if he was completely innocent of the murder of his wife, kids still shouldn’t be placed in a house with an adult who’s been convicted of a sex crime. So there’s that too. Was that part supposed to be OK because it was only women and girls he was spying on?
In the op’s thread, a poster named “susan” wrote a post informing the spearhead of the recent murder/suicide, which price responded to. Just afterwards, woggy says this:
“The only poster here that should be ashamed is YOU Susan. Gloating over dead children as a means of attempting shame on men whose only crime is being men.”
Fucking hell. It is impossible to talk to these people. They live in a world far removed from reality.
And Jesus Effing crap-on-a-stick at what price says later to a different commenter, eve:
“BTW, Eve, talking about gloating here is really in poor taste. A couple little boys just died (they happened to be the exact same age as my children), and if you think I would “gloat” over that you’ve got a real misanthropic streak in there somewhere. Please, try to have a little human decency and respect here.”
I am too angry for words right now.
Granted these are different people, and granted that MRAs in general are no stranger to double standards, but seriously? SERIOUSLY?
@ bostonian, they look so much like a little boy I used to sit for; I kind of want to call up his mom, go back to my home town, and just give him a hug. I seriously don’t understand how any human being couldn’t look at those kids and not just want to break down sobbing.
The MRA response is also very telling in that hey, these are little boys, who will someday be men, and you are supposedly the men’s rights movement. Why don’t you care more about the fact that someone took a hatchet to those vulnerable little boys, and that they died painful, terrifying deaths? Why is that dismissable just because you’re mad at the court system?
Or rather, they were little boys who would have someday been men if the dude whose behavior you want to gloss over as being the fault of the evil courts hadn’t brutally murdered them.
Well there you have it Cassandra. The “Mens’ Rights Movement” doesn’t actually care about boys or men. It’s all about resentment and vindictiveness.
But I’m sure we all figured that out already.
“BTW, Eve, talking about gloating here is really in poor taste. A couple little boys just died (they happened to be the exact same age as my children), and if you think I would “gloat” over that you’ve got a real misanthropic streak in there somewhere. Please, try to have a little human decency and respect here.”
Except if you read that sentence what he’s saying isn’t “you gloated over the death of boys, have a little human decency and respect for the boys” what he’s saying is “you accused me of gloating over the death of boys, have a little human decency and respect for me”… he’s really being offended that somebody implied he was being an uncaring asshat (which he is, part of it is that he’s hiding behind dead children to cover his own butt now)… it’s about him, not them -_-
I keep trying to figure out how someone gets from “the courts took away my kids and that’s not fair” to “so I’m going to kill the kids”. Because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, and it doesn’t make any sense unless it’s as simple as “that is my property and it has been stolen, and if I can’t have it then neither can anyone else”. I can’t conceptualise any way in which a parent who loves their kids and is sad about being denied access to them decides that the solution is to kill the kids.
No offense David but was it really necessary to add the gory derails of the boys death. I mean I know it’s googable but….
I keep trying to figure out how someone gets from “the courts took away my kids and that’s not fair” to “so I’m going to kill the kids”. Because this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, and it doesn’t make any sense unless it’s as simple as “that is my property and it has been stolen, and if I can’t have it then neither can anyone else”.
It’s like the story about King Solomon and the two mothers who both claimed the child was theirs.
One actually loved her child, the other only wanted the child as property.
“If I can’t have it, nobody can.”
:
Really really scary that people think this way, but some people do :
oh on the topic of being “driven to” kill… this tragedy reminds me of the one where the guy shot up a salon :
http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/8-dead-isn%E2%80%99t-that-delightful/
And at the time our buddy Elam said this (in response to somebody calling him out for saying that the guy was probably driven to kill)
Paul Elam in reply to scatmaster
I am not saying that even if driven to it, that it was right. Just that it is possible he was driven to do it by forces he had no power to stop. Along the same lines of Thomas James Ball. I don’t agree with what he did, but I also won’t just say that without pointing to the evil forces that plagued his life and drove him to the edge.
I used to have confrontations with family therapists who worked with some of my clients, and who often adopted the principle that one violence (from the man) had been identified, that all other “help” for the couple had to be put on hold till the violence was addressed.
That is just bullshit. The violence almost never happened in a vacuum. And by adopting the strategy of putting all other help on hold in that manner, what they were essentially doing was pointing to HIM as the one and only problem. Again, in most cases, that was bullshit. Often men become violent as a reaction to abuse, and we have no way of knowing for sure right now if that was the case in this tragedy.
Yes, friend, he could have been driven to it. It happens all the time.
It’s not right, but he was driven by “forces he had no power to stop”.
So what’s not right? The killing, or the forces to drive him? If he’s helpless against the forces that drive him, therefore what’s “not right” would be the forces right? Because the killing is the result of him being affect by “forces he had no power to stop”. NO POWER. So “I am not saying that it was right” is a meaningless disclaimer. If people have no control over what those forces “make” them do, then really Elam is implying that the forces are to blame, not the person. So the “act” might not be right, but he places the blame for the act on the “forces”. Just like the Spearheaders seem to be.
Oh and to give credit where credit’s due… AntZ in the comments is actually rational about this. He points out that it was 50/50 physical custody, that the man KILLED people and the MRM should not be involving themselves in this case and should be getting far away.
Oh and this is what I was originally looking for…
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/eight-people-dead-is-that-all/
Because Cassandra noted this isn’t the first time this has happened (murder in a custody battle) and it reminded me of one of the more disturbing and hilarious leaps of logic I’ve seen from MRAs:
keyster
Well then why don’t you ever hear about women involved in custody disputes going on shooting rampages? Because 9 times out of 10 they’re on the winning side, if they haven’t voluntarily relinquished custody.
Parents are apt to take pretty drastic measures to protect their children, regardless of sex. Pride and dignity are also immeasurable factors.
Yup, the lack of mothers killing people in custody battles is being used as PROOF that women win them all.
“One actually loved her child, the other only wanted the child as property.”
Well, hey, there is one way in which these guys have achieved something for fathers today – their existance has reminded me to email my dad and tell him how much I love him.
“Parents are apt to take pretty drastic measures to protect their children, regardless of sex. Pride and dignity are also immeasurable factors.”
And if the parent actually was attempting to protect their child from danger by, say, kidnapping them, then I might sympathise. But killing your kids is the exact opposite of protecting them, and “pride and dignity” are never valid reasons to kill anyone.
Also, that notice he went from “protect their children” to “pride and dignity” um.. no… the first is selfless, it’s about your children, the second is all about you… it says a lot that to him “pride and dignity” is worth killing people… i.e. “I feel humiliated that my property was taken from me, so I have the right to avenge my pride by killing people”
Also it says a lot that he equates children with “pride and dignity”… it’s the same thing with why the MRAs think you shouldn’t care about children you’ve raised if it turns out they don’t share your DNA… it’s all about them… their “pride”, their “dignity”… not the child, not caring about the child or loving the child, it’s what the child means to them, and what they feel the child means ABOUT them… it’s all about them…
May they and their mother rest in peace
I kind of wish David hadn’t included pictures of the kids. Every time I see those it makes me want to cry.
And now I’m going to check in on the nephew, who just adopted a kitty (his baby sister will be responsible for the kitty in about a year, when nephew goes off to college). I’ve known him since he was younger than those boys were, and he’s not even a blood relative, and still, even now, I feel protective towards him. The idea that anyone can interpret attacking small children with a hatchet as “protecting” them is really hard to comprehend, no matter how weird their political beliefs might be. It just doesn’t make any sense.
Pride and dignity are also immeasurable factors.
What a lot of hot air! But then again, what do I know. I’m an uppity arrogant feminist.
Elam just wants men to be able to beat and rape women and kids with impunity and without social or legal repercussions. As usual, he tries to excuse men’s violence based on some asinine concept that “men are just that way, so don’t blame them”. Same old, same old, from him.
Because the original post is too depressing to think about…who watches the Super Bowl in grim silence? And expects everyone at a party to do the same? Just watch it at home alone, dude.
@shaenon I’m guessing that when he talks (or when his male friends talk) he considers it ANALYSIS or MALE BONDING and when women talk it’s stupid frivolous chitter chatter or gossip -_-
It’s like the story about King Solomon and the two mothers who both claimed the child was theirs.
One actually loved her child, the other only wanted the child as property.
Ami, this is SO TRUE!!!