Remembering the Montreal Massacre

[HerBeatitude]

Just wanted to bring this to everyone's attention.

We should remember them

I was a teen living in Montreal at that time and also knew someone who was at poly when it happened.

Horrible.

We must never forget.

Last month, on a Saturday night, I was alone in the house because DH was on a business trip, and I heard an enormous screeching of police car sirens at around midnight. I noted it because it's unusual to hear the police in my area. Two days later, it transpired that a man down the road from me, about ten minutes walk from my house, had killed his three month old baby, his wife, and his mother-in- law.

What about Richard Speck, a mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966.

Lundy Bancroft is worth reading because he disregards any souped up "blame the mother" psychological tales that patriarchy likes to peddle.
He states, clearly and simply, that patriarchal societies support male violence against women. From the courts to the media, male violence is encouraged and goes unpunished. I found it reassuring because when you realise it's cultural, you see that it's not inevitable, or innate, for men to do this. The society in which they live encourages male violence against women:

And from Sexual POlitics:
" ...just as under other total ideologies (racism and colonialism are somewhat analagous in this respect) control in patriarchal society would be imperfect, even inoperable, unless it had the rule of force to rely upon, both in emergencies and as an ever present instrument of intimidation "

I read that to mean, that so unnatural is the status quo of female subjugation, that force must be continuously used, in order to uphold the status quo of patriarchy. This can be changed (I believe) as more women get into positions of power, especially in the legal system.

"And I've noticed that the men who kill their families, usually only target the women and young children. They never seem to go for their brothers, BILs, FILs etc, it's always their wife, SILs, female friends of the wife etc."

I am not sure I agree with that one though, I think people who kill their family usually go for people in the immediate family (houshold)regardless of gender and that if it happens to be the wife and mother in low as in Sakura's case, it is because they happened to be the people in the house. I saddly have had two cases close to me back home of men killing their families and in both cases the wife's dad (all living in the same house) was killed as well so my experience is a bit different I suppose. In one of the tragic case the man killed his family when his buisness went bankrupt (not gender related) and in the other one because the family was breaking up (I suppose it could be seen as gender related but am still unsure)Both men committed suicide afterwars.

I was just thinking again about the "Afghan VS Canada thing". Maybe if you look at the day to day life yes there is a difference, in Canada womem do not routinely risk their lives if they choose to work but once the killing has been committed, it is really shocking that one would say it is less of an issue because it is Canada.

It's still gendered though, because it's a man doing the killing (as opposed to a woman) and in the cases you just mentioned the men in question were the wife's family, so an extention of the wife, in the murderer's eyes.
It's very rare for a murderer to kill his own brother, though, or uncle. very very common for a murderer to kill his wife and children, though

Yes but I am pretty sure if they had lived with the man parents rather than the wife's parents they would have been killed too (at least in the Bankrupcy one).

I remeber two cases where men killed their fathers, they were both very mediatic cases but surely there are more?

the Menendez brothers

www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJean-Claude_Romand&rct=j&q=grench%20man%20pretended%20he%20worked%20for%20UN%20and%20killed%20his%20parents&ei=8eb9TKWqL4eShAe9rLjlCw&usg=AFQjCNFHmLmX8yhykrj3tDsWfMym5TJ2OQ&cad=rja

By no means I am trying to deminish crime agaist women but I think sometimes, in family murders the gender is not as important as the fact they are close (both in feelings and in geography sense) to the perpetrator.

I have not any recollection of any cases with men killing their own brother though so you might be onto someting and there might be more to it that the fact they do not live together.

but I'm sure the majority of family annihilators kill their wives because of rage, and because our culture socialises men into violence. I just thought it was an extreme case of coming home and kicking the dog. They kill their wives and children because they can , and because in the grand scheme of things, it happens with such frequency on the media and all around us, and always has done, that killing your wife doesn't seem such an evil act. A natural progression from just beating her. (Many DV victims, who reported the DV to police, are eventually murdered by their spouse)

What do you mean they do not believe their wives could survive without them? Do you mean they don't want to believe it?

I see what you mean SGM. But I think it could be equally a way of "saving" them too? maybe the shame of being pretty much destitute? I think unless the person like in the OP lives a note as to why they did it it is very difficult to know exactly what was the reason, it could be exactly what you said or it could not. I think family links brings an entire different dimention to it.

Sakura I thik the situations I have described and the situation of domestic violence are very different though. Maybe it would be intersting to start another thread about the specifics of killing family members as I fear we are derailing a bit of this thread main subject.
I do not quite know how I would word the OP though.I will have a think

gorionine Whatever you conclude about motives, you cannot separate male aggression, its prevalence from a culture that permits and promotes it

You nearly always find that the women who are killed by their partners have been subject to domestic violence previously. The media usually treats it as a one-off, but if you chase up the next story you hear on the radio of a woman being killed by her partner, you usually find some small print about the previous charges of assault, or that he was known to the police for DV, AND often that they were splitting up at the time.

I've noticed with female family annihilators, that there is nearly always some circumstance where they fear the children would literally not survive without them, so if the child is severly disabled and the mother is physically ill for instance. Not always of course - there are some pretty sick women out there too. But I can't remember a case to compare the the frequent ones where the man kills the children to "get back at" his ex-p.

SGM, I have misgivings about that POV. It's trying to make out as though the murderer is, in fact, a benevolent hero who was only thinking of his family.

What about the DV the woman put up from him with before she was murdered? DV is a precursor to murder. The cycles of abuse and then violence get shorter and shorter, and more violent, until one day he kills her. That's how most spouse murders take place. It's an (inevitable) culmination of DV. In fact, when a woman tries to escape her partner, or leave him, that's the time she's most likely to be killed by him.

Honestly, the theory that the murderer is looking out for his family sounds like bullshit.
Sorry to be blunt, I always feel when violence against women is depoliticized in such a manner.

What about the cultural acceptability of violence? The way violence, especially sexual violence is eroticized in the media; the way men are desensitized to violence against women because every other night a women is murdered on TV? The way women are dehumanised?

I would say all of these issues come way, way before the notion that a man believes the family can't survive without him. The fact that they murder their spouses just as the spouse is trying to leave them, tells me that they know their family can live only too well without them, and it is this which drives them to annihilate them. "Living well is the best revenge" as they say. These family annihilators don't want their woman to have that revenge.

I see.. I just don't believe them IYSWIM. It sounds like something a lawyer made up.

If we're looking for psychological motives, it's abandonment issues that drives a man to murder his spouse, coupled with a lack of respect towards her (and society supports him on that front).
But I'm sure a lot of them do it because of they think the kick is worth the penalty

Sakura Tue 07-Dec-10 10:35:38

"gorionine Whatever you conclude about motives, you cannot separate male aggression, its prevalence from a culture that permits and promotes it"

Sorry Sakura I am not quite sure I understand your post. Does it mean thar whatever the motive seems to be if a woman is amongst the vitims it is always a mysogynistic crime even if the perpetrator does not know it himself? Could you tell me more as I really am not too sure I get it.

I realise I do have a lot of questions but struggle a bit to write them down with them actually meaning what I actully do mean. I will have to put some order in my head and come back later.

yes, basically I meant that. I meant that in a woman-hating world, any motive, any trumped up psychological "my mother didn't love me" excuses for men killing women must be seen through the lens of the fact we live in a woman-hating culture.

If you don't watched TV for a while ( I live abroad and don'T) when you do turn it back on you realise you are re-sensitized to the misogyny.

As a 12 year old I remember watching a crime series and the first question that popped into my head was "Hang on.. it was a woman who was murdered last week, why is a woman being murdered this week as well. They should have made it a man this week..."
In my teen mind, woman-murder wasn't inevitable or natural so it confused me that the murder, on TV (so fiction) was always a woman.
Now we have CSI, which is the erotisizing of woman-murder, "making hatred sexy" . Then we have the general lack of outrage by society when men hurt women.
An evolved society should be outraged whenever any man hurts a woman, but society simply nods and moves on. It's part of the wallpaper.
In this context, I would say that men are groomed to perpetrate violence by a woman-hating culture.

If you haven't watched

We're highlighting examples of male violence against women on the 'Victims of Violence' thread and we're seeing time and time again that women who've died at the hands of their partners were previously victims of DV. We're also seeing, when these cases come to court, that the men killed the women because they were seeking to control them in some way.

I started the thread because I felt that there were too many of these killings happening and that they were becoming - to use Sakura's phrase - part of the wallpaper. There simply isn't enough outrage that these things happen.