On this day 26 years ago, an asshole said those words before murdering these women at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada.
If you really want to be discouraged, try googling “I hate feminists” now, in 2015. Or even “kill feminists”. They’re surprisingly popular phrases.
Yeah, I remember that night. I was a computer science student at the building next door (the main building of the Université de Montréal). While there I heard a rumor that something was up at the Polytechnique building. My day was done, so I headed home. It’s only once I got home that I learned about the shooting. I was horrified, and the city was shocked for weeks.
It might just be a urban legend, but I’ve heard that in the for a few years, there was a net increase of women registering for engineering programs around here. Young women looking for the next step in their schooling were suddenly made keenly aware that engineering was an option. So in a way, the murderer’s act backfired.
PZ:
It’s not surprising to me.
Pierre Le Fou @ 1:
I understand that you’re trying for something positive here, but, if it’s an urban legend, it’s not at all true. If it’s not an urban legend, in no way does it make Lépine’s murders to have backfired. Those women are still dead. Those women are still mourned. There was an immediate chilling effect on women who had an interest in STEM fields. Women in STEM fields still face walls of active hostility and harassment. Many women still end up turning away or dropping out of STEM fields because of that hostility and harassment. We live in a world where too many men are comfortable calling Lépine a saint; we live in a world where too many men think killing women to put us back in our place is a fine idea.
Our daughter, much to our pleasant surprise, has decided to major in engineering. I can only hope that she has the strength and support to find her way past the misogynistic shit that’s sure to come her way. I don’t know if she knows about this, and I don’t know if I should share.
FWIW, my advice would be share, ask what she thinks about it, and talk about what she wants to do. Maybe that information will discourage her from going into engineering, but if so, better she find it out now than half way through her degree. Maybe it’ll help her be prepared for the crap she’ll get and be more ready to deal with it when it happens. Of course, you know your daughter, I don’t, so if my advice feels wrong, feel free to flush it.
Note that this was never called terrorism. Admittedly, it was the 1990s and “terrorism” wasn’t the think then that it is now, but still, if an Arabic man had come into a room, yelled, “You’re all Christians and you’re going to be engineers!” and started shooting, what would that have been called?
The memory of this massacre still gives impetus to strengthen gun control laws in Canada – even after the damage Harper’s conservatives did:
http://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-tables-bill-to-reinstate-provincial-gun-registry
A perspective from the mother of the killer:
http://www.citynews.ca/2015/12/03/let-hate-go-says-mother-montreal-massacre-shooter/
Sadly even in the civilised world of British engineering, discrimination against women is rampant. My own daughter graduated as a civil engineer, went on a “training scheme” with one of the major UK companies, and spent 2 years being given the filing to do before they “let her go” at the end of the training period. It’s not an uncommon experience for women.
Every time I hear about poly I am more stunned than the previous time.
I’d never heard of the incident before hearing this moving song by Australian folksinger Judy Small, who wrote many songs on feminism and genderqueer issues:
Dianne #6. I am afraid if it happened today the outcome would be all too predictable.
First the press would gloat that Marc Lepine’s birth name was Gamil Gharbi. Then they would define him by his father – born in Algeria and migrated to the US.
Then they would point out his father had violent traditional views on women. When they found out his father had been brought up a muslim they would be in ecstasy
They would ignore the fact the father was non practicing and Marc was an athesist. They would ignore the fact Marc hated his father. They would ignore the anti feminist diatribe of Marc’s suicide note.
No. It would all be racist: arab muslim father inculcates son in a triumph of nurture over nature. Cause that’s the narrative, isn’t it?
Umm, Canada. From this side of the pond it’s all ex-colony. ;)
I graduated in April 89 from Polytechnique. Remember very vividly when I heard the news on the radio. And I’m proud this see my younger daughter starting at Poly in a few weeks to become an engineer.
Luc