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James Boulware: Another male rage bomb goes off in Dallas

A mug shot of James Boulware from a previous arrest
A mug shot of James Boulware from a previous arrest

Last night, as you probably have heard, a Dallas man named James Boulware launched a one-man quasi-military assault on the Dallas Police Department headquarters, firing an automatic rife with such abandon that early reports suggested that there were as many as four different shooters. After fleeing the scene in an armored “Zombie Apocalypse Van,” leaving behind an assortment of improvised explosives as a kind of going away gift, Boulware was cornered in a restaurant parking lot; after a long standoff, he was eventually killed by a police sniper’s bullet. It was something of a miracle that no one but Boulware ended up dead.

Boulware’s father told local news that his son had been “pushed past” his “breaking point” after losing custody of his son. Men’s Rights activists often describe men who “resort to violence” after losing a custody dispute as victims of a cruel family court system.

But in Boulware’s case, it appears, nothing could be further from the truth. 

Because, you see, he lost custody of his son two years ago — after a violent incident that offered a chilling prequel to last night’s rampage. As the local NBC affiliate reported at the time

A Paris man was arrested after family members reported to authorities that they were concerned he could go on a shooting spree. …

Officers confiscated several guns from a Paris home, after arresting the owner. “There are four or five long guns and three or four pistols, tubs full of ammunition, and the body armor,” says Paris Police Chief Bob Hundley.

James Boulware, 33, allegedly grabbed and choked his mother in Dallas on Tuesday morning, and he has made other threats, police and family members said.

“That he was going to just kill all the adult members of the family and then that’s when he made the comment he may shoot up some churches and schools,” says Hundley.

“He had been talking about the schools and churches being soft targets, being easy targets because no one in them was armed,” a man who identified himself as Boulware’s brother “Andrew” said.

After this incident, a judge handed over custody of Boulware’s son to Boulware’s mother; it seems rather clear that the court was right to deem him unfit to care for the boy.

Further confounding the standard Men’s Rights narrative is the fact that the mother of the child, reportedly a drug addict, was also deemed unfit; both were ordered by the court to pay child support to Boulware’s mother.

Boulware was well-known to local police for this and other family disputes — as well as for repeatedly threatening the judge involved in his case.

Indeed, he littered Facebook and other websites with comments ranting about the alleged injustice done to him, alongside angry and often hateful attacks on “Comrad [sic] Obama” and the “fag loving, abortion have typical queer American brain washed troll[s]” who argued with him online. After a commenter called him “dumb” in one recent discussion of American foreign policy, Boulware declared that “I’M TRYING TO FIND OUT WHERE YOU LIVE SO I CAN DRAG YOU OUT OF YOUR TRAILOR AND BEAT YOUR BITCH A$$!!!!”

His conspiracy theories may have been driven by delusions; Boulware’s mother says her son “heard voices” and that she and other family members had tried in vain to get him the mental health treatment he needed.

After last night’s events, Boulware’s father told local media that, while he didn’t think what his son had done was right, “we all have a breaking point, and they pushed him past it.”

But Boulware, it seems fairly clear, was already plenty broken long before “the system” got to him. And no matter how sad or angry he was about losing custody of his son, nothing justifies a violent attack on innocent strangers with assault rifles and explosives. Most people, even if they were pushed far past their breaking point, wouldn’t respond with attempted mass murder. We are not all rage bombs waiting to go off.

And that’s when this post comes back around to the Men’s Rights movement. No, despite his anger at the police and courts for “taking away his kid,” and his penchant for calling people “BITCHES” in comments sections he doesn’t seem to have been a Men’s Rights activist.

But his was the kind of rage that Men’s Rights activists like to “warn” us all about; his violence was the sort of violence that MRAs all too often excuse.

I’ve written many times before about the way the Men’s Rights movement has lionized Tom Ball, a New Hampshire man who committed suicide several years ago by lighting himself on fire outside a court building — in hopes, as he explained in a long and inflammatory manifesto — of inspiring other men to start fire-bombing courthouses and police stations to avenge the wrongs allegedly inflicted on men by the family courts.

We’re lucky no one took him up on this suggestion, just as we are lucky today that no one except Boulware died in his assault on the Dallas police.

Boulware’s apparent mental illness, and the extreme nature of his assault on police, may keep him from becoming the MRA martyr that Ball became after his death. But MRAs have been willing to excuse if not justify similar violence in the past.

Consider, for example, “How we kill Johnny,” the story Men’s Rights celebrity Paul Elam has just posted to his new “consulting” site An Ear for Men.

In the story — presented as a true one — Elam describes his feelings upon learning of the murder-suicide of a young man he’d worked with as a substance abuse counselor. After a quick mention of the murder part of the murder-suicide — Johnny was said to have “killed that little girl he was married to” and shot, though not fatally, the man she was sleeping with — Elam moves on to the real victim, in his estimation: Johnny, the guy who pulled the trigger.

Johnny, as Elam sees it, was really only guilty of loving the woman he killed too much.

You see, men love. They love with the most profound intensity and selflessness of which any creature on this earth is capable. And the steely bond between them and women is, unlike their hearts, unbreakable. …

They will lay down in traffic for the women they love and stand in the way of bullets to protect them. 

Yes, that’s right. He’s waxing poetic about men protecting the women they love — in the middle of a story about a man who killed the woman he loved.

I hope, more than anything else, that at some point in our future that people start to think. When you see the story on the evening news about a man who set himself ablaze outside a family court, ask yourself what kind of pain could drive someone to cure it with fire?

I can only assume this is a reference to Ball, who hoped that men would rise up to avenge his pain with firebombs.

When you read in the newspaper about the man who holed up in his house with a gun and his children, threatening to take them all out, ask yourself if this is just a crazy man, or a man driven to the brink by a pain so monstrous and devastating that even the unthinkable could become an option?

The fact is we “read in the newspaper” and on the internet about men like this all the time. And they are virtually always men. Murder-suicide, while rare, is an overwhelmingly male crime. Women lose custody too — as did the mother of the child in Boulware’s case — but outside of a few exceptional cases they don’t react to this by trying to murder fathers or judges or an entire police departments at once. Men sometimes do.

Elam has in the past “warned” us all that unless we start kowtowing to angry men like him, and soon, we will create a massive “male bomb” that will tear apart society as we know it today.

But men — or at least the vast majority of them — aren’t rage bombs. Those men who do resort to extreme violence — like Boulware and all the men we read about who kill their partners and sometimes even their children before, as they say, “turning the gun on themselves” — aren’t the victims they and Men’s Rights activists would like us all to see them as. They’re the perps — invariably men with an overgrown sense of entitlement, too in love with their own rage.

Those who use these men as a “warning” to the rest of us are playing a very old game, perfected by domestic abusers and bullies of all sorts. Abusers and bullies learn very quickly that they don’t always have to use violence to get what they want; the threat of violence is enough. “Don’t push me,” they say, and the implicit threat of an “explosion” of rage does the rest, all while enabling the bully to pretend to be the victim.

The Men’s Rights movement, to a large extent, is all about taking that implicit threat to the societal level.

It’s up to us to keep them from getting away with it.

 

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Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Buttercup Q. Skullpants
9 years ago

@EJ – Make sure they’re endangered, otherwise you void the manufacturer’s warranty.

Luzbelitx
9 years ago

I don’t know how am I interneting right now. We don’t even have electricity here! And I have no computer!

fromafar2013
9 years ago

I don’t know how am I interneting right now. We don’t even have electricity here! And I have no computer!

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/a9/a910c10542c676c4d0b6ab052b628fce9e3b88c4ff6be6e08c8796b1deea13e1.jpg

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
9 years ago

How do you Third World people even internet? We here in the First World would never be able to complain about manspreading if our eagle-powered yachts didn’t have 10Gbps wifi.

sunnysombrera
9 years ago

Sorry for the delay.

*clears throat*

I say chap, you’re rather a daft twit aren’t you? When the fine fellows here at this blog have the decency to engage you in conversation you go hither and thither all over the place, then you express an assumption that everyone on the internet is one of those bloody Yanks. Well I sir, am from good old Blighty as we call it here wot wot, and may I remind you sah that Sir Alan Turing was a Brit and one of the fathers of artificial intelligence! That device you are typing on has its roots in Great Britain doncha know! *twirls moustache* Lashings! Ginger beer!

sunnysombrera
9 years ago

[football hooligan mode]

LISTEN ‘ERE YOU FACKING C*NT!! YEW CAN’T DEBATE, YEW CAN’T REASON, SO SHADDUP AND FACK ORF BACK TO AMERICA YOU FACKING T*AT!! I AIN’T BOVVERED ABOUT WHERE YEW ARE FROM!! I IS ENGLISH! YA ‘EAR? LAND OF ‘OPE AN’ GLORY!

FAAACK ORRRFFF! *two fingers up*

Wanker.

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
9 years ago

Magnificent!

sunnysombrera
9 years ago

I don’t think I can do Essex girl mode, sorry. I have no idea where to start. I’ll take those two pints though, thanks EJ. 🙂

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
9 years ago

If you’re somewhere near London I can get them to you; otherwise they’ll have to be internet pints.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
9 years ago

Oooh, can I give it a shot?

Um…

Well, of Keith lives in a city, I can call him a “flatlander” but, like, that’s pretty much it.

I can’t say there’s many insults in Nor Cal slang that I know of.

EJ (The Other One)
EJ (The Other One)
9 years ago

@Jackie:

I hear there’s lots of things you can say about people in NorCal.

“He doesn’t separate his recycling, if you know what I mean.”
“He prefers rocket to cale, if you know what I mean.”
“He didn’t go to see the Harvey Milk movie.”
“He still wears knitwear.”

isidore13
isidore13
9 years ago

ILU guys so much, this is brilliant.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

It’s hard to insult people in Minnesotan because we’re so darn polite, dontha know? I would instead have to offer Keith a hot dish followed by some bars for desert. Luckily, because I’m so restrained, I don’t have to hug him goodbye.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

I suppose I could passively aggressively insult Keith by offering him a plate of lutefisk and insisting oh so politely that he must eat it.
http://folklore.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/plate-of-lutefisk1.jpg

We can talk about the weather while he chokes it down.

sunnysombrera
9 years ago

@EJ
Eeee, I live in Devon. Internet pints it will have to be. ^^

sunnysombrera
9 years ago

@WWTH
I, uh.

I don’t know whether I should ask what that is or not. o_o

Paradoxical Intention
9 years ago

Good lord, that asshole’s still at it. Keith, for future reference, if you put the word “blockquote” between two angle brackets at the beginning of a quote, and then “/blockquote” between two angle brackets at the end of the quote, it makes your novellas much easier to read.

If you’re going to be commenting on WordPress, perhaps it would be pertinent to learn a bit of basic HTML. I know it’s hard for you older folk, but I’m sure you’d get the hang of it eventually.

Keith | June 17, 2015 at 5:09 am

Wrong. I disagree with people who think Kurt Cobain was a great musician (ask your parents about him), or those who think liver tastes good. We can disagree on such things and I can still acknowledge that it’s your personal tastes, if that’s what you like.

Calling something “irrational” is a strong indicator you either don’t understand it or don’t agree with it.

For fuck’s sake, old man, words mean things, and context is a thing. Learn reading comprehension.

Making irrational statements on political matters, on the other hand, has implications beyond merely expressing opinions. Tearing down basic tenets of due process, whether it’s rape accusations against students, or poor people carrying large amounts of cash on highways, results in innocent people suffering unjustly. That I don’t like such injustices isn’t the reason to oppose them. Their unfairness and the resulting abridgement of rights is the reason to oppose them.

“Abridgement” of whose rights, exactly?

Are you really implying that someone saying “I was raped” is somehow an “abridgement” of the accused rapists’ rights? Really?

And how does “poor people carrying large amounts of cash on highways” result in “abridgement of rights”?

What is this word salad?

“… logic is the only thing you seem to think we should make decisions on, apparently.”

Absolutely. Making political decisions based upon emotions or whims is ridiculous.

“Emotions” and “whims” are two different things, Keith.

You can be emotional about a subject and still want to make laws about it. I’m a rape survivor, so I’m very passionate about getting better laws in place to protect rape victims/survivors.

Does that mean you think I shouldn’t advocate for such things because I’m using emotions as well as my logic that “rape is a terrible thing that I experienced and should never happen to anyone ever”?

Toxic masculinity in action, right here.

“Fine, but the “Muslims are violent and engage in threatening protests” are quite the itty bitty minority, just for reference.”

Not small enough. The number of Muslims who agree with the violent groups is disheartening.

Really? Do you have a census of all the Muslims who agree with them? I’d be happy to see it.

Having a face-to-face conversation with a man who told me that Hitler didn’t go far enough, a man who by all outward appearances is a “moderate” in a respectable position in the US, made me quite skeptical of the “tiny minority” claims. The only other person I know who praised Hitler was a neighbor in college who was from Serbia, IIRC.

Yup, because referring to conversations you had with nameless people I don’t care about is totally the way to get me to believe you.

“You referred to “gays”, and I corrected you saying that that’s not an acceptable term to refer to people of other sexual orientations as a whole.”

I wasn’t referring “to people of other sexual orientations as a whole.” I made reference to people murdered by Muslim theocracies for being accused of engaging in homosexual acts.

And I told you to not to refer to those people as “the gays” because it’s fucking rude you self-important jackwagon.

Please read my comments before you make a further ass of yourself.

Ridiculous over-sensitive language policing is just stupid.

It’s not “over-sensitive language policing”, it’s just factually wrong.

All gay people are queer, but not all queer people are gay. “Gay” only refers to men who are homosexual.

If you’re going to be referring to a group I belong to, please fucking use the right terminology. I’m not a man who is attracted to other men, therefore I’m not gay.

Fuck off.

There are far, far more important matters at hand.

Like writing racist, sexist novellas all over a feminist forum to bore me to tears? Congrats, you’ve done so much with your life.

“Perhaps if you’d learn to listen to someone who doesn’t share all of your characteristics, you might learn a thing or two and not be such a self-righteous shitweasel.”

More impertinence. What makes you think I haven’t had discussions with people of different orientations, since you were just a baby? You’re so presumptuous.

I never said you haven’t had discussions with people of different orientations, you’re having one right now with me, in case you haven’t been paying attention.

What I said was you don’t fucking listen. You only get into discussions to hear yourself pontificate, not to actually have a discussion.

“…slurs and stereotypes referring to Islamic people still fall under the category of “racism”.”

No, they don’t, because Islam isn’t a race. You acknowledged that. The term “racism” means a belief that one race is superior to another. Muslims are all different colors and ethnicities.

Religion isn’t a genetic attribute. I’ll gladly mock religious ideas because they are ridiculous. I’m not mocking people for how they act, but for what they believe.

Ah, you’re a self-righteous atheist then. Gotcha.

Hate to break it to you, but you can make racist slurs against people who belong to a religion. “Kike” is a racist slur against Jewish people for example.

“…America is Third World….”

No, it isn’t. Just stop.

Yes it fucking is. America’s only been around for a couple of centuries, countries overseas (Especially in the Middle East) have been around for millennia. The good ol’ US of A is an infant country compared to them.

Why the fuck are we supposedly superior to those countries? Why the fuck are we “first world”, if not because of some classist bullshit that we really can’t even claim anymore with how much debt we’re in?

“Secondly, what makes you think that people in the so-called “Third World” don’t have some of the same problems we do?”

Really, just shut up. You’re digging yourself deeper.

I think that a woman who is treated like chattel in Saudi Arabia, who knows that if she is raped she can be executed for adultery, who can’t drive a car, who can’t leave her home without an escort, would love to only have the problems of the First Worlders, such as those in the US who whinge about “microaggressions.”

And here you go with the Oppression Olympics again.

Why the fuck are you assuming that every single Islamic woman is treated this way?

Yes, when they are treated this way, it’s bad, but what makes you think that these are the only problems they face? Or that they need us good white folk to come “save” them? Or that they would want me to drop everything to come and do so?

I support and want to help these women, not lord over them with a “Great White Savior” complex.

“Because [Third World people] [watch TV and read magazines and get cattcalled].. And it’s really fucking ignorant (and let’s face it, racist) of you to assume they don’t.”

Except I don’t assume they don’t. I’ve lived overseas and I’ve known many people from Third World countries, with whom I’ve had conversations comparing life there to here. So, quit with your ridiculous straw man arguments.

No, you quit with your bullshit stereotyping.

You can’t have possibly spoken to every single person on this planet. You’re making sweeping statements about an entire culture based on events that were probably years ago, if they even happened. Because let’s face it: Some dude on the internet telling me how cultured he is while he’s making sweeping generalizations isn’t convincing.

Trying to say that people in “Third World Countries” have it much worse than we do, so everything we care about and any problems we have is irrelevant is so fucking ignorant it hurts.

If you want to go help those poor women in the “third world”, then why the fuck are you here trying to convince me you’re this cultured, superior individual?

The fact is that what people complain about here in the US, in the First World, are often trivialities that people in the Third World regard as insignificant by comparison to their major problems, which we don’t face. Yammer out another lame accusation of “racism” if you like, but I’m mocking you and the more shrill SJWs for getting so caught up in relatively trivial matters.

Yep, because people in the “Third World” don’t have the same problems we do with sexism and the like because Keith, in all his infinite wisdom, said so! So us silly “shrill SJWs” should just shut up about women being murdered for telling men they don’t want to go out with them, women being raped, men not getting the mental health they need because they were taught that asking for help is weak and therefore “feminine”, etc.

Yup. We shouldn’t care about any of that, because other people have it worse! How selfish we are for caring about being murdered or raped in the United States when other people have it worse than we do!

[/sarcasm]

Learn from this humiliation and be a better person.

http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1334900927622_2306143.png

Yup, you totes humiliated me. A racist, sexist, self-important rando on the internet insisting I’m wrong about everything because his one friend that he totes has overseas says that everything over there is terrible and they wish they could live like us white folk, and I should be grateful that women are not being threatened with murder or rape all the time just for existing on the internet and expressing opinions.

Oh wait.

“One, if Muslim women are wearing burquas, or any other religious garment, of their own free will, why is this a problem?”

Oh, you’re one of those, who apologize for the oppression by male Muslims by pretending the women choose to be uncomfortable. Many wear such garb out of fear. I recently watched a video of some ISIS thug shooting a woman in the head because her hijab wasn’t modest enough for his liking.

Why the fuck do you think that every single Muslim woman is being forced to wear religious clothing?

There are lots of Muslim women who freely choose to wear the burqua or hijab.

And so what you watched that video? What the fuck does that prove, beyond the fact that ISIS members are shooting women for not doing things exactly the way they want them to?

It doesn’t prove that she was forced to wear it in the first place.

Stop making excuses for mass misogyny!

Stop making excuses for your racist Great White Savior complex!

“How does that make them any different than, say, Catholic nuns? ”

Who beats or kills nuns for not wearing head covering? Also, notice that most modern nuns, at least in the US, no longer dress that way.

No one. That’s the point. We mock Muslim women for wearing their relgious garb, and claim that they need to be “liberated” from it.

And yet, we don’t do the same for Nuns. We understand that they made a choice to wear it in their quest to serve God.

You need to understand that not every woman wearing an Islamic garb is being forced to wear it. It’s a stupid and dangerous stereotype, and it’s based on bullshit that white people feed to other white people.

And I beg to differ on the “modern nuns” bit.
_________________________________________

So, now that Keith has demonstrated that he has no desire to talk like an adult, but rather a cantankerous child with a dictionary shoved down their throat and the mannerisms of a grumpy old man, I’m ending this discussion here.

It’s clear that you have no respect for me, or have a desire to actually read and comprehend anything I have to say if I’m not bowing down and admitting your superiority.

You’ve shown a blatant disrespect for anything anyone else here has had to say, and I’m done with you.

Go fuck off back to a Fox News forum, Keith.

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
9 years ago

*giggles madly*

Paradoxical Intention
9 years ago

Goddamnit, blockquote mammoth.

My comment’s in moderation, but I’m not typing all that shit out again. So deal, Keith.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
9 years ago

@EJ

Most of the insults I know are for fucking flatlander that come fucking wine tasting, going 20 mph on a 50 mph highway, slowing down at every fucking winery (which there is a lot of), sudedenly alowing down and not fucking using their blinkers to turn.

Other than that, I use normal English to insult people.

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
9 years ago

… WAIT, DEVON, WHAT.

*paleonerds the fuck out*

Lucky. XD

Paradoxical Intention
9 years ago

My previous comment is in moderation, but I fucked up the blockquote on the first bit.

Keith’s just gonna have to deal, because I’m done with this roundabout conversation with a crantankerous, self-important shitweasel who was to silence women because he doesn’t think our problems are important enough because racist stereotypes.

Fuck off back to Fox News, Keith.

Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
Pandapool -- The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me "Banana", "Jackie" or whatever)
9 years ago

Paradoxical, you know some Nor Cal insults, right? o3o

Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
9 years ago

Erm, shit, I shouldn’t have said “Madly.” Replace with “Giggles head off.” My bad. ^^;

Paradoxical Intention
9 years ago

Pandapool — The Species that Endangers YOU (aka Banana Jackie Cake, for those who still want to call me “Banana”, “Jackie” or whatever) | June 17, 2015 at 4:13 pm
Paradoxical, you know some Nor Cal insults, right? o3o

I should, but the funny thing is, I can’t really remember any of them.

I know jokes poking fun at Californians in general, but no NorCal insults.