École Polytechnique murders 32 years ago today

[Rhannion]

Today 6th December marks 32 years since 14 women were murdered in Montreal, Canada. They were shot by because they were women.

The thought processes are incomprehensible to the vast majority of people.

Exactly. Keep it in mind when you deal with them.

@334bu

*he actually let the men flee*

To be fair to the male students, he actually rounded them up and made them go out at gunpoint. At that point the students also thought there were other shooters and that they were actually being singled out. It was only when they were outside and the shooter shut them out, that they realised that the women were the real targets.

I can't imagine how the women and men felt when that dawned on them. How dreadful.

And yes, murdered for being intelligent women

[quote vivariumvivariumsvivaria]Guess who they have speaking...brace yourself for the sharing of misogynistic groping this poor vulnerable person was subjected to.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-trans-woman-guestspeaker-1.6274185?cmp=rss[/quote]
Oh, good grief. Memememememe. Sod the women who were murdered, rather than having their arses felt 😑

Featuring male people who prioritise male interests on a commemoration of the events of that day where an antifeminist man killed feminist women is an actively hostile act. It enrages me.

Just googling this to see context etc.

I'm still not clear.

I think (but could well be wrong) that there are many orgs groups communities that hold rememberance events (events not good word to use but can't think of right one).

I think from reading this speaker was at one of them. Rather than there's one main event and it was there iyswim.

Happy to be corrected, Google gave results local news etc hard to piece together.

CBC PEI Twitter turned off comments on one post. One still up vv angry response.

A few hits maybe 5 first page Google had exact same wording on their page about it, which included-

'As we mourn their loss and remember their lives , we reaffirm our commitment to fight the hatred that led to this tragedy, and the misogyny that still exists today. In Canada and around the world, women, girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+ (two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, plus) and gender diverse individuals face unacceptable violence and discrimination. '

Also first page Google this piece-

owensoundsuntimes.com/news/local-news/speaker-raises-uncomfortable-question-at-montreal-massacre-vigil

'“Would we be here today if those women had been Indigenous? What if they were trans women? Or women who worked on the streets or had mental health or addictions issues?”

Karen Houle made the observation from the steps of Owen Sound city hall Monday to a few dozen people on the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

Meanwhile, Indigenous women, children and two-spirit people go missing and are targeted every day in Canada, Houle said.

Houle said many she works with don’t feel safe being who they are in their own homes. She works at the M’Wikwedong Indigenous Friendship Centre and runs a program called Building Gender-Diverse Communities. She’s a 2SLGBtQQIA+ mentor.

“It is the systemic fabric of inequalities that fuels desperation and a lack of hope that leads people to violence.”

She advised everyone to ask people what their pronouns are and use them, and don’t assume about gender, sexuality, identity or intentions, she said. Believe survivors and learn the signs of help, Houle said.'

Concern for indigenous people obv important. Massive problems, huge issue.

The rest? Could write an essay about why so shitty.

These smaller countries all seem to fall over themselves to be the wokeist wokes. NZ, Scotland, Canada. I know Canada is not small but on the world stage it is.
I think it's to do with a smaller pond of candidates for government and you get a few power hungry, attention hungry people who pull things to an extreme position without the many 'others' who are in bigger Govs who would pull back.

I'd never heard of this tragedy.
Why can't transwomen let women have anything of their own. Even massacres

@CheeseMmmm

Concern for indigenous people obv important. Massive problems, huge issue.

The rest? Could write an essay about why so shitty.

A massive, but quite different thing to the Montreal massacre. “It is the systemic fabric of inequalities that fuels desperation and a lack of hope that leads people to violence.”

I don't think that was at all what was going on. The women targeted had emerged from the millennia of inequality against women. The murderer wasn't being treated unequally. Maybe he felt hopeless because he couldn't compete with them ... I've no idea what the relevance of that sentence would be in the context of any VAGW tbh. this was a specifically Incel-type, woman hating, MRA act of extreme violence. I can't make any sense of that sentence in the context of the massacre unless it's some sort of excuse for the man.

This was about the women who were shot and those who died on that day. They were targeted that day.

This is what the day was about - those 14 women. This wasn’t the day to look at others - just these 14 and why they were targeted.

This person should not have been asked to speak, nor should they have agreed to speak. They did their speaking at a trans memorial last month.

How many trans women were killed during this period in Canada? I couldn't find out.

Soon even asking questions like this could be outlawed with Bill C-36. Morgane Oger's bill criminalising feminism, intends to silence any dissenters and impose the ideology on the public using the law and to censor the online publication, Feminist Current, run by Meghan Murphy

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Shame on Canada.

@GoodieMoomin

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

Thank you. May they rest in peace.

@GoodieMoomin

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

Thinking of their families and their stolen lives.

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'.