In the wake of murder of Judge Esther Salas’ son and and wounding of her husband, followed by the suicide of seeming perpetrator, Roy Den Hollander, we are learning about the specifics of this crime: the misogyny and racism of the perpetrator, and distracted by the extraneous facts: that he was married to a Russian woman, that Judge Salas had a case involving Deutsche Bank pending on her docket. I have the virtue, if you can call it that, of not being distracted by the trees in this forest because I work on domestic and sexual violence issues. If you chose to call these issues, “misogyny magnets,” you’d be right. In my many years of federal advocacy, the antipathy directed toward the funding and response to family violence issues has become so pronounced, that have to actively help Hill staff understand the roots of this misogyny. And so, it was no surprise, to me at least, to see Roy Den Hollander direct his misogynist critique at the Violence Against Women Act: “‘Perhaps the Violence Against Women’s Act could get my citizenship back,” he added. “All I’d have to do is date an American girl then accuse her of abuse.'” A colleague of mine who is well-versed in the misogynist anti-VAWA universe recognized his name before the press even made the connection.
So while I commend us for being thorough, and vetting the many strands of this and wanting all the facts, I implore each of you not to ignore the misogynists in our midst. They are among our home grown terrorists and until we recognize and start to address where this racist and misogynist misinformation comes from and how it’s perpetuated, we will see this crime again as I have both seen it and written about it before.
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I wrote this 3 years ago: “One trait shared by perpetrators of both hate crimes and intimate partner violence is toxic masculinity. Thus, crimes of both types play out similarly, espousing ideas that men (or in the instance of one ideology, white men) are superior, and should be in control, and the kind of victim blaming that has surfaced in wake of [hate crime victim, Heather] Heyer’s death. This ideology is backed up by a willingness on the part of the “believer,” to enforce his (perpetrators are disproportionately, though not exclusively male, as statistics bear out that roughly 85% of survivors of domestic violence are female) beliefs with resort to violence, if he is not “heeded.” Thus and not surprisingly, domestic violence often turns up in the backgrounds of white supremacists like Fields who have carried their beliefs to violent extremes.”
I wrote this 5 years ago, “perpetrators of these crimes are disaffected white males who feel wronged by a particular group of people (Elliot Roger blamed women who were not interested in him socially, Dylann Roof professed to want to start a race war), and therein lies the danger: we repeat this syndrome where we act as if the tragedy resulted from the “one off,” action of someone with mental health concerns, and in so doing, we absolve ourselves of the responsibility to make guns less available, generally, and to challenge the dangerous and problematic notions of masculinity that often underlie mass shootings.”
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If crazy is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different outcome, let’s respond differently to the homegrown misogyny this time. Let’s give it the attention it deserves. Let’s work on strategies to prevent it and combat it. Let’s make it unnecessary for me to write about this again.
Thoughts from the Rabbit Hole 