In April this year, 20-year-old University of Mary Washington student Grace Mann was found bound and choked to death in her campus residence. This month, so-called “Men’s Rights Activists” are celebrating her death, claiming it “served a purpose.”

While no trial has yet been held to confirm the circumstances behind Mann’s murder, one possibility is that she was killed for her prominent role in feminist activism on the campus in Friedricksburg, Virginia. Mann was a member of the group Feminists United, which published an op-ed in the school paper in January to “expose the insidious misogyny and hatred” on campus.

The most egregious example of this “insidious misogyny” was a violent chant performed by the school’s rugby team at a party last fall. The chant celebrated rape, murder, and necrophilia against “whores.” A male friend of Feminist United president Paige McKinsey managed to record the song, which included the lyrics:

Finally found a whore (Finally found a whore!)

She was right and dead. (She was right and dead!)

Well god damn son of a bitch we’re gonna get it in! (God damn son of a bitch we’re gonna get it in!) Finally got it in (Finally got it in!)

Wiggle it all about (Wiggle it all about!)

God damn son of a bitch I couldn’t get it out (God damn son of a bitch we couldn’t get it out!) Finally got it out (Finally got it out!)

It was red and sore (It was red and sore!)

Moral of the story is never fuck a wh*re!

Feminists United handed over the tape to college administrators who deliberated the matter for four months before acting. They chose to dissolve the entire men’s rugby team indefinitely, and mandated all 46 members of UMW’s Mother’s Rugby attend sexual assault training classes.

Immediately, furious supporters of the team hit Feminists United with a wave of harassment and threats online and on campus.

As WHTH reports:

One supporter of the team warned that feminists would “burn” if the team was suspended and that “there will be no survivors.” Another threatened that “Dandy’s about to kill a bitch … or two.” When Feminists United reported these threats to the school administration, they were reportedly told that the school could do little about them.

Just one month after the team’s suspension, Mann was killed. After a brief manhunt, the prime suspect Steven Vander Briel is now in custody. He is a returning student, and former member of the rugby team.

Feminists United have since joined with the Feminist Majority Foundation to file a Title IX complaint with the Department of Education charging the University of Mary Washington with a “systemic failure to protect” members of the group “from a sexually hostile school environment, from sex-based cyber assaults, and from threats of physical and sexual violence.”

But not everybody is sad that Mann was murdered.

Mike Oelke of the Feminism is a Fraud blog describes Mann’s death as the inevitable result of the unwillingness of feminists to “learn misandry is not a joke.”

Prior to Mann’s killing, Oelke had written a post predicting that:

[O]ne day a feminist wearing an “ironic” KILL ALL MEN t-shirt will walk down the wrong street, enter the wrong room and encounter the wrong man; a man that does not value her as a woman and chooses not to treat her as an equal. The man will not see the t-shirt as ironical humor, but be offended and beat her savagely, laughing as he licks the tears from her crying eyes.

He writes that Mann’s death means that his “prediction has somewhat been proven true.” Furthermore, he promises even greater violence will be perpetrated against feminists, as “Some types of males are going to take that badly with predictable results.”

He finished his piece by stating:

“this young woman’s death serves a purpose. She ‘Took one for the team.’ ”

We don’t yet know why Grace Mann was murdered, but we do now she was facing threats of violence, murder and rape prior to her murder for her efforts to stamp out misogyny and homophobia on campus. The fact that the same sort of people who issued such threats before her death, are out there celebrating in public after her death speaks volumes for the existence of violent sexism which Mann spent the final hours of her life warning against.

Misogyny is not a joke. It is not some hobby horse that “angry women” ride around to piss men off. It killed 18,000 American women in the last 12 years. This means that more women have been killed at the hands of their husbands and boyfriends since 9/11, than Americans died during 9/11, and in all terror attacks and wars since. This year, the country will spend $38bn on Homeland Security, and $598bn on defense. It is estimated that America will spend just $4bn addressing violence against women. It is long overdue that we take violence against women, and the attitudes which promote it, with the seriousness they deserve.

Featured Image via WHTM