Remember Montreal

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Remember Montreal

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1LolaWalser
Déc 6, 2013, 3:13 pm



December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine murdered fourteen women and wounded ten women. He entered École Polytechnique de Montréal with a Ruger Mini-14 and a hunting knife for the purpose of “fighting feminism” by murdering the female engineering students there. He began his violence in a classroom where first he ordered the students to separate into men and women. He asked the female students in French if they knew why he had singled them out. One student answered no, and Lépine explained, “I am fighting feminism.” Nathalie Provost attempted to defuse the situation: “Look, we are just women studying engineering, not necessarily feminists ready to march on the streets to shout we are against men, just students intent on leading a normal life.” Lépine replied, “You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists.” He opened fire and killed six women. Lépine continued through the school, committing more murders and assaults (gun and knife). Finally he killed himself. Contained in his suicide note was a hit list of nineteen more Quebec women whom he considered feminist figures.

On December 6, we remember the women whom Marc Lépine killed:

Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student
Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student
Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student
Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student
Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student
Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student
Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student

and the women who lived who suffered from his violence.


Link

27sistersapphist
Déc 12, 2013, 11:43 pm

I'll never forget the phone calls before it hit the news. Every Québécois woman I knew was crying that day. Hell, we all were.

Twenty-four years and so little has changed. In fact, we've lost ground.

3lemontwist
Déc 13, 2013, 6:50 am

I was only 5 at the time but I remember my reaction when I first learned about this. Absolutely terrifying. I have a PhD in electrical engineering and am now a research scientist. The sexism I've had to deal with throughout my education and career have been bad enough without overt terrorism.

4LolaWalser
Déc 13, 2013, 11:13 am

I was a sophomore, spending a year in Italy. The news were just of some mass killing, it would be years before I learned the details. Is it crazy that I still somehow can't believe this happened in my lifetime, when I was already an adult? Not in, say, medieval central Asia, at the hands of some bandit horde?

#3

I commiserate. I suppose I've been lucky, in general, and so far. But there have been moments... Some years ago I worked closely with a team comprising physicists and engineers--about two dozen people, all men... of, shall we say, diverse opinions on the place of women. Just imagining trying to build a career, to exist, in that environment (I feel like I was more of a "visitor", plus senior to most of them) makes my blood curdle.

I went once to an IEEE conference with them (awkwardly, the big boss meant it as a gesture of thanks, when I'd have been just as happy without it). I'd have been less conspicuous if I'd been a talking penguin. Probably looked at less suspiciously too.

I posted this (#1) on another board. The comments make one's heart cry. But, as they say, it's the comments about feminism that make it necessary.

5justjukka
Jan 3, 2014, 1:48 am

I was only two years old when this happened and nobody ever told me about it.  I don't even know if my family remembers.

6LolaWalser
Déc 7, 2014, 9:53 am

 
 

7LolaWalser
Déc 8, 2016, 3:29 pm

The comments on the article commemorating this event on a certain well-regarded Canadian newspaper site got overwhelmed by troll shit; then there's this:

Toronto boy planned attack on massacre anniversary - police

8LolaWalser
Déc 6, 2019, 3:12 pm

Thirty years ago on this day--and as a commentator noted, the killer wasn't, it turns out, "the last of the dinosaurs" but a sign of times to come.

Since the last post in this thread Canada saw its second massive misogynist attack in Toronto in 2018. Despicably, Wikipedia introduces this event as targeting "pedestrians", when those targeted, and eight out of the ten murder victims, were women. Witnesses actually described how the driver seemed to go specifically for women, as far as the geometry of the scene allowed him. Not to mention that the killer made clear his motive was misogyny from the start.

But misogyny emerged belatedly as a factor in other massacres as well--the Danforth Avenue shooting (Toronto again), and the Islamophobic attack in Quebec. Belatedly, because people still refuse to acknowledge just what a problem misogyny is.

Thirty years after a guy killed women because he wanted to kill women, feminists in particular (as he saw them), and left not just a suicide note explaining his motives black on white, but also a hit-list naming 19 prominent women he wished he could kill, people are still pretending misogyny isn't a widespread, social, systemic problem.

The right wing and religious fundamentalists are both recruiting men who hate women, attracting them precisely by fostering and flattering their misogyny, and yet, except for the lone feminist or sociologist voice here and there, this is still rarely mentioned, let alone delved into.

It's not difficult to see why this is so--because it hits too close to home, because the boundaries between the "bad" and the "good" men are on this subject so hard to draw.

9susanbooks
Déc 7, 2019, 4:00 pm

Everything you said, Lola, and also I think misogyny isn't called out more because to most people it looks like normality.

A car hit a telephone pole near my house last night & someone posted a pic on facebook, with no text, no details about the driver, etc. A commenter typical of the wit in my town wrote, "never let yr gal drive." Laughing emojis and thumbs up all around. It's just so casual & so everyday. When I have the energy to civilly point out the misogyny on my local sites I'm told to calm down (though they're the ones in CAPS with exclamation points) or to get a sense of humor. It's exhausting. I'm white; I don't know how women of color deal with this endless shit along with the equally endless shit of racism.

This is such an ugly world right now. I'm really grateful to the posters in this forum.

10LolaWalser
Déc 8, 2019, 2:22 pm

>9 susanbooks:

Ah yes--men may beat and kill women for "looking at them funny", but it's women who can't take a joke.

"Get a sense of humour" there means only "shut up and suck it up". People like that aren't going to acknowledge they use laughter as a weapon, that their jokes are intimidation and that it's the bottomless well of societal misogyny that allows them to see and target women as the butt of the joke. It's funny how few jokes there are about the male gender as such--are there even any? It's always rabbis, cops, priests, shrinks, golfers... the Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews... functions or underdogs, IOW. But the hallowed male gender as such--oh no, can't joke about THAT.

I don't know how women of color deal with this endless shit along with the equally endless shit of racism.

Yes indeed.

11susanbooks
Déc 9, 2019, 9:07 am

What's that thing Margaret Atwood says? Something like Men's biggest fear about women is that women will laugh at them. Women's biggest fear about men is that men will kill them.

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