École Polytechnique murders 32 years ago today

Geneviève Bergeron,
Hélène Colgan,
Nathalie Croteau,
Barbara Daigneault,
Anne-Marie Edward,
Maud Haviernick,
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz,
Maryse Laganière,
Maryse Leclair,
Anne-Marie Lemay,
Sonia Pelletier,
Michèle Richard,
Annie St-Arneault and
Annie Turcotte

I hope each of these women is at peace. I'm holding my 8 week old daughter, just as each of those women was once held by her mother, treasured and loved with every piece of them. I can't imagine the pain this crime caused to those families.

I fear the world is getting worse not better for women and the choice of speaker just reinforces that view.

I'm no sure they really wanted someone speaking 'for women'.

They either don’t check or don’t care about why they get to speak for women.

Hang on - are you telling me that the speaker at an event where women were massacred by a man with a gun because they were women/feminists previously put a tacitly threatening (to women/feminists) picture of an individual with a gun on social media?

Words.Fail.Me.

I'm so tired.

What is the stat? One dead woman every three days or so in the UK - murdered by a man. If she's over 75 her death or rape isn't even recorded because, well, who cares?

I used to be sympathetic to trans women, I really was "of course, come in and pee, let me fix that make up for you" - but, increasingly, I look at the piles of dead women compared to the, erm, no dead trans women, and I am losing sympathy.

I am middle aged and only now beginning to understand what "sisterhood" means. Those women who were murdered for being female by an inadequate man were my sisters. And I feel their loss. Which is odd, I didn't know them, but, jesus wept, I have a welling up of noisy, fiery grief at the loss of all these women who were all loved and needed.

We needed them.

One every three fucking days.

Yes. Well. No surprise. It’s a sub culture theme isn’t it?

The speaker retweeted this image of a TRA with a machine gun in August. Nerf or Nothin'." uses the implication that there is only one option, regardless of the debate

“I had a red dress on”, said no woman when describing her experience of being groped in a crowded bar, ever.

Interesting detail for this person to put in, no?

Geneviève Bergeron,
Hélène Colgan,
Nathalie Croteau,
Barbara Daigneault,
Anne-Marie Edward,
Maud Haviernick,
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz,
Maryse Laganière,
Maryse Leclair,
Anne-Marie Lemay,
Sonia Pelletier,
Michèle Richard,
Annie St-Arneault and
Annie Turcotte

"she campaigned to have the city change a commemorative plaque hanging outside of a Montreal park honouring the women killed at Polytechnique. Instead of ambiguously reminding visitors to contemplate the “victims of the Polytechnique tragedy”, the brand-new sign speaks in no uncertain terms: “This park is named in the memory of 14 women assassinated in an antifeminist attack.”
www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/04/mass-shooting-1989-montreal-14-women-killed

Geneviève Bergeron,
Hélène Colgan,
Nathalie Croteau,
Barbara Daigneault,
Anne-Marie Edward,
Maud Haviernick,
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz,
Maryse Laganière,
Maryse Leclair,
Anne-Marie Lemay,
Sonia Pelletier,
Michèle Richard,
Annie St-Arneault and
Annie Turcotte

theconversation.com/montreal-massacre-anniversary-the-media-must-play-a-key-role-in-fighting-femicide-172123

This is a better account but even in a piece that suggests we need to look at how violence against women is framed men are only mentioned twice as perpetrators - it's as if the violence just 'happens'.

Disgraceful. There is no tragedy that TRAs won't insert themselves into and make it all about them.

Shame on Canada.

I remember that massacre and those women. I was a student at the time and studying feminism. I remember watching the news report on the TV and having a premonition from a few early clues that this would be an act of gynecide. As well as being angry and upset - and also scared (in case of copy-cat crimes and particularly since I was studying something obviously feminist) it also chilled me to the bone in the sense that it was an early realisation of how much some men hate us and how vulnerable we are. It also stunned me that the obviously woman-hating nature of the event wasn't given much attention in the mainstream press. I remember crying with anger and sadness and not sleeping the night after the story broke.

I am incandescent with rage at a memorial of this being appropriated and the fact that this was not just terrorism - it was gynecide - being not only swept under the rug but openly and overtly whitewashed.

How dare they. How dare they minimise what happened to those women because they were women - biological females who dared to enter into a realm that some men think is theirs. How dare they hardly mention that this was perpetrated by a man and was (and is) part of a continuum of men's violence against women that has existed for millennia and which exists, in different forms, cross-culturally?

How dare they appropriate our oppression, minimise it and make it all about them?

How dare they then twist it to suggest that the bloody massacre of these women by a man is actually about elements of women's status and privilege by suggesting that 'only women' are talked about and we need to mention other minority groups because apparently they are marginalised by not being mentioned? How about the answer being that because despite the hype there have not been any mass massacres of 'two-spirit people' or trans/NB people?

Can women not have our own space and mention even when we have been massacred in an act of gynephobic hate?

Imagine if women waltzed into BLM and said 'but what about the Montreal Massacre - women's lives matter too' (not that we would).

I have words for the individual who was not born female who spoke at this event and for the authors of those articles that minimised this act of gross hatred and violence against women but they'd get me banned so I won't say them.

I do hope that women are giving this air and sunlight on social media though because it is an excellent illustration of the inherent and prevalent misogyny in the camp of some of those who seem hell-bent on silencing and shaming women for daring to speak our name.

I remember this terrible murder. So sorry for any of their surviving families who have to deal with this narcissistic bullshit on top of their grief.

These fuckwits will peak the world. It won't take one example, it will take hundreds. Sadly there are hundreds. I fear the backlash that is already starting for LGB and T people.

If a man were to step up and say...

I cannot begin to understand how much fear there still is in women - girls are brought up to be careful and wary, etc.

But this speaker made it NOT about women and girls (and these 14 women in particular). This just is not on.

During Monday's event, Preston said she will speak about some of her experiences of harassment on P.E.I. She hopes her stories can raise awareness.One incident happened in a bar.

We know what this is from the threads on transwidows, paraphilias, fetishes and sports and from The book "Men in Men's bodies" by Anne Lawrence

I had nightmares about this - very restless night (Prince Harry also popped at one point in to lecture me about about packing in work because it’s stressful).

I woke up angry. That and the BBC 100 women list just pushed me over the wedge.

I've woken up furious about this. The only thing I can think to do about it recentre the women who that man murdered. These are their names:

Geneviève Bergeron,
Hélène Colgan,
Nathalie Croteau,
Barbara Daigneault,
Anne-Marie Edward,
Maud Haviernick,
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz,
Maryse Laganière,
Maryse Leclair,
Anne-Marie Lemay,
Sonia Pelletier,
Michèle Richard,
Annie St-Arneault and
Annie Turcotte