Column
An Obsessive Misogynist Killed a New Jersey Judge’s Son. He’s Long Targeted Feminists, Too.
How many people have to die before we take sexism seriously?
I hate that I’m writing this column. Over the years, I’ve published version after version of it: how the majority of mass shooters have a history of domestic violence; how misogyny is a clear and obvious indicator of future violence; and how politicians, mainly on the right, refuse to treat it as the epidemic it really is.
And here I am once again. Just this week, Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer and well-known misogynist, allegedly killed the son of a federal judge and wounded her husband in an attack at their New Jersey home.
Den Hollander’s hatred for the judge, Esther Salas, was never in doubt. After Salas presided over a case he brought to the court in 2015, he fumed in a self-published book that she was a “lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama.” A full motive for Den Hollander’s alleged crimes may never surface, however: He was found dead Monday after he shot himself in an apparent suicide.
But what’s not in doubt is his disdain for women: Den Hollander once sued to end “ladies’ nights” at bars, tried to defund women’s studies departments in universities, and…
