Martin Pribble reminds us of the Montreal Massacre. On December 6 1989, a guy called Marc Lépine went into a classroom at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. Katherine Ramsland describes what he did there. [trigger warning]
In French, the young man asked the 10 female students to get up and move across the room. He then told the men to leave. No one moved. A few people laughed, as if this were some kind of joke. That was the worst thing they could have done. He had been humiliated enough in his 25 years. On this day, of all days, he was not going to be treated in that way.
Lifting his rifle, he shot twice into the ceiling. It was no joke.
“You’re all a of bunch of feminists!” the man shouted, his eyes now alight with anger. “And I hate feminists!”
This time, he ordered the women to get up from their seats and the men to leave. A few moved to obey, but others remained confused. They wondered whether they should try to overpower the gunman, protect the women, or leave. The choice as to what was best was unclear. But after a few moments, the male students and teachers walked outside. In weeks to come, many of them would have nightmares about this moment, reliving it over and over, wishing they had acted differently.
When the 10 women had moved into the specified corner, the gunman explained his reason for being there. According to survivors who spoke later to police or reporters, he told them that he was there on behalf of males. “I’m fighting feminism.” Women had been taking employment and opportunities away from men, he said, and feminists needed to be taught their place.
Nathalie Provost tried to tell him that they were not necessarily feminists, but this only enraged him. He lifted the rifle again and, as they screamed for mercy or tried to leap out of range, he methodically shot them from left to right. All were hit. Provost was shot three times.
Gendercide, Ramsland calls it.
Martin Pribble explains the aftermath.
The people of Canada were profoundly affected by this massacre, and as a direct result, a group of men initiated a campaign to urge men to speak out against violence to women, and to commemorate those hurt and killed by this awful event. On the second anniversary of the “Montreal Massacre” (as it came to be known), the first “White Ribbon Campaign” was held. The campaign sought to motivate men to stand up against, and speak up about, any forms of violence against women.
This year, the White Ribbon Campaign is now supported and represented by countries in every continent including Australia. The White Ribbon Campaign Australia is this year supported by an advertising campaign called “Hey Mate“, focusing on the attitude that many have about intervening when sexism and violence against women rears its ugly head. It is backed by a pledge that man can make, and publish, publicly proclaiming:
I swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against women. This is my oath.
Over 50,000 men have made this oath, and knowing that they “have got your back” helps enforce the attitude that men too, are sick of violence against women. The “Hey Mate” campaign is made up of four advertisements, and highlights four scenarios; “At the pub”, “At home”, “At work” and “At the party”. It highlights the fact that it is not only okay to point out when someone else is acting inappropriately or violently towards women, but that it is okay to intervene because men are not alone. These kinds of campaigns can only work if they have support of the people. In this case, over 50,000 men have made the oath, but with 22m people in the country, this is but a small percentage of the potential supporters of this campaign.
Good on you, Martin.
I wonder what if any affect this has on canadian’s views of feminism et al compared to the views of people from other nationalities…. QUICK TO THE SOCIAL SCIENCE CAVE!
Thanks for the compliment.
The murders of these 14 women on December 6, 1989 had a remarkably profound affect on me and my feminism. I was a Canadian university student when it happened; these victims were my contemporaries, my sisters. And these murders were so clearly motivated by hatred of women – sure it was the hatred of one man but he expressed opinions no different than the opinions I grew up hearing or that I heard every day at school and work.
When the people (ie. men) around me refused to acknowledge these murders as a hate crime, well that was the moment I understood that some people would never, ever accept that hatred of women was bred in our bones. They would never accept that society, as a whole, refused to value women and that violence against women was the result.
That was when I realized that you couldn’t just show someone oppression or misogyny and expect them to acknowledge it. And that was a very eye-opening moment for me.
I still mark December 6 every year and I will for the rest of my life. This year is particularly bittersweet since the Conservative government recently repealed the gun control legislation brought into affect by advocates of violence against women. Still, I will light 14 candles, speak 14 names and I’ll never forget.
There is Hope. It seems so rare.
sambarge:
I am so sorry.
Screwed that up:
I swear this oath as well.
One man harms 14 women with a gun — that’s misogyny. A committee harms millions of women with legislation — that’s family values.
Sam Barge – that’s a beautiful way of honouring them.
I hope, perhaps naively, that one day we won’t need ribbons and pledges. That saying “I pledge to protect women” would not be met with “Nice one mate” but “Er… why wouldn’t you?”
One day. It would be nice if we could say, one day in the future, that the ruined or stolen lives of all of our fallen sisters weren’t taken in vain.
Someone recommended the film Polytechnique about the Montreal Massacre and I stupidly went to watch the trailer on Youtube. The comments were, shall we say, predictable: “Masculinity is being destroyed by femenism but we have to make women realize what they are doing. I fear they’ll only notice if they get hurt like this.” “Marc Lepine, pan-Anglosphere post-feminist legend.” “Your end will come also. Mark my words.” “marc had every right to do what he did..women are evil.” “this guy snapped for ONE REASON: when he woke up the dishes weren’t done…its pretty obvious..”
The story of the massacre struck a note with me. The rape and murder of Jill Meagher only blocks from my house, and with the killer living on the same street that my girlfriend walks down every day, really hit home with me. These offenses were perpetrated by a man against an innocent person. This is why I support the White Ribbon Campaign, so that hopefully men will change their views about women (and others), seeing that the macho-testosterone-filled world occupied by so many males in the world is not the world we hope to see in the future.
My opinion is, since most violence is at the hands of men (and I mean all violence), if men can make a pledge to protect those around, and also to not hurt those around, the world will be a much safer place.
What is weird is that I have received negative comments at my blog for this piece because one reader sees this campaign as “exclusive”. I hate that answer, because it turns a blind eye to so much of history (and the present), the inequalities and the abuses suffered. Go see what you think of “Jaros” comments here:
http://martinspribble.com/archives/3428
Well done. When it comes to women, it’s international bystanders’ syndrome.
martypribble:
“I swear never to commit, excuse or remain silent about violence against
womenpuppies. This is my oath.”It ain’t exclusive, but it sure is specific.
Poor reason for hating it; as I’ve noted, even the original is not exclusive, just weirdly explicit.
I don’t like imperatives.
@6.Tony–Queer Duck Overlord of The Bronze :
As do I. This.
“When the people (ie. men) around me refused to acknowledge these murders as a hate crime…”
Misogyny-denialism is a big problem. I once spent hours trying to convince some fellow undergrads that the acid attacks in Pakistan and India are examples of misogyny.
“Poor reason for hating it; as I’ve noted, even the original is not exclusive, just weirdly explicit.”
Weirdly? Why weirdly?
Thanks Ophelia Benson – first I’d heard of this.
emily isalwaysright :
Please tell me you’re kidding!
Not that its a joking subject or anything. Ye-non-existent-gods!
By what possible “argument” could throwing acid in a woman’s face be considered anything other than misogynist?
@14. emily isalwaysright :
When it comes to the acid attacks on women, I don’t know if this helps or if you’re still arguing or plan to again in future but hope it will – see this :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/taslima/2012/07/14/our-men-throw-acid-in-our-faces-destroy-our-lives-but-we-never-stop-loving-men/
post on Taslima Nasreen’s No Country For wWomen blog.
WARNING : Seriously disturbing and upsetting images there.
This is misogyny at its very worst.
But, of course it is sadly far from the only form and variety. Misogyny takes many forms and is all too prevalent in this world – for now.
Hopefully a collective effort and education may one day change that? Something worth fighting for.
emily, because it singles out a specific category of people for special treatment and therefore connotes that exclusivity to which Marty’s commenter purportedly refers.
StevoR: no, not kidding. It was extremely surreal. They basically said that such acts are the acts of a psychopath, and have nothing to do with gender. I tried to explain that some things can be analysed from the social level, but nope . . . they can see through all that feminist bs!
The amount of misogyny-denialism in the yoof is very concerning. (Disclosure: I am a mature-age undergrad, not so yoofy any more).
John, surely you can think of scenarios where “special treatment” is warranted? And if so, doesn’t that mean that you need to show why the “special treatment” in this case is not warranted?
(Btw, I don’t think calls to end the out-of-proportion abuse leveled at one group from another as “special treatment”. It’s hardly a NICE thing, which is what I think of when I think of “special treatment”.)
Whoops, grammar typo:
*I don’t think calls to end the out-of-proportion abuse leveled at one group from another are “special treatment”.
Emily,
Agreed.
emily, I made no claims about warrant, and if it weren’t special, it wouldn’t require specificity.
(BTW, the oath doesn’t preclude non-violent abuse, does it?)
John: violence does not necessarily have to be physical. Abuse is, by definition, violence.
John, I’m having trouble figuring out what “weirdly” is supposed to be if not a “claim about warrant”.
StevoRo asks:
“By what possible “argument” could throwing acid in a woman’s face be considered anything other than misogynist?”
I agree that such acts cannot be dismissed as the mere actions of psychopaths. However, it doesn’t follow that they are essentially misogynistic. Radical islamists resent *any* challenge to their authority and women who don’t fall in line are just a special case of that. The Montreal Massacre is different in that respect. The guy hated and resented women because they were more successful than him. Some individual radical islamists may of course also be similarly motivated, using political/religious authority as a pretext.
No. Women who don’t fall in line are 99% of that. Their authority is based on maleness and misogyny.
I went and read Jaros’ comments, and my reaction is this:
First, if we take his objections seriously, then he needs to understand that problems with specific causes need specific solutions. Violence against women has much more specific causes that violence in general, or violence against men in general. So a campaign focused on violence against women is warranted.
Second, there’s no reason to take his comments seriously. What about the men, and all that.
—-
Ostro,
Do radical Islamists throw acid in the faces of men who challenge their authority? Wouldn’t you describe radical Islamist doctrine misogynistic already, without the acid-throwing?
Far more men were successful than him, but he didn’t shoot any of them for taking jobs and opportunities that they didn’t deserve. Because men of course deserve success, and it’s OK to be less successful than some guy. But not OK to be less success than some woman, because women don’t deserve success. It’s an act against a whole class of people with a specific justification. It’s misogyny.
I was also a university student in Canada when this happened; I seem to recall it was just as classes were ending for the December exams. Sometime over the break, some a-hole scrawled “Good shooting, Marc!” on a wall somewhere on campus.
The University of Alberta campus, last I checked, had two separate memorials to the victims of this shooting.
nonsense. They don’t throw acid on men. it’s a punishment speecifically designed to rob women of their beauty, which society makes sure we understand is the only thing we’re judged by.
@10:
The campaign is a wonderful thing. It lets us know we are not alone. What you need to explain to people like “Jaros” is this: Violence against females has the exact same etiology as violence against males: the patriarchal construct of what a “manly man” should be. Support from other men in saying “fuck that” will drastically reduce violence against women as well as against men. I’m not sure you understand this point yourself though; or at least you didn’t make it clear to Jaros.
That can’t really happen without first men changing their views about themselves.
The problem is not biological in origin. It’s cultural. The idea that testosterone causes aggression in humans is mere folklore but completely scientifically unproven.
No, it’s not. You’re starting to get into gender-essentialist territory here.
That won’t happen if you stereotype men as intrinsically violent who need to adopt the role of “protector” lest they become the aggressor. That’s the patriarchal construct of men, and fuck that.
“Jaros” has missed the point. Standing up against violence against women does not mean, in any way, condoning or excusing violence against men. It’s like calling a campaign to find better remedies for cancer “exclusive” because it’s not doing anything about heart disease. I take the oath but that does not mean I see violence against men as any less of a problem or as male victims any less deserving of help. And, to any oath-takers that do see it that way (if there are any), fuck you.
But I don’t like your answer about inequalities and abuses and you seem to suffer from a little blind eye yourself. Men have suffered plenty of inequalities and abuses throughout history and the present. The fact that these have come (predominantly, though not exclusively) at the hands of other men does not alleviate the reality.
KarenX – exactly.
#20 Emily isalwaysright – the tendency to label anyone who commits a crime or some other abhorrent act a psychopath is so frustrating. It is a denial that ordinary people are capable of horrible things. In this case, a culture that values women well below men creates a circumstance in which women can be terribly abused or killed with little repercussion and virtually no condemnation.
@Ostro,
It’s possible to imagine situations where throwing acid in a woman’s face is not motivated by misogyny, but in the real world, acid-throwing:
1. is almost exclusively directed at women
2. is almost always directed at the face with the purpose of causing permanent disfigurement
3. in areas with high levels of Islamist activism, is commonly used against women who attend school or who don’t wear the hijab
4. in many parts of South Asia (including non-Islamist areas), is often directed at women who refuse a marriage proposal or want a divorce
5. also occurs, although more rarely, in western countries; perhaps the most famous example is Katie Piper, a model and TV presenter who had acid thrown in her face by an accomplice of an ex-boyfriend (who had raped, beaten, stabbed, and threatened to hang her but still seemed to think she belonged to him and therefore he had the right to melt her face as revenge for dumping him).
Barring the occasional odd example (like the guy in Devon who had acid thrown in his face for refusing to give a cigarette to a stranger), acid-throwing is pretty much definitively misogynistic.
I believe her. I’ve had people refuse to recognize the push to keep women away from higher education during the 1800’s in Europe and elsewhere as misogynistic. Despite the reason for restricting access to higher education being a false belief in women’s inferiority they’ve argued it isn’t misogynistic because “it wasn’t because they hated women.”
@ChrisLawson – I was going to mention Katie Piper.
Anyone interested in her story can see it in the Channel 4 programmes that have followed her progress, My Beautiful Face, My Beautiful Friends, and The Science of Seeing Again.
She’s started a foundation to help other people in her situation, but it’s a shame something so horrible is behind it.
If “special treatment” means protecting me (a woman) against rape, beatings and murder, I’ll accept the special treatment… THANK YOU.
Men are not systematically abused by women, nor have they been for centuries. If anyone denies that FACT, they’re deliberately lying or are seriously uninformed.
By inserting other social problems into this particular discussion, you are perpetrating a deliberate distraction from this very serious and important issue. If, however, you yourself are a misogynist, that would be your intent!
Reading the account of the life of Ada Lovelace (mathematician and logician, who wrote the first ever computer program before there were actual computers) might be enlightening in this respect.
Lovelace had to wait for her first husband to finally die to pursue her love for math.
And she was not alone. There is a story I’ve heard of a girl who hid from her parents to work on the proof to Fermat’s theorem. Her parents took away candles, paper and pencils so that she would stop working on math, which was seen as a man’s thing. Left free, she could have solved it. About a century before it was actually done.
And today the dearth of well-known women mathematicians and scientists is held by some idiotic jerks as proof that women are not as smart or gifted as men in those area.
It’s a bit like saying that chinese girls of generations past couldn’t run as fast as other people while closing your eyes to the fact that their feet were deformed by the practice of binding them.
It’s incredibly wasteful and stupid to deprive ourselves of half our most brilliant minds in the name of the fear of some moronic and talentless man-boys that their fee-fees might be hurt by losing to a girl.
Yes. Maybe we wouldn’t sill have cancer. Who knows? Women are the road not taken.
However, it doesn’t follow that they are essentially misogynistic. Radical islamists resent *any* challenge to their authority and women who don’t fall in line are just a special case of that. The Montreal Massacre is different in that respect. The guy hated and resented women because they were more successful than him.
Marc Lepine (aka Jamil Qarbi) was a Muslim. His father was Algerian, which makes him a Muslim according to Islam.
Was Lepine an Islamic (i.e. a practicing Muslim)? It is unclear. What is clear is that he was somewhat religious. There is no question that his father’s culturo-religious misogyny had an influence on him.
I was in University in Canada when this happened, too. (Waterloo, specifically, which had at the time pretty much the most off-balance sex ratio of any University in Canada.)
At about this time, both the President and Vice-President of the student Engineering Society were female. (And, quite honestly, better at it than the previous male president who was a bit of a huckster.) The highly-misogynistic ‘Enginews’ joke paper had been finally gotten rid of a few years previously.
I remember, one day, finding a poster that somebody had put up that used a publicity picture of the EngSoc President and VP, along with some nasty comments, a ‘For a good time, call:’ line, and an obviously photocopied version of the EngSoc approval stamp.
Needless to say, I took it down and took it into the EngSoc office to tell them about it. Apparently they’d been taking them down all morning, and had just missed that one because it was in a back hallway few people took. So yeah, some people just really can’t seem to handle women in positions of power, and I got to see a good bit of culture shift just while I was in University.
Mohsen- he was also an avid collector of military memorabilia, IIRC, and had been raised by his single mother (so his father’s influence would have been minimal).
I definitely remember hearing some of my more rednecked relatives decrying that this “son of an immigrant” (who came from a culture where women are valued less than camels, according to people who had no idea exactly where he was supposedly from) had done a very horrible thing- he had inspired people to talk about gun control. The murders and misogyny didn’t really bother them (it was a big city, you see, and people get killed there all the time; of course, they were used to misogyny), but GUN CONTROL- the horror! the horror!!
Okay, chrislawson & Waffler.
There’s an issue involved here that I’m trying to puzzle out for myself, so let me just make my point and then I’ll shut up.
People often do mean, cruel, demeaning, disrespectful, and lethal things to other people and sometimes do them differentially, e.g. based on the victims sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, etc.; sometimes even based on doctrine, as Waffler says, or on some misplaced sense of entitlement (think of racism and slavery) or a warped sense of self-respect. I had a very abusive stepfather who physically and mentally abused my mother and half-siblings, one of whom was biologically his; I had more beatings and injuries than I can count. My stepfather hated a lot of things: he hated to be proved wrong, he hated my atheism, and my disobedience (which didn’t involve things that would ordinarily be considered culpable), and he also attributed some of these to an absence of respect that he felt was his due. His beatings were applied differentially, not exclusively but mostly to us males; he still showed restraint in beating females (though not always); I guess in his case that maybe signified that males were deemed more in need of being “broken”. I don’t believe my stepfather hated me. He just hated certain things about me and if I had just sucked up to him and been compliant, the abuse would have ceased (instead I left home). The metaphor of “breaking an animal” captures some of the distinction I’m trying to draw. You break a horse because you disvalue its wild uncontrollable behavior, not because you hate horses; once broken it is after all a valuable animal of the sort you want. And different animals are broken in different ways.
Is Islamic doctrine already misogynistic? It certainly relegates women to the status of objects like cattle (and therefore they may need to be broken) but if my breaking-horses analogy is holds, that is not necessarily the same as hatred. Of course one might argue that there is some sort of unconscious hatred that might be the cause of such relegation of women in the first place, a kind of cultural Freudian death-to-women wish, but I don’t believe that.
Yes, acid in the face is differentially applied to women by radical Islamists (beauty is important to and for women, and that is a good way of breaking their spirit and by extension that of other women who might be similarly inclined to be uncompliant. Females are in a sense different animals to be broken in a different way. (However, males are more likely just to be killed outright rather than made compliant; still, it’s also a lesson pour les autres.)
Note that I didn’t in my previous post (#28) say that such “breaking” of women can’t involve hatred; I admitted that it can. I just don’t believe that such evil actions necessarily involve hatred. The problem with Islam is not that it hates women per se, but that it loves them like cattle.
Ostro
If they are doing it to break cattle, then they wouldn’t do it to foreigners there on visit, because such a “one shot” gesture would not be expected to change long term behavior. Also, they would only do it to women they considered theirs (or their responsibility) – you don’t go into someone else’s paddock and break their horse.
They do it to foreign women. They do it to each other’s families, not just their own. So your idea doesn’t hold water.
Well, eric #46,
No analogy is perfect.
But given the jihadist intentions of some radical Islamists, we are all fair game. Western women might encourage their own women by setting a bad example and are therefore legitimate targets. Their paddock is ultimately the world. Submit to the forces of Allah and The One True Religion or die. Of course they sometimes won’t acknowledge the legitimacy of local or regional variants of The One True Religion so they fight amongst themselves too.
Cattle herders don’t throw acid on their cattle to train them.
Thinking of human beings as livestock is not an eccentric form of loving them.
This entire discussion thread has me baffled and angry. Women are human beings. We are not horses, cattle or persons owned by the male members of our species. We have basic human rights as sentient beings and I’m sick to death of the “debate” over this topic. If you adhere to a culture or religion that demonizes women based purely on their gender, then you are a misogynist. The need to control other human beings (by any means) is a sickness. It reveals an innate jealousy and insecurity. Muslim men require female genital mutilation of “their women” for one reason and one reason only – to ensure that sexual activity for these women is not only NOT pleasurable but also very painful. This is so their wives will not be unfaithful. While they do this to “their women” they visit brothels where they can have enjoyable sex with unmutilated women who have often been SOLD into the sex slave industry as if they are commodities and not human beings. Women are also raped in that culture just for sport and then the victims are murdered for the crime of being raped! Anyone who does not see this as extremely grotesque and disturbing on so many levels, is evil by any definition. Any form of bias against women simply because they are women is misogynistic. Marc Lépine hated women. Every man who demeans or abuses women in any way, shape or form because she is a woman, hates women. Of this I have no doubt. Misogyny is a serious global problem and anyone who denies this has his head in the sand. The white ribbon campaign is an honourable endeavor. It should NOT be criticized because it focuses on this one very serious problem. PETA doesn’t address violence against men either but I noticed in no uncertain terms that PETA wasn’t brought up in this debate. To alter the focus of this campaign is to, in essence, state that misogyny is not a problem. It is! It’s real! I’ve witnessed it first hand. A campaign to address THIS SPECIFIC WORLD PROBLEM does not take away from any other global issue. Wake up and wise the hell up! Men opposed to the white ribbon campaign are equivalent to KKK members opposed to the civil rights movement! And frankly, I don’t give a damn if anyone agrees with me or not!
“I just don’t believe that such evil actions necessarily involve hatred. The problem with Islam is not that it hates women per se, but that it loves them like cattle.”
Ostro, Muhammad said, “I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers are women.” Why? Because we are inherently wicked creatures. Not because we’re lovable cattle.
Treating people like fucking mules based on their gender is an expression of contempt. I know a lot of men in the Enlightened West with similar contemptuous attitudes toward women. They think women are inferior and stupid and less than they are. And they have no problem telling you that. Are you seriously trying to tell me that’s something different from misogyny. They laugh at women being abused, say they probably deserved it for being bitches and/or sluts. And I hear this from hip, liberal men as well as religious fanatics.
@AtlanticCanuck
I’m also sick to death of women’s humanity always being up for debate. And being told it’s not misogyny, it’s just “a dissenting opinion on gender issues.”
While I completely agree with this in theory…..
……. it sometimes is used to argue that women are Utility Monsters. Though to be fair, the opponents tend to claim utility-monsterhood as well.
(for those who don’t know, a utility monster is somebody who feels pleasure and pain so strongly that under overly simplistic forms of consequentialism, it is correct to subordinate everything to them)
I am amazed by people not thinking vitriolage to be misogyny. It happens too often, IIRC (esp when combined with similar crimes not involving acid) to be the work of psychopaths.
Incidentally, I would urge restraint about Islam. It’s pretty terrible RIGHT NOW but was not always. Not surrender, not passivity, but there is nothing more terrifying than these situations where none dare urge restraint.
For me the oath is already taken, for it shall scarcely ever run counter to The Greater Good.
Sorry, but I have ZERO restraint against Islam! All monotheistic religions are inherently misogynistic. They use their ancient myths to oppress 51% of the Earth’s population when, in fact, their fairy tales are pure bullshit!
And ‘im’, your comment was somewhat convoluted. If there was a point, it eluded me.
We were pretty disturbed by the Montreal massacre. In addition to the mere fact of the thing, it was geographically close (in particular: *this* side of the Canada-US border, where we smugly assume that such things Just Don’t Happen). And my wife and I are both engineers. And my wife was taking a grad course at Carleton at the time, and IIRC she had a class that night….
The oath? Of course. Why should it even take an oath? It’s called “being a decent human being”.
Bravo! Eamon Knight. Very well said. It’s so bizarre that yours is not the typical response!
I’m a Canadian too and the misogynist murders at Ecole Polytechnique really remind me that misogyny is everywhere. Patriarchy is pretty much worldwide.
I know Patriarchy cannot be sustained any more. It’s a dying society. Once you give women the power over resources and their reproduction you’ve started dismantling Patriarchy. Not without a fight. Men will fight to keep their power over women.
It’s an unspoken deal men make with each other. It’s horrific and I’m glad I’m a feminist who realizes this and lives my life accordingly, with that understanding.