Feminism

MRA Murders the Son of a Woman He Hated, but Conspiracy Theorists Blame Jeffrey Epstein

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Transcript:

Last week a man apparently went to the home of a federal judge and murdered her son, critically wounded her husband, and then killed himself. This was obviously very big news, obviously, and it became even bigger news due to a lot of people immediately starting to speculate on the gunman’s motivation. The judge in question, Esther Salas, was just a few days prior to the shooting assigned a case related to dead billionaire pedophile and best friend of Lawrence Krauss, Jeffrey Epstein. Specifically, the case was a lawsuit against Deutche Bank, which investors alleged had failed to comply with anti-money laundering measures and had instead taken on shady clients like Jeffrey Epstein, leading to the investors losing money. I think we can all agree that the real victims of that international child sex ring were the investors. I’m kidding, I honestly do hope that all the institutions that propped up Epstein and his cronies see serious repercussions. Seriously, fuck them.

So Salas was assigned the case and just a few days later a man dressed as a FedEx delivery driver rang her doorbell and then shot her 20-year old son and her husband. Salas was in the basement at the time and was unharmed.

The conspiracy theorists lost their minds, more than they already had. r/epstein debated whether Deutche Bank was behind the hit or whether it was someone “connected to Epstein’s finances.” No matter what, they were sure that this was a paid hit, even though it was sloppy, because hits are often purposely sloppy in order to make sure to send a “message.”

Of course, when the shooter was discovered to have killed himself, that was just further proof. Epstein didn’t kill himself and neither did this poor schmuck. Any idiot can see that he was paid to murder a federal judge and then offed before he could blab.

Except that we almost immediately learned the identity of this assassin: Roy Den Hollander, an attorney who had previously tried a case before Judge Salas. And here’s the kicker: that name rang a bell for me. Because it turns out, Den Hollander was (in)famous in my circle as a virulent anti-feminist men’s rights activist.

You might have even heard of him — he made headlines back in 2007 when he started suing nightclubs for offering discounts to women (but not men) on “ladies’ nights.” He lost that bid, as he lost a 2010 suit in which he claimed a club committed a human rights violation by charging him $350 for a bottle of vodka when it let a woman in for free. I’m a woman and I went to a club with bottle service exactly once in my life and I was also asked to spend a ridiculous amount on shitty booze so I gotta say, were Den Hollander less of a misogynistic piece of shit he may have had better luck by making it a class action lawsuit for both men and women who wander into clubs dressed like…well, like this.

But he was a misogynistic piece of shit, so he lost that one and he also lost a lawsuit against Columbia over them offering a women’s studies course. He lost when he tried to prove in court that the Violence Against Women Act was discriminatory towards men. And in 2016 he sued, well, all of mainstream media for the mean way they reported on Donald Trump. And the case that he brought in front of Judge Salas was a challenge to the male-only draft.

It’s easy to see all of this and think “wow, that guy is a clown. Let’s laugh at him!” I mean, I definitely did. But at the same time, Den Hollander wasn’t just agitating for “men’s rights” in the court system. He was very active in the MRA community online, including here on YouTube. His website is a goldmine of misogyny, full of “jokes” about women by someone who appears to have never actually heard a joke, like “I have a computer to fight with—who needs a wife.” He also made another entire website dedicated to humiliating his ex-wife, a young Russian woman who apparently divorced him as soon as she got her green card. The site includes revenge porn as well as a memoir in which Den Hollander discusses how much he hates his mother. In fact, the book is dedicated to her: “To Mother, may she burn in hell.” 

In that book, he also explicitly talks about how much he hates female judges in general and Judge Salas in particular, saying that she is “a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.” He talks about wanting to ask her out but worrying that she’ll hold him in contempt of court.

It’s also worth mentioning that female journalists who have reported on his antics report that Den Hollander harassed them following their articles.

In other words, Den Hollander was the very model of a Men’s Rights Activist. Man goes through bitter divorce; man joins Men’s Rights Movement; man harasses women; man seeks out woman and her family and tries to murder them. The Men’s Rights Movement is a machine that churns out terrorists, but because they tend to be white and male, and their victims tend to be women, no one takes it seriously. They continue to gather on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and forums and radicalize men. If they were Muslim the FBI would have nipped this in the bud but they’re not. When one of them stalked and harassed me, and threatened to murder me, the police and the FBI ultimately did nothing. A cop told me that even though the man had previously been arrested for domestic violence, there was just no way to tell which guy threatening to murder women was actually going to follow through. There weren’t enough resources to investigate them all, so they’d rather investigate none of them. They’ll make a report and put it in a file and when I answer the door and get gunned down, they’ll open that file and have a pretty good idea of who did it.

Comforting.

So yeah, another life lost and another family torn apart thanks to Men’s Rights terrorists. And the conspiracy theorists will plug their ears and say it’s all just a set up, because in America it’s more believable that a dead pedophile put a hit out on a judge overseeing a case that only barely related back to him, then to believe that a misogynist tried to murder the family of a woman who he repeatedly made misogynistic comments about.

I’ll end with the only amount of comfort I can get from any of this: Roy Den Hollander is finally dead and gone, and now everyone will know that he was 69 years old when he died. He constantly avoided talking about his age because he thought it would ruin his chances with women. Well, Roy Den Hollander was 69 and now he’s dead. I hope his ex-wife has a good bottle of champagne on hand.

Rebecca Watson

Rebecca is a writer, speaker, YouTube personality, and unrepentant science nerd. In addition to founding and continuing to run Skepchick, she hosts Quiz-o-Tron, a monthly science-themed quiz show and podcast that pits comedians against nerds. There is an asteroid named in her honor. Twitter @rebeccawatson Mastodon mstdn.social/@rebeccawatson Instagram @actuallyrebeccawatson TikTok @actuallyrebeccawatson YouTube @rebeccawatson BlueSky @rebeccawatson.bsky.social

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