The F-Word

I've just read the front page piece by my Star colleague Catherine Porter, the one commemorating the Ecole Polytechnique massacre of Dec. 6, 1989.

She interviews Nathalie Provost, who was shot four times and survived, when a gunman burst into that engineering school 20 years ago. (I won't name him because I prefer to remember his victims.) Here's a snip:

"We are not feminists."

A young, incredulous Nathalie Provost said those words to Marc Lépine 20 years ago Sunday. It was a bid to save her and her fellow students' lives – the women Lépine had isolated in a university classroom before opening fire on them with a semi-automatic hunting rifle.

Provost was one of the lucky four who survived. "At the time, I thought to be a feminist meant you had to be militant," says Provost, who today is overworked and feeling skittish as the anniversary approaches. She was the young woman who, from her hospital bed a couple days later, urged Canadian girls to not be frightened by the event and to pursue engineering careers. She was also my introduction to feminism in life, not just theory. And to the concept that the personal is political.

"I realized many years later that in my life and actions, of course I was a feminist. I was a woman studying engineering and I held my head up."

If you go through the comments section, which seems to have been invaded by the gun nuts and some of the angrier men's rights activists, you'll see:

1. That there's a lot of denial that the long-gun registry, which Parliament is set on eliminating, has anything to do with preventing violence against women.

This is unmitigated crap, as I have said over and over again. And Statistics Canada proves it. Check it.

Can it be a coincidence that, since the registry was established, the number of femicides by rifles -- which the preferred method of shooting one's spouse to death -- has declined drastically? Fact is, having a gun in the home will make somebody more likely to use it.

True, the numbers were already on a downward trend but, research shows, much of that can probably be explained by the fact that, thanks to the feminist movement, women were becoming more economically independent and a network of shelters and other services was being built. Women who have the means to get out will more likely get out -- although, sadly, that's when they are at the most vulnerable to being stalked and killed.

Just read men's rights activist regular Keith in the comments in my previous post on this subject where he attempts to justify these murders by writing:

''How many women who are the ultimate victim of violence, were killed by a gun due to social policies which enslave men to pay the female victim money, in the form of so called child support, to make the women independant while making the man destitude?''

Charming. The system sucks so you shoot the mother of your children. Poor victimized men's rights activist.

But I digress.

Eliminating the gun registry is not only a slap in the face to the Dec. 6 victims and their families, it's also another insult to women by the Conservatives. But they don't get it, as The Star's Susan Delacourt reports today:

The potential demise of Canada's long-gun registry cast a shadow Friday over any attempts by federal politicians to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre of 14 women at Montreal's l'École Polytechnique.

In the Commons, Bloc Québécois MP Thierry St-Cyr (Jeanne-Le Ber) said the survivors of the tragedy have been let down by the "hypocrisy" of a government that helped usher in recent private member's legislation to wind down the gun registry.

Quoting Heidi Rathjen, one of those survivors, St-Cyr said: "It is a slap in the face of the victims of Polytechnique, as well as of all other victims of firearms."

But Conservative MP Sylvie Boucher, parliamentary secretary for the status of women, said the Bloc should be ashamed to be playing political games on the backs of women's deaths. Conservatives are proud of all the law-and-order measures they've introduced to combat violence against women and punish those responsible, noted Boucher.

Oh please. Many men who shoot their wives have no criminal records. You can't preemptively lock them up. But the gun registry allowed the police to take away the rifles of men who did have priors.

Get it?

However, one thing they often do have is personality disorders, such as depression. Well, let me tell you, if a guy does go around acting suicidal and has guns, he won't get to keep those guns if the police hear about it.

Get that?

The gun nuts say that the gun registry was too costly -- although the money has mostly been spent. Throwing out the billions spent is like saying ''Oh, the house cost two billion to build, which is too much, so let's blow it up.''

Operating the gun registry now only accounts for some $8 million a year, chump change for the government, especially considering the cost of domestic violence. How much does it cost to try and incarcerate a killer? How much does it cost to place the children under the care of social services?

What's the worth of a woman?

If the gun registry costs $8 million a year, which is the most oft-cited figure, and 16 women are killed by rifles per year, that's $500,000 per woman. Speaking for myself, I think that a woman's life is worth at least that much.

Do you Keith?

2. That, despite all the evidence, there are still people out there who claim that the Dec. 6 shooter was just a lone madman -- who had a violent father, by the way -- and that the massacre had nothing to do with feminism.

Give me a break.

Not only did he deliberately separate men from women, he also wrote this before he packed up his arsenal and shot up the school. Some excerpts:

Would you note that if I commit suicide today 89-12-06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs) but for political reasons. Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker.

<CLIP>

Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men.

Gee. Sounds familiar. Too familiar.

Happy St. Marc's Day

December 6 is celebrated around the world in English speaking countries as

International Marc Lepine Day

It seem that almost every week some distraught suicidal young man takes a rifle or pistol and shoots people at a school, a shopping mall, or a city. These are called horrible events by our media, and invariably used as reasons to hate men by the feminists, their blue gun thug Gestapo, and their talking head lackeys. The young men are almost always emotionally distraught, driven to desperation by a feminazi society that has tried to trample him into dust.

Every year, every month, every day, every hour, men are driven to suicide by the evil feminazi hate machine...

And:

Marc Lepine tells women and feminists YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE MONTERS ANYMORE. He tells these thousands of women and feminists who have stolen their partner's house, their car, their money, he tells those who have stolen their ex-husband's children, their jobs and drove them to suicide: STOP TO BE MONSTERS, stop to secretly dream of killing men and planning gendercide, and we will perhaps begin again to love you some day. This is a powerful message, A MESSAGE OF LOVE, worthy of a new Christ.

I guess the Dec. 6 shooter was not such a loner, hunh?

Yes, dear reader, there are men out there who consider the killer to be a hero.

I wonder if those guys have guns.

One more thing: Here's some mealy-mouthed memorializing on the part of Helena Guergis, the Minister of State for the Status of Women, in today's National Post. It's almost all about what those foreigners do. Nothing about what good old boy Canadians with their guns do.

Just saying.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Judy Rebick adds this:

I am writing this from Montreal where I am attending a colloquium to examine the massacre twenty years later. Journalist Francine Pelletier,  who was one of the women on the hit list found in his suicide note,  told the hundreds of women attending that she now believes this was a political act, an anti-feminist act, different than the every day incidents of violence against women.  “If he had wanted to target women, he would have gone to a nursing school,’ she said. “He was targeting women who had the audacity to want to do a man’s job.” Dominique Payette of Laval University agreed calling it a classical act of terrorism designed to strike fear in the hearts of women not so different than the Taliban throwing acid in the faces of little girls who want to go school.

 

I think it was both an act of terrorism and an extreme form of the violence women face every day.  As one participant said in the discussion, male violence in intimate relationships increases when the woman tries to become more independent.  It is used to keep women in their place through fear.

 Please read the whole thing.

FED UP WOMAN DATE: Sooey makes the point over in Cynic's comments that the killer's suicide note says almost nothing ''men's rights'' activists and even well-known pundits make on a routine basis.

An extract from his suicide note:

"Even if the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts. For why persevere to exist if it is only to please the government. Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men."

Sounds like any number of Feminist-hating pundits these days to me.

Er, except for that Grim Reaper bit, of course. That's pretty out there.

Comments

[Emily Dee]

Have you visited the REAL Women of Canada website? Almost every article ends with visceral comments about 'feminists'. Just horrible stuff. It makes me so sad.

My aunt was killed by her husband with a long gun in rural Canada, after years of abuse. She was trying to leave him. He said she was getting "uppity" and had it coming.

[Persist]

Great text- and excellent article . The- people who seem to live on another level of ethics- DO like to- comment, don't they ! Would be just sad- if some of the like-thinkerts weren't so murderous-.At least the NP text was better than a really hateful blast last year- by a woman with an unfortunate name-

[Antonia]

Emily, I am sorry about your aunt. Sadly, her story is not unique.

But, in these blogo-parts, we don't call them ''REAL'' women. They are UNREAL -- and I wonder how many of them are actually women.

[JR Jake]

Wow, that is pretty heavy. Sorry if I did not remember this incident in 1989, I was somewhat incapacitated at that time, etiology known but not detailed within. I firmly believe anyone who holds a firearm should not only have a background check for felonies, but also psychological profiling as well.

If there is an active gun registry and the Police have aforehand knowledge of someone who has run afoul of the law, or cause for domestic related offenses, it can be easily discovered as to their gun ownership. If that is the case, the guns should be removed from their person until they are deemed suitable to reclaim their lost possessions.

[hysperia]

Antonia, this post is as fitting a tribute to the women who died on December 6, 1989 as can be imagined. What I remember from the terrible days that followed that tragedy was the comfort I got from the women's movement whose leaders said: First we mourn, then we work for change. The fire and passion and intelligence and persistence and sheer hard work behind this piece are, in my mind, a direct result of all that fierce mourning and then the work of so many of us that followed. I am as moved now as I was then: so sad that there are many men (and women like Helen Guergis) who would prefer to continue hating or ignoring women than to see the truth; grieved for the hundreds of women and their children and families who suffer every day as a result of that ignorance; angry for the human waste that affects us all - the women who are victimized, those of us who know them or love them or work for them or are them and the many men who are their fathers, brothers, lovers and sons; and committed to use my intelligence and energy and compassion for the rest of my life to change all that.

Solidarity sister!
hysperia

[wascally wabbit]

Antonia - I'm back in court next week once more - supporting one of my daughters as she fights an abusive Ex who is using the court process to drag out her suffering. I am convinced that some of these mens activist organizations are now clandestinely counselling their clients on how to do just this - knowing it will clog the courts and subvert justice!
My other daughter burnt out after 12 years of providing therapeutic services to rape and sexual assault victims - and is now working in the slightly less troubled waters of marital counselling (well - at least the proponents want to try and patch things up).
I live in a very rural location where using guns for hunting is a way of life. Conservative MPs used their tenpercenter privileges to flood this riding with propaganda pressuring the local NDP MP to vote for the recent private members bill (she did). When I wrote the local media protesting these tactics, I was lambasted by people who are "friends" for taking the wrong side (which I hadn't). Frankly, there is a world of difference between owning a firearm in an urban environment and owning one in a rural setting (and I'm talking hunting weapons here not automatics). We have to find a way to modify the current legislation in a way that doesn't make farmers and other rural residents from feeling like they are being branded as criminals by folks in cities who don't seem to appreciate the differences!

[stellersjay]

Jeez, Antonia, you weren’t kidding about the comments on Catherine Porter’s piece, were you? I couldn’t help noticing that, as always, about 3/4 of the comments were by men. Makes you wonder where the “women talk too much” crap came from, but then again, the research consistently shows that anytime women account for more than 25% of the conversation, men hear them as overbearing and dominating the conversation. In its own way, that's kind of emblematic of what, aside from mental illness, fuelled that man’s murderous rage, isn’t it?

[Keith]

Antonia, I was asking you to explain your justification of the death of women by registered rifles in order to make other women financially independant while making men destitude. The registry solves nothing on it's own and is a huge investigative expense that is not critical in the resolving of these crimes. The registry prevents nothing. It is short sighted social policy just like the policy of lets make one child's parent financially independant while making the child's other parent destitude.

[Ess Bee]

Keith's repeated and inappropriate linking of the issues of murder by shotgun and the gun registry with that of child support payments is creeping me out.

[Pale cold]

The child support guidelines are very clear. They are based upon income. They are also based upon current income and they can also be suspended or changed when there is less, when there is legitimately no income at all. It is a simple matter of filling out a court paper, and providing proof of that income change.
Legitimate drop in income.....Keep that in mind. I know many men who work under the table, or who hide assets in order to punish an ex financially. Judges will watch for this trickery.
http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/fcy-fea/lib-bib/legis/fcsg-lfpae/index.html
The amounts are adjusted for each province and are also based on the number of children.
They are too low in many cases.
These costs STILL would be incurred if the child was living with both parents.

Enough mis truths Keith. The facts do not support your incessant whining. At the end of the day, the amounts paid are based on what the man, or woman, is actually earning, not some arbitrary amount pulled out of the sky.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

"Kim Campbell, then a minister of state, went on to become – very briefly – the country's first woman Prime Minister. "

from Catherine Porter's article.

just wondering - how many people on this blog voted to keep her that way, instead of watching her crash and burn?

[Stan Howard]

I was the director of programming for a student service agency at McGill University when the Massacre happened. Many of my students were sickened but thought it was the work of a maniac. This included a lot of women in the hard sciences or in education. When I left and came to Toronto and Dec. 6th came around I had a friend who taught math in a Toronto area community college. The male students cracked jokes in the memorial assemble at the college. One student remarked that Lepine was wrong: that he should have raped them before killing them.

I think it was two years after the killings, a Quebec writer had a book published on the anniversary that came to the conclusion that it was feminism was the real killer and that Lepine's actions were understandable.

Is it any wonder that Harper feels it is politically "safe" to stop funding women's groups, end the gun registry and the programm that allowed advocacy groups to have funds to constitutionally challenge laws?

Did the 14 die in vain? No, but only some heard the shots. We have to pump up the volume so that everyone will hear them.

[Ashley]

Thank you Antonia, that was a great article. I was absolutely floored by the link "Gee. Sounds familiar. Too familiar." I read Bob's whole post (and a few other posts) and I'm still in shock. I can even begin to understand how a person's view of the world could possibly be that warped. Unbelievable. He also seems to think they are still executing people at Auschwitz? Yikes.

[pale]

Stygian has that lockstep thought process going on.....

Lets see. Kim Campbell, was a con. A Progressive con, but still a con. ( and was handed the reigns to the party just as it crashed and burned of course...Ol Brian Baloney and his crew made sure they trashed the place before they departed)

Personally, I vote for a bulk of the platform of the candidate, not the gender specifically. I mean, look at Palin in the US. One would have to ignore the fact that she is as smart as a chicken to vote for her...(Or be as smart as a chicken)

Same goes with Helena and Rona Ambrose. Abhorrent women.
But if a progressive woman runs, and she is not all about stabbing women in the back (figuratively of course) she has my vote.

Women do not all march to the same drummer.
That is what conservatives do.

Glad to clear that up for ya.

[shane]

"If the gun registry costs $8 million a year, which is the most oft-cited figure, and 16 women are killed by rifles per year, that's $500,000 per woman. Speaking for myself, I think that a woman's life is worth at least that much"

Major Heart surgery costs $100,000 per person in Canada (of Tax dollars). So if the gun registry was abolished there would be money to save 80 lives= per year.

More importantly, lets not ignore the elephant in the room, the firearm homicide rate was already on the decline before the gun registry was introduced. It really isn't impossible to believe that the rate of decline would of continued if the gun registry wasn't introduced.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

Pale. You fail.

Catherine Porter originally said "Kim Campbell, then a minister of state, went on to become – very briefly – the country's first woman Prime Minister. Today, women make up a paltry fifth of the House of Commons. "

suggesting , I think, that Kim Campbell was a GOOD THING.
now we discover that it's not about women as such, but certain types of women.

and Sarah Palin will surprise us (me pleasantly, you I think, less so)

but do check out this

Poll Shocker: Palin Within 1% of Obama

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/sarah_palin_obama_poll/2009/12/08/296051.html

tralalalalala