Men’s Rights Activists love to “warn” women that they may soon face a day of reckoning if they don’t shape up and start acting the way MRAs think they should. Don’t make men angry, they say; you wouldn’t like us when we’re angry!
Still, most MRAs making these “predictions” at least make a token effort to pretend to be horrified at the notion of men rising up to wreak vengeance upon uppity women. This isn’t what we want, they assure women; it’s just what will happen if you continue to “provoke” men with your bad behavior.
Other MRAs find it impossible to contain their glee; like doomsday preppers with well-stocked bunkers and enough ammo to kill every living thing within a 500 mile radius, they can’t wait for the end of the world.
Peter Andrew Nolan is one of these other MRAs. And he’s started to celebrate a little bit early.
In a series of recent blog posts and Tweets, Nolan has heralded a number of murders of women at the hands of their exes in his native Australia as portents of a new age of antifeminist retribution. (Click on screenshots below to see archived versions of these Tweets.)
I’m sure actress Denise Richards was delighted to find the above in her Twitter notifications, sent as a reply to a Tweet of hers wishing her father a happy Father’s Day.
Several feminists who ended up in a discussion with him on Twitter were treated to the following.
As Nolan sees it, the murder of women in Australia and Ireland is now perfectly legal, as he has officially declared war upon both countries.
Nolan thinks politicians and police officers are also legitimate targets in his “war.”
And he assures us this “war” will continue until he is properly compensated for whatever terrible injustices he thinks have been done to him.
Now, Nolan’s “legal” claims are of course ludicrous, and he is obviously in no position to “release” any murderers of women in either Ireland or Australia.
But as bizarre as his arguments are, Nolan is no troll; as longtime readers of this blog know all too well, he’s deadly serious about all of this.
The man who used to call himself Peter-Andrew: Nolan©, but who now prefers to call himself Joschua-Brandon: Boehm©, is a follower of the exceedingly strange and dangerous Sovereign Citizen movement. He thinks the odd punctuation he’s added to his various names actually means something important, and he does indeed believe that he is at war with Ireland and Australia, that murdering women is legal in both countries, and that he has the right to enforce these claims of his as best he can.
Happily, he is not actually in either of these countries — last I heard, he’s in Germany, and as I understand it, he is barred from entering Ireland and possibly Australia as well. At least according to the laws that the rest of the world follows.
This isn’t the first time Nolan has justified or indeed celebrated violence against women. His declarations of “war” are not new. He’s offered some (barely) qualified praise for far-right mass murderer Anders Breivik, and at one point he warned any women thinking of commenting on his laughable Facebook ripoff MAN-BOOK that he just might just kill them for it.
But these recent Tweets are pretty brazen, even by his standards. He is clearly a threat to women, as well as to politicians and government employees regardless of gender.
H/T — @TheFirstPaige
NOTE TO COMMENTERS: Please avoid describing Nolan as “crazy,” or attempting to diagnose his mental health. Mental illness doesn’t cause hate. And please refrain from violent language, even when it is clearly metaphorical.
If men only murder because the evil wimminz drive them to it, why is it that men actually kill other men more often than they kill women. And how can women be viewed as enemy combatants when we only commit 5-10% of homicides, depending on the country?
It’s scary that men like this believe a woman being less than subservient to a man is the moral and ethical equivalent a man murdering a woman. Men like Nolan are the reason that famous Atwood quote is used so often.
@ Lea
I doubt the ableism is about excusing or absolving misogyny. Rather, people who make ableist statements consider mentally ill people to be responsible for their illness on some level.
I don’t think it’s realistic to expect misogynists to snap out of their hateful belief system without help, or just by having the moral weakness of their position pointed out to them by people they consider their ideological enemies. A lot of people seem to have the same intuition about this as I do, and this leads them to make the connection with a colloquial understanding of mental illness. It doesn’t help that many MRAs clearly have a tenuous grasp on reality at best.
@ sunnysombrera
I’m kind of with her on the asylum. Rehabilitation is exactly what MRAs and other violent extremists need. Their problems are not a form of mental illness, but they still need to be treated. Sometimes involuntarily, and often someplace where they can’t walk out freely – not unlike addicts. Language with ableist implications comes from ignorance and should be corrected, but in some cases the message itself is not necessarily ableist.
WWTH,
If even that. He’s white so I’m betting he’ll be one more “crazy” shooter and neither his politics nor his intensely hateful bigotry will be touted as factors.
I’m so glad his wife and kids were saved from him. He’d have killed them if he had that chance. I have no doubt.
Then it’s good thing no one here suggested that it was. 0.o
Um…addicts should not be locked up and bigots are not remotely like addicts.
Except for the denial part.
@Cassiopea
There is a place where people who intentionally kill people are (or should be, at least) put. Someplace they cannot just walk out of. It is called “jail.” Rehabilitation is a great idea, and our criminal justice system is terrible in a lot of ways, but treating violent extremism as a mental illness only stigmatizes the mentally ill. Let’s choose mentally ill people’s welfare over that of violent extremists, yes?
I’ve contacted a German feminist with this story who’s more knowledgeable with Twitter and better connected than I am. Maybe she can point to what can be done to alert German authorities and put some pressure on them. I found Nolans LinkedIn profile, which states that he lives in Mannheim.
As soon as I’ve heard from her, especially how to inform police in a way that they don’t immediately dismiss me because of Twitter or something like that, I’ll contact German authorities. David, have you archived the tweets?
@ Lea,
:p I didn’t mean to suggest anyone had suggested otherwise, it felt like a necessary statement in that context for the sake of clarity.
And I compared bigots to addicts only because they both need rehabilitation for something that is not a mental illness. Both may need to have their freedom restricted for the safety of others and their own, or to facilitate treatment. I guess I should have been clearer about this given that there probably are people out there who actually think addicts should be locked up even if they are not acutely dangerous to themselves or others: I don’t believe that. However, I do believe it’s helpful for addicts to have the option of voluntarily committing to a program they will then physically be prevented from leaving.
I like (no I don’t) how Nolan’s only in it until he gets what he wants, then he’s going to call it off. I bet his army of entitled crybabies would listen, too (no I don’t).
reported to FBI
“I still can’t figure out why so many of them throw tantrums. Even if they don’t care about our feelings/opinions/rules, wouldn’t apologising and not doing it again just be a thousand times easier?”
Why would they need to apologise? I didn’t see any rules about commenting, no ban on calling MRAs psychopaths.. If it’s some inside rule, how can you expect an outsider to follow it? At least for me categorizing these people as mentally disturbed is easier than thinking every fucking man that I come accross could potentially want to kill me. For my own mental sanity I’ll keep calling this guy a psychopath because he clearly lacks the capacity for basic empathy.. And no need to answer I’ll leave so that I won’t be offending anyone with my own problems and opinions anymore. I’ll only apologise for apparently being so stupid that I didn’t know of any inside rules.. So sorry. Have a nice life everyone and bye!
@cassiopeia
Despite your claim to the contrary, you’re treating hateful political ideologies as if they were illnesses of some kind. They are not. Bigots are evil, not sick. Moral failings are not the result of pathology, they are the result of choice. People like Nolan need to be opposed, not treated.
And liquid nitrogen cooling as well.
I am so glad I live in a country with extremely strict gun control laws.
@ andiexist
You can only be put in prison as a punishment when you’ve already broken the law. That’s too late for the victim.
I seem to have antagonized you and I’m not entirely sure how. I explicitly stated that violent extremism and mental illness are separate things. Hence it wouldn’t make much sense for me to support treating violent extremism as a mental illness. There would be little reason to expect that to be effective.
As far as his references to Australia go, I’m pretty sure he’s patting a lot of entirely admirable *cough*despicable*cough* men on the back for killing so many women (and children, and other family) this year. With Rosie Batty named as Australian of the Year out loud and proud arguing in favour of more refuge places and more funding for refuge/ crisis/ court/ counselling/ support services for abused women and children the issue’s getting a lot of publicity. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-20/rosie-batty-launches-never-alone-campaign-on-lukes-birthday/6560674 Never alone looks like a good initiative.
Destroy The Joint are keeping count of murders so far this year. https://www.facebook.com/DestroyTheJoint
Applauds murderers, believes the courts only stopped access to his kid because he’s male. Self awareness? What’s that?
Also I kind of hope Colon Nolan Dickbag (c) has another massive tantrum in the comments section.
@ zoon echon logon
What if opposing them only causes them to dig deeper into their trenches, radicalize further and recruit other maladjusted individuals, while addressing the underlying issues could make a difference for the better?
A lot of the anger Angry White Men have is justified, it’s just woefully misdirected as a result of successful media campaigns. Increasing economic inequality is only sustainable if the people whose opportunities are disappearing are made to hate someone other than the people who are getting richer.
I don’t believe in evil, or a dichotomy between pathology and choice. A chain of trivial choices small enough to be morally insignificant in themselves can add up over time, and when a person’s actions finally become morally unambiguously bad, he may no longer have had any acceptable options left.
Forget my question; just seen the links to the archived tweets.
I was just going to mention Emperor Norton! Outlawing the word “Frisco” is definitely a benevolent act.
… What the FUCK? Please tell me we’re thinking of different definitions for “Pathology” here.
sarah:
This part? Totally accurate. It has nothing to do with mental illness, and everything to do with a sense of entitlement, and an unwillingness to let go of the past. It’s common among MRAs–many of those who never got married in the first place seem stuck in perpetual Hollywood High School mode, where the “jocks” bully “nice guys” and the girls all go for jocks and bad boys.
Their thinking is dysfunctional, but not necessarily in a clinical sense, and it harms people who are genuinely mentally ill to automatically overlap the two categories. These vile individuals are choosing their positions, words and actions, in a way that many mentally ill folks cannot always control.
Yup. It’s called stochastic terrorism. Right-wing bloggers and media routinely push the idea of certain persons, or groups, as “dangerous”, “evil” and “must be stopped by any means possible”. Eventually, some so-called “lone wolf”* gets the idea into his head that he’s the man to do what no one else seems brave enough to — eg. Anders Breivik.
And then the fit hits the shan.
*Of course, there’s really no such thing as a lone wolf. They are pack animals. Just because you see one by himself doesn’t mean that he’s really all alone in the world.
I had to do this at my previous job. We even had to do a “simulation”. It was pretty traumatic. For some reason it was one of only two “mandatory professional development” events I actually went to at that job. Really wish I could have gone to the obnoxious “how different generations are different” talk instead of that one. This was after Illinois was ordered to draft a concealed carry law, and the police chief in that town was NOT happy about it. He told us to call 911 any time we noticed somebody was carrying, which probably says something about how busy the police were in that town.
So glad I now have a job where security actually screens to make sure people are obeying the no-carry zone (although the fact that I work in a place where that is necessary and get to go through a police screening every day on my way into work is less heartening).
@c.s. Strowbridge:
Nah, he’s a white. White men can’t ever be terrorists (unless somehow they’ve converted to Islam) no matter what they do!! All causes of white men are inherently worthy and right, didn’t you know???
@cassiopea
See, “I don’t believe in a dichotomy between pathology and choice” sounds like you’re saying at least one of a few different things.
a) That mental illness is a choice. (It certainly sounds like you’re saying this, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it was bad phrasing.)
b) That there’s no real difference between the ethics of forcibly treating a mentally ill person or a dangerous, violent MRA. (You’d actually be sorta right, because *neither one* is ethical. Forcing someone into an asylum is wrong no matter what.)
c) That both mental illness and bigotry result from tiny choices that are steps in the wrong direction. (Victim blame-y on one part, bigot-apology on the other.)
d) That you believe something can be both pathological and a choice… which sounds a lot like a to me, except with more loopholes for you to say “I didn’t mean the *good* ones” and jump through. People do not choose to be mentally ill.
d2) This could also be “I believe it’s a mental illness but not really, it’s a choice too, so it’s okay to force them into asylums.”
Being an awful person: not a mental illness, and not a reason to stick people in an asylum. If you don’t think they’re mentally ill, don’t advocate sticking them somewhere associated integrally with mental illness. In fact, don’t advocate sticking anyone there because FORCING SOMEONE INTO AN ASYLUM IS EXTREMELY UNETHICAL.
(I’m probably ninja’d by now, but I had to work on some stuff and come back to comment, so comment is late.)