Today, in the Men’s Rights subreddit, we find Demonspawn, a long-time fixture in Reddit’s MRA circles, getting dozens of upvotes for a comment in which he advocates murdering family court judges and other government officials:
Demonspawn is responding to a post from Robert Franklin on Fathers and Families about Dan Brewington, “[a]n Indiana man fac[ing] five years in prison because he criticized the judge and the custody evaluator in his divorce and custody case.”
Or at least that’s how Franklin wants to frame the issue. While conceding that Brewington “often used intemperate language” on his blog, Franklin downplays what seems to have been a relentless four-year harassment campaign from the troubled father. According to a report on the case on the Eagle Country Online website:
[P]rosecutors argued that Brewington took his postings beyond being critical of the court system. They became personal against anybody who became involved with his case.
“This was sick revenge dragging my wife and kids into the matter,” Humphrey said during his testimony. “I don’t know of many cases where a subject has more clearly expressed his intent to do harm.” …
Brewington … called [custody evaluator Edward] Connor a child molester and prostitute in his “Internet rampage,” contacted the Children’s Home of Northern Kentucky where Conner is involved as a board member, and sending mass e-mails to Connor’s colleagues and legal professional around the area. …
Connor’s wife, Dr. Sara Jones-Connor, reaffirmed what her husband shared with the judge.
“For over four years we have dealt with his attacks on a daily basis,” Jones-Conner said.
And Franklin leaves out the most serious of the accusations against Brewington: that he threatened to murder the judge.
Brewington’s cellmate at the Dearborn County Law Enforcement Center for two-and-a-half months, Joseph McCaleb, had sent a letter to jail officials on September 25 after being concerned with what he heard from Brewington.
“He talked about following (Judge Humphrey) home, shooting him, and dumping him in the river,” McCaleb said of Brewington’s alleged “detailed and thought out” plan.
I should note that after testifying that Brewington’s threats seemed serious, McCaleb later concluded that they weren’t; and Judge Brian Hill did not take his testimony into consideration when sentencing Brewington.
Was Brewington’s sentence fair? I don’t know. But Franklin’s posting was misleading, to say the least, if not dishonest. And while a few people raised questions about it, no one on the Men’s Rights subreddit bothered to spend the two minutes on Google that would have turned up the story I’ve been quoting from, instead relying entirely on Franklin’s, er, incomplete account.
Whether or not Brewington’s threats were sincere, Franklin’s post had Demonspawn and many others on the Men’s Rights subreddit thinking violent thoughts themselves. Here are some more selections from the discussion there. Note that every single violent comment I quote below got upvotes from the regulars.
Here, Boss_Money invokes the memory of Tom Ball, who killed himself in hopes that his dramatic suicide would encourage other MRAs to start firebombing courthouses and police stations:
Later in that same thread, coldacid suggests that suicide is a much less effective strategy than murder:
Anxdiety, meanwhile, shares his fantasies of violent “retribution.”
Boss_Monkey returns with a miniature manifesto for armed revolution:
And whats_up_doc suggests that violence may be the only solution:
The Men’s Rights subreddit is by and large the most “moderate” of all the major Men’s Rights forums online. But this is the language, and the thinking, of a hate movement. Anyone who really cares about improving life for men needs to call this kind of thing out, and make clear that it is completely unacceptable in any rights movement worthy of the name.
Perhaps not, but it’s not your disapproval that’s the decider~
Now go. Shag your imaginary girlfriend and win the approval of the imaginary MRA hordes XD
Having made money off of writing, you really don’t have the talent XD
Is steele still commenting here? After he’s stated no less than three times that he’s disgusted with all of us as individuals and is leaving? I thought three was the magic number where the story ends and he finally fucks off…
Giggling at the “honing my rhetorical skills against easy targets” though… If you have any rhetorical skills in the first place, you don’t practice against easy targets unless you want your ass handed to you against a hard target. And “honing rhetorical skills” =/= “repeated assertions that something is true and that one need not provide evidence for it.” And “honing rhetorical skills” is what you do when you’re completely uninterested in the actual answer and you just want to make your assertions look nice.
kirbywarp — Steele = Varpole, is yes, he’s still here
it’s not your disapproval that’s the decider
Well it’s not anyone’s, but I’m generally a good indicator. Not because I’m a straight honky dude, but because I’m quite intelligent.
Having made money off of writing, you really don’t have the talent XD
Have I not established this?! I did not develop the talent because of misandry.
is yes = so yes
damnit
which is funny, because all the practice he’s getting here isnt stopping mikey from sounding turgid and hyperactive
“…but because I’m quite intelligent.”
You keep saying that, we’ve yet to see any proof though.
@Argenti:
Yeah, I think I remember reading someone else make that connection as well…
He must really love work/his significant other, to keep commenting for 15 minutes after he said he needed to leave.
Regardless- I have indeed allotted too much of my free time to this place. Enjoy your vile hateblog.
plenty of people were told they shouldnt write and fought on in spite of their critics. if you couldnt hack it, its not feminisms fault, and all the cowardly excuses in the world wont change that.
but seriously, shouldnt you stop stalking this place so you can get ready for your ‘hot date’
wow, the ‘i have better things to do’ facade dropped away super quick there
Alright, serious question now. Is there, or has there ever been, a person who’s used the argument “because I’m intelligent,” and it was actually true? It’s like a reverse ad-hom. “I’m intelligent, therefore I’m right.”
the only question is has he be reading chaucer
You’re a wienie. Most of the writers whose books I buy don’t have university degrees. They’re writers. You don’t need a humanities degree to write, you just need to write well enough, and tell a good enough story, that people want to read your work.
Rather than hear criticism that could improve your work, you decided to take your ball and go home, and whine about how meanie, meanie, mean girls hurt your feelings, so you gave up your dreams, and blame women for all your problems. Wuss.
****
Over the years, I’ve read kijillions of accounts of The Difference Between Men and Women Is: and one of the common ones is that couples fight because women want to talk about their feelings while men want to fix the problem. They misunderstand each other, and thus fight.
So I’m watching this MRM bullshit, and they’re all about wanting to talk about their feelings (their negative feelings about women). Feminism is all about fixing the problems. The MRM doesn’t show any interest in fixing anything, they just want to bitch about the bitches.
I have no conclusion about this, it just makes me go “Huh”.
No, that’s skills. Skills are what you develop. Talent is what you had to start with. The sad thing is, this is post-college you, or so you say. You’ve presumably had some composition courses. You don’t have the talent to actually be good. That said, plenty of hacks *still* manage to make actual money writing; fuck, for as famous as they are, Tarzan and Star Wars were by and large hack jobs. Shit, have you even participated in NaNoWriMo? No matter how bad and unlucky you are, you could at least write for your own sense of gratification, if you wanted. Stephen King and I believe it was Rod Serling both listed the requisites to being a ‘real author’ as very low, and for damn good reason.
Speaking of those two, this is the ‘misandry’ of the publishing industry then? The one that told J.K. Rowling to initial her name because boys wouldn’t read a story by her? This is the misandry that prevented you from working? You are pathetic.
http://youtu.be/Fj3WBfRZ5Nc?t=43s
Bother, I’d meant to say “No, really, your disapproval is meaningless” to me under the first block quote. And that video was supposed to start at 0:43. “Stop. Don’t. Come back.” indeed.
re: Mr “I do crunches at work”
Isn’t he claiming to be some kind of professional?
That bit about crunching at work made me think about this article on a study of how executives spend their time:
Scroll down and read about the 20 hours of “miscellaneous” — it’s a hoot.
I was going to mock how Steele went from “the wage gap doesn’t exist” to “the wage gap exists but it isn’t a problem because it started when sexism actually existed” in like three posts, but I can’t stop laughing at his transparently desperate attempts to convince us that he’s a super cool dude.
And whose book was rejected by twelve publishing houses. She could’ve given up on the second or third rejection. She didn’t. Steele just doesn’t want to admit that he’s responsible for his lack of a career. The hustle to get your work out there is 95% of getting published. Writing is the easy part.
Hasn’t he been done replying to Rutee like 5 or 6 times now? Homeboy can’t even stick the flounce when it comes to a single poster. smh
… Are you being serious here?
Guys, please tell me he’s not being serious here.
(I’ve seen very similar posts from us lot, mostly in the sense of “I’m off to have awesome sex with my partner who, according to MRAs, does not exist.”)
Ok, but does Varpole/Steele have a high IQ?
Whoa, hey, hold back folks: he has a girlfriend. And a job! Clearly, we didn’t understand the Adonis we were going up against. Best quit now.
Is he attempting to make “I have a girlfriend” the new “I have black/gay friends”?
Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a wealthy industrialist, with a stable of hot, supermodel girlfriends. (Yes, it is true that I make them live in a stable, but let me assure you it has all the modern conveniences: running water, heated floors, fresh straw every day.)
I am about to make approximately 800 comments over the next four days, but I would like to counter in advance any arguments that I am obsessively concerned with this blog.
In the life of any fantastically successful businessman such as myself, there is a certain quantity of downtime. When I am at work in the penthouse of my personal Malaysian skyscraper and I am experiencing downtime, sometimes I may do 40 crunches. I may spend some time in my personal hyperbaric chamber preparing for my one-man ascent of Kangchenjunga. (Mt. Everest is SO overdone.) (When I say “one-man” that does not include my hot, supermodel sherpas. They are well cared for, and live in tents with all the modern conveniences: running water, heated floors, and all the yak milk they can drink.)
And sometimes I may pop onto Boobzland. As a wealthy, supremely intelligent urban professional, surely you agree that I am free to spend my time as I wish? You vile creatures. No doubt all of you are layabouts on welfare, sitting on crumb-infested couches and eating bon bons paid for by men’s tax dollars, so you don’t understand the concept of efficiency.
For my first comment, I would like to take on your vile complaints about women getting paid 70 cents on the dollar. False. You are both strawmanning and ad homming the
facts, with a side of the masked man fallacy to boot. According to numerous studies, well-educated, professional, childless, urban women working in high-paying jobs are
in fact earning very high pay. This proves that this problem does not even exist, and that it will end in 10 years. Vile hyenas.
When I was a tender-hearted lad, I expressed a desire to become a bestselling novelist. My teacher at the time, Gloria Steinham-Dworkin, stopped combing her leg hair and
burning her bras for a moment to take me aside and tell me that, because of feminism, men were no longer allowed to learn how to write. This is why I am now a member
of the Movement.
You vile warthogs.
Nothing that compares to this has ever happened to any woman, anywhere, and it completely destroyed my life. That is why I am now a wealthy industrialist, instead of a writer, and it is also why the bare rudiments of logic escape me. Feminism! A vile hate movement.
I am now sitting back in my solid gold Aeron chair, prepared to face the femi-comment onslaught. I am quite intelligent. I will prove that over the course of the 800 comments I will be making here.
But for now, I’m off. The hyperbaric chamber awaits. And then the stable of supermodels, who are grateful for my attentions, and for the fresh straw.
Clovis Asstrumpet
p.s. As I plan to do some seriously efficient sockpuppeting over the next few days, allow me to introduce you to some of my other names:
Mavis Rearviola
Fruvis Hindharp
Pervus Dorsalsaxophone
Titaniummmm
Alexander Steelpole
p.p.s. How dare you accuse me of sockpuppeting! You vile nematodes.
p.p.p.s. Rutee is a big poopyhead. POOOOOOPYHEAD.