The Montreal Massacre

On December 6, 1989, Marc Lepine killed 14 female students at L'Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. Thirteen other students were wounded. He then killed himself. The whole thing took 45 minutes. He had applied for admission to L'Ecole Polytechnique but had not been admitted, a decision he blamed on affirmative action policies. The suicide note he left pinned on his body gives us a hint of the rage he directed toward women and feminists.

Please note that if I am committing suicide today ... it is not for economic reasons ... but for political reasons. For I have decided to send Ad Patres the feminists who have ruined my life. ... The feminists always have a talent for enraging me. They want to retain the advantages of being women ... while trying to grab those of men. ... They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can.

suicide note quoted from: Gendercide

He murdered female students who, for him, symbolized a threatening new development. Yes, he was a survivor of child abuse. Yes, he was a troubled person. Yes, many men are good and would never consider violence as an alternative.

But here's the thing. Violence against women is hardly rare. Women murdered by men -men they know and may even love- aren't even rare. These murders in Montreal were yet another expression of the terrible misogyny that women deal with every day. When half the population is vulnerable, can the other half really be entirely innocent?

What would the world look like if good women and men were truly partners? How would the world and individuals have responded to the Montreal Massacre if women and feminists weren't only victims, but also political allies? In the short term, I'll settle for less. What if the women who cry "feminism" when it's time to interpret events such as these weren't labeled as shrill or bitchy, but were respected as intellectual allies?

I'm not male-bashing here. I'm the daughter of a man, the wife of a man, the mother of a man, sister to more brothers than any human needs, and friends with still other men. I'm trying to figure this out.

All I have so far is that we should remember not merely as an act of moral vigilance, but with a firm political conviction that things should be different. Otherwise, those 14 women died for nothing, and they deserve better than that.

Tags: feminism social justice social work