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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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sunnysombrera
9 years ago

On that note, seeing that Return Of Kings post where the writer claimed the original purpose of sexual intercourse was to make women submissive to their male masters

Da fuq?! Cite please through DoNotLink. Not that I don’t believe you, such a post is typical of ROK, but this is something I want to see for myself. Wow…

Luzbelitx
9 years ago

Though personally, I don’t agree with the specific phrase “Teach Men Not To Rape” because the real issue is that while men know that the concept that is called Rape is wrong, they might still commit rape if the act isn’t called rape (such as having sex with a person who’s passed-out or coercing someone into sex). We also need to address that a lot of guys don’t know what is and is not consensual

Well, this is exactly what “teaching men not to rape” means!

To create a culture in which no one can muddy the waters regarding consent because men are not told that testing women’s boundaries is okay, were they are not shown that women are sexually available objects to be taken.

A culture in which rules of consent are clear and well-known, men cannot argue they “don’t know” what rape is.

This probably wouldn’t solve rape in itself, but it will make real rapists come to light and not be able to hide behind most people’s (especially men’s) ignorance and prejudices.

But the sex-negative RadFems tend to go too far in the opposite direction, essentially becoming the straw feminist that we often try to fight against, claiming that anything a woman does that conforms to more traditional ideas of women’s gender norms is done out of societal coercion. Of course, some of them, such as Katharine MacKinnon, go as far as to say that even the act of sexual intercourse is something No True Woman would enjoy.

Well, I really don’t think that’s actually the strawfeinist stereotype MRAS push for.

Of course a radically unusual view of sexual violence will sound… well, radical.

Women have been kept as ignorant as possible of options other than submissive heterosexuality, and ahave been discouraged to even think of other options through violence, since the beginning of time.

Really, we have milennia-old documents proving men treated women as little more than livestock.

To think this has no impact on society and women’s identities, is as much as saying women are not human.

Humans are deeply affected by stuff like this.

The question is, if we removed the veil of ignorance and the threat of violence, what would women be like?

It’s really, really hard to believe the change would be a small one.

It makes me wonder how different MRAs really are from RadFems in some respects. Neither seem to have a very positive view of men’s ability to control rapist urges, neither have much respect for male rape victims, and they tend to be transphobic as hell.

RadFems state there is a system of violence imposed on women to accept men’s worldview in spite of their own interests.

Saying “all PIV sex is rape” (even if it’s a cartoon of real Radical Feminists) is hardly a matter of me’s ability to control themselves: it has to do with how society was built.

As for the last two, it makes me think you don’t really understand how radical feminism works.

I suggest you ask some questions instead of guessing: there are some of us here who can answer RadFem questions using the first person, you know?

Luzbelitx
9 years ago

OMG, is this some sort of Reverse-Blockquote Mammoth I’m beholding?

Ok, the first paragraph there should be a blockquote and the rest… well… I hope you’ll be able to figure it out. 0:)

delete tinder
9 years ago

No dummy…Being a Mentally ill Psycho, Randomly shooting up Police Stations and threating to do the same to schools and churches, DOESN’T do anything to slow down the growing Police State. It just solidifies it. This idiot will now be used as a posterboy to enact even more unconstitutional laws and enact even MORE Police Powers.

Are you really that stupid, or just a troll?

Grace Alexander
9 years ago

I’m from Dallas originally, and just found out about this a few minutes ago when our neighbor here in our new home of Uruguay asked me if I had heard. That’s how quickly I got out of touch with US news (we’ve been here just over 2.5 weeks).

I wish I could say I’m gobsmacked by the reactions, but this is becoming typical. Any man who goes on a murderous rampage is automatically assumed to be driven to it by a woman. Just like we make them rape us, kill us, beat us, get mad at us, lose their jobs, lose their self respect – FFS.

I’m simply more glad than ever to be removed from the worst of it. I haven’t had a single man say something disgusting to me when I walk downtown here since I arrived. Not ONCE. And I go down the Rambla almost every day. They just don’t DO that here. The one man who was bullyish and rude was a Russian guy (and I’m quite certain that had a lot to do with the fact that I was out with my fiancee – also female).

I’m glad no-one else was killed. That’s almost unbelievable.

Aunt Edna
Aunt Edna
9 years ago

Far from it being in ‘poor taste,’ David, I see this piece, like the other ones where you thoughtfully and at length dissect the connections between the culturally sanctioned ‘new’ misogyny, aggrieved entitlement, and male violence, to be examples of your best work.

creepy cupcake
creepy cupcake
9 years ago

A part of me still can’t help but sympathise with people like this. The world must be a horrid place for a person who is so angry and hateful and has no self control.

Neurite
Neurite
9 years ago

Mew York Kitty:

“I do like the cat presence though, and I’m trying to understand why MRAs are so anti-cat and why feminists here seem to be so pro-cat.”

I think a lot of it, at least on the MRA side, has to do with how much “cats” are coded “female” in our society, while dogs are coded “male”. (Nobody stereotypes unmarried women as turning into “dog ladies,” for one.)

A great series of posts/conversation on that coding, and its implications:
http://cleolinda.tumblr.com/post/120285373509/kateordie-egadsy-dammit-cas

A lot of the pro-kitty-ness here, in turn, mostly has to do with mocking MRA’s anti-cat sentiments – it lightens up the discussions and it makes the trolls so deliciously angry.

Neurite
Neurite
9 years ago

Argh why did it embed? Sorry everyone, I just meant to post the link. Hope it’s not too disruptive.

weirwoodtreehugger
9 years ago

I think a lot of it, at least on the MRA side, has to do with how much “cats” are coded “female” in our society, while dogs are coded “male”. (Nobody stereotypes unmarried women as turning into “dog ladies,” for one.)

Which is funny because I’ve actually met quite a few single older women who are really into their dogs, treat their dogs like their children and bring them everywhere. I’ve met quite a few single older men who are like this with their dogs as well. Yet nobody seems to think it’s weird, funny, or crazy for men to be obsessive with their pets.

One thing I love about being a cat person is that it weeds out assholes. I have no beef with people who are team dog, but men who hate cats and think women who love cats are “crazy” are always misogynists tools and I’m glad to wilt their boners.

makroth
makroth
9 years ago

Hhhhhhmmmmmmm… ”Batman and Dogwoman: Uneasy Allies”

How well would that work?

Bernardo Soares
Bernardo Soares
9 years ago

I get the impression that the dog/cat gendering has to do with this alpha shit. People think that with a dog, you have to have an authoritarian relationship. I actually once had a serious discussion with friends about whether, as antiauthoritarian commies and anarchists, we should prefer cats to dogs as pets…

Anyway, I’ve seen to many men harassing their dogs because they thought the dog has to “listen”, while not realising that their dog usually wasn’t so stupid as to not realise that they were just arbitrarily shouting commands at them. My dad used to do that all the time, and he never understood that our dog was always listening to me (as opposed to him) because he knew that when I called him, I had a reason, and that I’d leave him alone otherwise.

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

I actually once had a serious discussion with friends about whether, as antiauthoritarian commies and anarchists, we should prefer cats to dogs as pets…

Surely as an anarchist you should do as you please in the matter?

Film Runner
9 years ago

That bit from Elam about ‘loving too much’ is making me wonder what these guys define as love? What is it that they feel so strongly about that the idea of a woman leaving them is seen as a driving force to violence?

Ellesar
Ellesar
9 years ago

I am a dog woman (Jeanette Winterson anyone?). I don’t hate cats, but dogs are the dogs! (English vernacular here, the full phrase is ‘the dogs bollocks’ and it is a positive thing!)

I will make the suggestion that drugs may have been an issue here too – as it seems unlikely that Boulware’s ex partner would have a significant drug problems, and that he would not at least be a regular user of something pretty unhealthy.

I would like to echo the person who mentioned the welfare of the child – hoping that grandpa is not too interested, as he sounds like an angry blamer too, and it seems likely that grandma would have had some pretty good reasons for not being married to him anymore. Hopefully mum can pull herself together enough to parent again before he is grown.

Anyway, I am cringing every time a non regular is using the term ‘crazy’ or variations thereof – I wish that peeps would read the thread in entirety, or at least acquaint themselves with the culture here.

Mew York Kitty (@CCMSparkster)

@sunnysombrera I linked to the WeHuntedTheMammoth article that quotes the ROK article where some horrible probable rapist claims that he can’t use PIV to subjugate women anymore, so he has to do anal in order to feel like he’s subjugated his girlfriend. However, he realized that his girlfriend was actually into anal, so he didn’t know what to do.

@neurite Though also, I thought the internet at large was far more pro-cat than pro-dog, and the only pro-dog side of the internet was the Manosphere. I’m guessing it has to do with cats being associated with nonconformity, individualism, and not giving a shit about others. That’s why lolcats are so popular but loldogs are barely existent.

Also, as far as I know, you can’t be a Certified Alpha (TM) if you own a Pomeranian, Pug, or Yorkshire Terrier. So it’s not just having to be a dog person but being into big dogs traditionally thought to be “hostile” and “vicious” like pitbulls and dobermans.

Also, Hitler had a dog, while Lenin had a cat. Then again, Lenin isn’t exactly the best representative of Leftism to say the least.

But the IWW is very pro-cat, adopting the black cat as more or less its mascot.

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0489/4081/products/anarchist-cat-owie-to-one-owie-to-all-decal_1024x1024.jpg?v=1408967206comment image

Mew York Kitty (@CCMSparkster)

@EJ Of course you can do either as an anti-authoritarian leftist because the cultural associations of dogs and cats are social constructs. Besides, what about Shiba Inus? Doge is basically a lolcat now and Shibes are cute, so I’m guessing the Manosphere wouldn’t be too much into Doge stuff.

Also, as I said before, plenty of dog breeds wouldn’t be considered alpha enough for the alfalfa males, namely anything that’s cute and/or can fit in your lap.

But then, what if the Certified Alpha breeds like German Shepherd are bred to be cuddly and friendly?
#MindBlown

Bernardo Soares
Bernardo Soares
9 years ago

@EJ: 😀

It was a ridiculous discussion. But as some of my friends were flirting with anti-speciesism, the topic was more contentious than you’d think.

@Mew York Kitty
I always thought that the IWW-cat comes from the phrase “wildcat strike”? Wikipedia actually cites an anecdote about a cat that was adopted as a mascot after its appearance coincided with a turnaround of a strike.

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

@WWTH

I miss having a cat. I love my dog but I also need a cat.

I NEED BOTH GODDAMNIT! I LOVE BOTH! WHY AREN’T THEIR MORE CATDOG PEOPLE?!

INCOHERENT YELLING FOR NOT REASON!

NothingClever
NothingClever
9 years ago

Regarding the alpha thing. I was doing research for a werewolf novel I’m writing and I came across this article. (Please, o internet lord, let that format properly.)

Apparently, not only are humans not wolves, but wolves aren’t even wolves. What’s an alpha to do?

Mew York Kitty (@CCMSparkster)

@Pandapool Speaking of, when will science make CatDog real?
@Bernardo Yes, that’s true, but obviously the IWW were up to something when they realized that a century later, cats would make up as much of the internet as porn and vitriolic hate speech. XD

Bernardo Soares
Bernardo Soares
9 years ago

@Mew York Kitty: You might be onto something. Hasn’t the IWW made a bit of a comeback in recent years? I know that the German part of the FAU is actually growing. This is a curious correlation… 😉

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

@NothingClever

During the 1930s and 1940s, Schenkel studied captive wolves in Switzerland’s Zoo Basel, attempting to identify a “sociology of the wolf.”

Something seems wrong here, something very scientifically wrong…

AllisonW
AllisonW
9 years ago

Mew York Kitty: this is a nitpick, but Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin are examples of radical feminists that aren’t trans-exclusive. Andrea Dworkin believed that transgender health care should be covered by insurance, and Catherine MacKinnon recently did a fairly friendly interview with TransAdvocate.com. Which isn’t to say there aren’t quite a few transphobic radical feminists out there, but there are a lot of transphobes in lots of populations. There are other things I disagree with them on, like their often cringe-worthy views on sex workers, but they aren’t exactly TERFs. (Full disclosure: I don’t consider myself a radical, for many reasons.)

Also, on the cats thing, is it just me or does everyone seem to forget that cats are highly lethal predators who’ve been estimated to be behind, what, twenty or thirty percent of human-civilisation-related wildlife deaths? Then again, humans are also highly lethal predators, so I suppose it makes sense that we’d empathise with them.

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

@NothingClever

That article made me sad. There wasn’t one peep about Farley Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf. The man lived with artic wolves and studied them for his novel and found all the family relationships, wolf behavior and hunting/scavanging strageties back in the 60s/70s. He might not have been a proper scientist, but still.

Never Cry Wolf is a great book to read if you’re writing about werewolves, BTW.

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