By David Futrelle
On Sunday evening, a man dressed as a FedEx employee knocked on the door of the house of federal judge Esther Salas. When the judge’s husband and son opened the door, the man shot them both, killing the son.
According to the Daily Beast, law enforcement sources are saying that the shooter was Men’s Rights attorney Roy Den Hollander, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound Monday morning.
Hollander, the New York Times reports, brought a case before the judge in 2015 concerning male-only draft registration. [See CORRECTION note below]
A publicity-seeking activist attorney, Hollander was perhaps best known for a series of lawsuits taking aim at “Ladies Nights” at bars and clubs, which he felt discriminated against men. (He appeared on the Colbert Report once as a “Difference Maker” eager to show off his hip-hop dance moves.) He also sued a nightclub claiming that it was a human rights violation to be forced to pay $350 for a bottle of vodka. In 2016, he sued an assortment of big names in the news business, claiming they had committed “wire fraud” by broadcasting “fake news” about Donald Trump.
I’ve written about him several times, describing the controversy over a “male studies” course he thought he was slated to teach in Australia (the University in question said it had never approved the course in the first place). Hollander later sued two Australian journalists — in the lawsuit he described them as “modern-day, book-burning, Bacchae reporters from down-under” — for allegedly posting falsehoods about him and getting him fired from the teaching gig the school says he was never actually hired for.
But among some Men’s Rights activists the man was a hero. Paul Elam of A Voice for Men once praised him for
putting his name on the line and his license to practice law at work, taking on everything from financial discrimination against men by nightclubs in “Ladies Nights” to Columbia University’s Women Studies Program which he contends more resembles a religion than not. …
[A]s much as I loathe the idea of anyone claiming authority on what a “real” man is, if I had to venture a guess, it would be men like Hollander.
A Voice for Men also published an article by him back in 2010, making him the first alleged murderer to be linked directly to the hate site.
Strangely, only a week ago another prominent Men’s Rights attorney, a man named Marc Angelucci, was gunned down outside his house in San Bernardino County, California. No suspects have been named, but I can’t help but wonder if Hollendar was somehow involved in this murder as well.
I will likely follow up on both of these stories as they develop.
H/T — @EyesOnTheRight
CORRECTION: I originally reported that the Daily Beast said he had a pending case before the judge; other news outlets, including the NYT, are saying it was in 2015, so I altered a sentence to say that.
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Speaking of masks, does anyone know if the plastic face shields that are now coming out (what I privately refer to as ‘wielder’s’ masks, since they vaguely look like those) are any good at blocking the virus? Some of the people at my workplace (fast food joint) are starting to wear those instead of the cloth masks, and they say the plastic ones are easier to breath in, at least.
Does anyone know if that’s been studied as of yet?
And as an aside, there’s a couple of new peeps on the previous page that had some interesting comments let through, who don’t seem to be trolls (that I could tell, anyway).
@Redsilkphoenix:
I don’t remember where I saw it and can’t find it anymore, but an article I read suggested that the plastic face shields aren’t hugely successful on their own, but that wearing one as well as a cloth mask does make for a better outcome and may be recommended for those who have to meet a lot of people (one of the supermarkets here has their cashiers wear both) or are particularly vulnerable.
@Big Titty Demon
My apologies, I also misunderstood you.
What is that in reference to? You don’t quote anything, and the person you atted hasn’t posted anything on this page. Most likely you atted the wrong person or posted it to the wrong thread, but the meaning would still get across OK if you’d at least quoted what you were responding to. My own habit is to quote if I’m referring to any post other than the one immediately preceding mine.
Oh, lovely. It’s putting me in the goddamn spambucket again.
WHY ISN’T WHITELISTED TRULY WHITELISTED ON THIS SITE??? AS IN POSTS GO DIRECTLY THROUGH WITHOUT ANY FILTERING AT ALL? HOW OFTEN DO SPAMMERS POST NORMAL ON-TOPIC STUFF FOR LITERALLY SEVERAL ***YEARS*** AND ONLY THEN SUDDENLY POST THEIR SALES PITCH? Gaaaaaaah!
Oh, check out the list of terrible, terrible “girl jokes” he posted on his website. Some un- highhlights:
“Clubs can’t call their waitresses bunnies or other furry animal names.”
“Can’t hate that which you lust after.”
“Give feminists a taste of their own medicine, hand back that poison apple; see how they like it.”
Also, the page-long joke with no punchline about being seen by a hot nurse.
Oh, check out the list of terrible, terrible “girl jokes” he posted on his website. Some un-highlights:
“Clubs can’t call their waitresses bunnies or other furry animal names.”
“Can’t hate that which you lust after.”
“Give feminists a taste of their own medicine, hand back that poison apple; see how they like it.”
Also, the page-long joke with no punchline about being seen by a hot nurse.
http://www.roydenhollander.com/main/Writings/Girl_Jokes_Pics.pdf
Damn.
Those are just sad.
@Redsilkphoenix
The United States CDC says that face shields are of unknown efficacy without a mask, but can be helpful when used with one of in sustained contact with strangers. Looks like it is not a substitute for a mask.
@Surplus
If you’re talking about Schnookums, I think that post was in reference to how Big Titty Demon said that she was referring to Angelucci, not Hollander.
@NewtonThePlant
Does anyone actually find those funny? I thought the point of jokes was to be funny, but none of those seem very funny, just misogynistic. It’s like he forgot the punch line or something. Even if one is misogynistic are those funny? I just can’t find any humor in them. It’s like Vogons took a break from poetry and took up joke writing.
@Naglfar, Schnookums
I’m going to confess here that I was surprised both of you apologised, as good faith misunderstandings do happen and I didn’t think it was a big issue. Then I thought, if I misunderstood someone in a personal conversation, I would of course apologise to their face and the conversation would continue on, that’s the natural flow of speaking. Am I just too used to impoliteness on the internet that you guys treating me like a regular person sticks out to me? Well regardless, thank you for promoting internet good manners!
@Surplus
Umm, I did get the meaning though… and Schnookums @’d me? I could raise this question myself if I was confused, just saying. I don’t think it’s an issue for me, especially since, as evidenced above, I often @ people without quoting myself.
@Surplus
Given that your laments about being caught in the spam filter seem to be made within a few minutes of your original post, I think what might be happening is that your most recent comment doesn’t always immediately show up on the page labeled:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/ […] /#comment-XXXXXXX
That you get redirected to immediately after making a comment. But your comment hasn’t been caught in a spam filter, it’s just a weird glitch in the web programming. If you scroll up and hit the “XX Comments” link in the header of the article, it will redirect you away from the /#comment-XXXXXXX page just to the comments page, where your comment will be visible.
EDIT- The phenomenon is in fact happening to this comment that I just posted. No sign of it immediately after posting, but if I go to the /#comments page instead of the /#comment-XXXX page, I can see it and edit it like I’m doing right now.
I always hit “back” and then “reload” after posting a comment. Normally the comment is there, even if it wasn’t before the “back”-“reload”.
Regardless of the underlying cause, my comments being held for any length of time causes significant inconvenience, since I have to hover by the computer frequently refreshing the page until it shows up and am constrained in other ways out of caution. Until the comment shows up I have to keep a local copy safe, in case it has completely failed and I have to repost it. So I copy it into the clipboard (which I then can’t use for anything else until it appears, or I decide it needs another attempt) and must not navigate the browser tab (so it’s still in the input box to resend if need be). 2 copies, one in clipboard and one in browser.
Can’t just leave it unattended to do something else; if the comment has actually failed to go through for any reason, and something else also goes wrong (power cut, browser or OS crash, etc.), then it would be lost completely and I’d have to rewrite it from scratch.
So any substantial delay before a comment gets accepted ties the user down to a significant degree until then: can’t go out or do other things, can’t copy and paste other things, can’t move on to other WHTM threads or whatever in that browser tab, not without risking permanent data loss.
This, in turn, means that such delays should be avoided except where absolutely necessary: with a new user, who might be a spammer or similarly, or with a troll or someone who’s “on probation” for sometimes making problematic comments.
Right now, such delays are not being restricted to only those two conditions, and worse seem to be inflicted arbitrarily and capriciously on many, if not all, of the regulars in good standing. I have also seen complaints that some regulars get moderated any time they post links and that yet others do all of the time, as if David has subjected them to a probation, without him apparently having actually done so.
All of these things indicate that even “whitelisted” users’ posts are being subjected to some kind of filtering, and that this filtering even applies different standards to different people in a manner that, again, seems capricious and arbitrary. None of that seems fair or justified.
If it assists diagnosing, whilst very occasionally they appear straight away, usually it takes five or ten minutes before my posts show up. That’s with Safari 13.1.1
@Surplus
I don’t know what to tell you, bud. The back end of the website is managed by WordPress and none of us or David can fix it. I think this is just something you’ll have to deal with if you want to keep commenting here.
If you believe that your comment is so important that you cannot abide the risk that it may not be seen, then you could always save the comment to notepad or some other word processing software. That way it’s not taking up your clipboard, and you can go off and attend to other things without fear of losing your comment because even if the power goes out or something, you’ll still have it saved to your hard drive, or the cloud, or wherever. If you’re worried about using up too much memory or something with hundreds of word files, you could just use one file for it, and keep pasting over the older comments that have already appeared.
Instead of hovering over the comments page, you could hit post and go do something else for 15 minutes. By then, everything should have cleared itself up. This isn’t an instant messenger or a discord server; I don’t think you’ll miss anything important by not seeing the new comments immediately as they are made.
FWIW it’s been years since I’ve had a post vanish into the aether. I can make multiple posts in the same thread and/or across different threads; and they all show up eventually. So it may be ok not to back them up in notepad; although I guess that’s a good failsafe. But you should also be safe moving between threads, or even websites, after you’ve clicked ‘submit’ even if the post hasn’t shown up straight away.
@Big Titty Demon
I find that the anonymity of the internet makes people forget manners sometimes. Though since this blog has a good community I try my best to be polite to fellow commenters.
Re: comments
The only time I put mine in a notepad application is when I’m on my phone and have a poor connection so my comment might not submit the first time, so I can paste it in again and try again.
@Surplus
The back button isn’t sufficient as it won’t always take you to the correct page. Have you tried clicking on the XX Comments link like Catalpa suggested? Or doing like I suggested and removing everything from ‘/comment-page-x’ and after from the url and then reloading? These work. It’s extremely easy to work around this issue and yet you refuse to even try it while complaining about the huge inconvenience it is to you.
I’m actually surprised he’s the first. The site’s been around for years, and given the type of people it attracts I’m surprised there weren’t other murderers published there in the past.
What? AVFM (from I’ve read of it) is high on bombast and posturing but that doesn’t make it an incubator for real-world violence, at least not to any significant degree. The distinction is pretty easy to grasp, frankly.
I’ve frequently run into the same problem you’re having, Surplus, and deleting the comment and page reference from the URL, like kupo suggests, solves it 100% of the time. So for this page, to see the most recent comment if WordPress is not displaying it, you would need to change the URL to the following:
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2020/07/20/mens-rights-attorney-roy-den-hollander-accused-of-shooting-a-federal-judges-husband-and-son/
If you’re not willing to try this, then you’re just going to have to put up with the issue. Complaining isn’t going to solve it. Saying it’s a significant inconvenience for you (why is anything about this site significant?) isn’t going to solve it. What solves it is simply removing the page and comment references from the URL. You’re not being held in moderation and you’re not being singled out. I’m sorry that you may have to lift a finger and touch your keyboard to improve your experience, but that’s how it is sometimes.
@Motte and Bailey
This is a site that regularly published articles about “bash a violent bitch month” and advocated beating women. This can easily promote IRL violence. I don’t know why you’re defending them.
Catalpa said
This always works for me, although my comments generally appear right away.
WordPress is a strange and cantankerous beastie that seems to demand the right to hang up comments at will.
@Naglfar
One time after my abuser dislocated my jaw he tried to convince me that he didn’t use enough force to dislocate my jaw if I had normal joint and bone strength. So really it was my body just being week and I shouldn’t be so mad that his actions lead to the dislocation because a “normal” woman would be able to take it. So this guy is basically like that. Their actions don’t “really” hurt people. They don’t really inspire violence. Other people are just week. Their not that hard to grasp because all abuser basically think and work the same, Same as mottie boy over here.
@Lainy
I am sorry you were abused that way. This sentence in particular sticks out to me as particularly awful, as it sounds like your abuser was implying that women should “be able” to take a beating i.e. that beating women is okay. I hope you got far away from that person, he sounds horrible.
@Naglfar
I am, and I always saw it as a kind of like “I didn’t hit you that hard, your just sensitive” type thing.
My joints do get dislocated a lot easier then others would. And I’ve dislocated my jaw just by doing normal things that weren’t abusive, like oral sex and yawning to hard. It’s not fun.
@Lainy
I haven’t dislocated my jaw from giving oral, but I have from yawning. I agree that it’s not pleasant.