Men's rights activists rush to defend Iowa gun nut who murdered woman for sexual harassment complaint

Is anyone surprised?

Published June 16, 2015 4:25PM (EDT)

Toddlers have shot people at an alarming rate his year, data showa. (<a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-875983p1.html'>Stokkete</a> via <a href='http://www.shutterstock.com/'>Shutterstock</a>)
Toddlers have shot people at an alarming rate his year, data showa. (Stokkete via Shutterstock)

Over the weekend, an Iowa man who identified himself as "a born free, gun toting, Constitution loving American" shot and killed a woman with whom he worked after she reportedly filed a sexual harassment claim against him. According to one local radio station, Alexander Kozak was fired from his job on Friday because of the harassment complaint, prompting him to get his gun and murder Iowa Children's Museum employee Andrea Farrington. Farrington appears to have been the latest in a line of women to report Kozak's harassing behavior.

So, obviously he decided to kill her -- that's the logical course of action to take against someone who feels targeted and harassed and says something about it, right? Well, yes, according to several men's rights activists at the Roosh V forum, an online community of pick-up artists who rushed to defend Kozak's actions on Monday.

David Futrelle at We Hunted the Mammoth weeded through a number of the comments, which include various rationalizations for Kozak's violent actions and decision to commit first-degree murder. According to one commenter, Farrington's complaints of sexual harassment were baseless, because, "like rape," the term "sexual harassment" doesn't actually mean anything. Another commenter identified as Red_Pillage asserted that Kozak wasn't guilty of making unwanted sexual advances, but rather of failing to be attractive to Farrington or other women he allegedly harassed:

Given the lack of details regarding the allegations, it is safe to assume he did not touch or proposition these women. Simply put, he was guilty of having no game and/or being creepy.

I don't need to mention to anyone here what the results would have been had the genders been reversed. If I complained about someone at work (a women) harassing me, I would probably be laughed out of the room. It really is amazing how far people will bend over backwards to "protect" women. Women who lie about trivial BS such as this. Her feelings are all that matters. The problem is when the importance of "feels" extends beyond the solipsistic mind of a female and bleeds into the environment around them. Which of course is what we're seeing today on a massive scale.

As far as I'm concerned, his being guilty of not giving these bitches the tingles is what caused him to get fired, and in turn, murder this chick.

Yet another commenter, Samseau, blamed Kozak's absent father and "domineering" single mother for leaving the shooter ill-equipped to handle his (in their world, justifiable) rage at Farrington. Surprisingly, the commenter conceded that Kozak probably shouldn't have committed murder:

He wasn't being rude to anyone on his job. He wasn't trying to be a pick-up artist on the job and shitting where he eats. His 'prior-complaints leading up to his firing' are almost certainly trumped-up charges. His crime? Being a beta male raised without a father and a domineering mother. [...]

I do not think this man was justified to murder. He must be imprisoned. But the amount of self-control it would have taken him not to snap was more than an average man could handle; indeed it would have required a Saint-like amount of virtue to not blow up after having his life completely destroyed. As Roosh says, Alex's only crime was being average.

The most significant consensus among commenters, however, was one that Futrelle notes is quite common: this sort of male-perpetrated violence against women isn't a sign of men being socialized in a world that reinforces toxic masculinity, but rather one that has elevated feminism to an extreme and become misandrist. Given the frequency at which men murder women they've already abused, that argument might require a little more evidence.


By Jenny Kutner

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