So there was a bit of ugliness over on the Men’s Rights subreddit the other day. No, scratch that; there was a giant explosion of ugliness.
A couple of days ago, you see, a Redditor with a nine-day-old account posted a story to r/menrights detailing the alleged ill-treatment he’d gotten at the hands of a vengeful ex-wife and an unsympathetic family court system. The story was filled with literally unbelievable details – among other things, he claimed to have been rendered homeless by the demands of the court, forced to pay $1000 a month in spousal support to his ex though she had a $60,000 a year job. Some commenters challenged the veracity of the tale – while the OP gave a case number in his post, no one has been able to find evidence that a case with that number actually exists. (The OP has not responded to the skeptics.)
But most of the respondents assumed the story was true. And why not? It seemed to reinforce every paranoid MRA fantasy of evil women and courts out of control. Despite its fishiness, the post got more than 700 net upvotes.
And that’s where the ugliness began. Not content to merely offer the man sympathy and advice, many commenters started talking murder, and some of the most violent comments got dozens of upvotes.
While these particular comments were deleted by the mods (you can find them in the comment histories of Volcris and graffiti81, where you’ll see they each got many more upvotes than shown above before they were deleted), other violent comments remained up, many of them receiving upvotes as well. Here are some screenshots of some of them.
Here’s PacoBedejo, with nearly two dozen net upvotes for a comment seconding the burn-them-and-kill-them suggestion.
Speaking of arson and murder, here’s ErasmusMRA offering a not-quite-endorsement of the terrorist manifesto of Thomas Ball, an MRA who burned himself to death in front of a New Hampshire courthouse in hopes that his death would inspire other men to firebomb courthouses and police stations in protest of allegedly anti-male courts.
Here’s wazooasiteverwas relating the allegedly true story of a friend who solved the problem of an unfair divorce settlement with double murder:
What a shock that the alleged double murder has given the kids a “bad impression” of their dad.
This comment from Synackaon’s directly advocating murder was downvoted and deleted. (You can still find it in his comment history.)
Yet this comment of his offering an only slightly veiled advocacy of violence remains up, and has gotten dozens of upvotes:
I didn’t get to this now-deleted comment in time to get a screenshot, though one Redditor memorialized its (alleged) content in a post on the Circlebroke subreddit:
TheIrish7 tries to avoid the charge of misogyny by not-quite-justifying gender-neutral violence:
Arx0s contends that if he were in a similar situation he would stop short of actual murder:
This strange and elusive comment from Syn_Ick seems to suggest that the Men’s Rights movement can’t succeed unless and until it becomes socially acceptable for men to physically assault women.
There are many more such comments in the thread; I don’t have have the time or the patience to screencap and post them all. You can find more collected in r/againstmensrights, or by going through the thread itself.
Now, not all of those advocating (or not-quite-advocating) violence or murder in this thread are r/mensrights regulars. But some of the worst comments come from one very active r/mensrights commenter who has advocated violence against family court judges in the past: Demonspawn. (I’ve written about his threatening remarks in the past here and here.) Here are some of his contributions to the, er, debate (Each comment is from a different part of the thread; click on the images to go to each original comment in context.)
Given that advocating violence is against the rules in r/mensrights, and that Demonspawn has been advocating violence fairly regularly for some time, you might wonder why he is still allowed to post in the subreddit. I sent a note to the Men’s Rights mods, and got this response from the top mod:
This gives you some idea of how seriously the mods or r/mensrights take the issue of violence.
The phrase “digging your own hole” comes to mind.
If you want to see what happens when people turn to violence to “solve” disputes with partners or exes, see here.
(Thanks to Cloudiah for the first screenshot and for pointing me to many of the other comments linked to here.)
@Princessbonbon
Is the doctor’s name Monty?
No wonder he’s so chuffed about his microwaving abilities! All this uber-modern technology …
Uh, DaPoet, you came here. No one invited you.
He’s.. he’s like Owly 2.0.
Say, those who know Pell’s style, d’you think this nincompoop is one of his sockpuppets? Dragging out the old hysteria line sounds like Pell when he was on his “us doctors in mental asylums totally stick pins under patients’ fingernails” schtick.
@Kitteh’s
That’s what I just insinuated… *detectiving face*
@thenatfantastic
I missed that! I wasn’t around during the Uncle Monty phase. Was that one of Pell’s? I had the vague impression he had something to do with Owly.
Or maybe they’re all one big happy family.
Providing even the shakiest evidence for his claims isn’t Pell’s style. I’m siding with the time-traveling-doctor-from-the-19th-century theory.
Uncle Monty was when Pell tried to post a picture to prove how sexy he was. He said the picture was from ‘about 25 years ago’ (1987). It was in black and white, and was in fact a poster of Montgomery Clift from the mid-1950s. When called on this he said ‘OHHHH YEAAAAAAHHH… that’s a picture of my Uncle Monty. We look so alike that I totes mixed it up’.
It was kind of beautiful.
Pell likes to ride different hobby horses, likes to wear false personae on his sleeve, and has a different writing style. Having spotted Pell before, I don’t think it’s him. That would change if he starts writing some of his hackneyed, rhythmless poems about “mature orgasms.”
I wish these guys would get consistent–abortion would be better than the “financial rape” of child support, amirite?
Having an 1880s doctor would be a lot more entertaining at least.
I don’t think this is Pell.
Damn. I better finish up the MB bingo cards, because someone surely would have gotten a bingo from DaPoet’s last few comments.
But then how would they have the ability to whine about their exes expecting them to pony up support for their children?
Montgomory Clift ROFLMAO! Priceless, priceless.
Righto, so this is some other nitwit. The time travelling doctor bit is definitely worth it, though. I’m betting he’s the sort of quack who’d be pushing this sort of thing.
@Kitteh, You can see the whole story of Pell, with footnotes, here. It’s well worth a read.
Thank ‘ee kindly, Cloudiah! 🙂
Oh, that biography is perfect!
You’re right, there’s no excuse for suggesting murder.
As a fellow in a nasty divorce, I may be angry, but there’s really no room for that kind of talk.
It’s unfortunate but true, however, that there are quite a few guys who end up living off ramen noodles in squalid conditions because the wife got the house and the kids and the fellow has to pay child support. This is what is known as an “amicable” divorce.
I’m lucky. I raised our children for nine years, from infancy, while my wife started her business and worked 70 hours a week for most of the childrens’ lives. I have mounds of proof and neighbor and friends willing to testify that I’ve been the home keeper and the primary caregiver of the children………
………and for that I get 50% custody in the eyes of the court. 50% custody for a man is what is known as a “contentious” divorce. Because you have to fight for it. Even if you literally raised the children from infancy.
Woman have it pretty rough in our society. One of the few places they have a pretty hefty advantage is in divorce court. They assume that since you wear a skirt, you must be the care giver of the children.
To be fair to the courts, of course…most go by a standard model. Put yourself in the place of a judge……they don’t want to decide where the kids go. They’d rather eat glass. So they defer the whole thing to the friend of the court who uses a standard model. The friend of the court sees no evidence, hears no testimony…their job is to make a model-based decision so the judge doesn’t have to deal with it.
Most of the time both parties just want to get the divorce crap over with. So the guy just says “Okay, whatever….” and the woman then gets the kids. getting the kids then means the guy pays child support. A LOT of it. It seems unbelievable, but it’s true
So your wife got primary custody of the kids….that means she was also awarded the house (the “custodial environment”). So As the father who was booted from the house and lost time with the kids, you still need to pay for the house AND pay for supporting the kids. So MOST of your income actually goes toward that. It’s quite common, and very unfair. More men need to know what they’re getting into when they agree to letting the mother have primary custody and the home.
….this is what comes of not fighting for shared and equal parental time and just letting the court system take over. The court system HATES dealing with these decisions and they’ll use cold blooded, thoughtless models as much as possible to wash their hands of responsibility and….work. It’s still very common in many parts of the country for courts to just blindly grant women primary custody with very little basis in terms of who raised the kids.