Montreal Massacre - 20 years on

[Bellis]

20 years ago yesterday, a 25 year old man, Marc Lepine, entered Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, separating women from men, and shooting 28 people (mostly women), killing 14 women, before shooting himself. He blamed feminism for all his problems - he included a hit list of local professional women as the "feminists" he wished to kill. It has been suggested that he targetted female students at the technical university because he blamed them for his inability to get admission to EP - they had taken seats that should rightfully have been his.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_massacre

Today, I am listening to a videocourtesy of my FB feed deconstructing media coverage of the massacre. She raises questions of glorifying the bloody shots of the women, minimizing the crime as one that targetted women as women, denying the event as further evidence of a cultural pattern that accepts a certain violence against women. And also focusing on the shooter as victim - a fascination with his psychology and motivations at the expense of honoring the dead. I don't agree with all she says, but it's thought-provoking.

RIP Montreal fourteen.

[Chaldanya]

20 years ago yesterday, a 25 year old man, Marc Lepine, entered Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, separating women from men, and shooting 28 people (mostly women), killing 14 women, before shooting himself...

Some of the women that survived the initial attach killed themselves afterwards because they could not cope with the massacre. His killings are higher than 14...

I can't watch the video at work but I'll try to check it out later.

N

The names of the victims are:

* Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student

* Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

* Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

* Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student

* Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student

* Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student

* Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department

* Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student

* Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student

* Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student

* Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student

* Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student

* Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student

* Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

Je me souviens.

I actually hadn't heard of this until I met a female engineer from Montréal who talked about its influence on her own life path. (She wasn't a student until after this had happened, but it still loomed large in her mind, and her parents'.)

[Yagathai]

I don't know that it's fair to add the later suicides to the victims list, personally.

[VarysTheSpider]

Today, I am listening to a videocourtesy of my FB feed deconstructing media coverage of the massacre. She raises questions of glorifying the bloody shots of the women, minimizing the crime as one that targetted women as women, denying the event as further evidence of a cultural pattern that accepts a certain violence against women.

I can't watch the video, but is she actually denying the bolded part, or questioning denying it? The latter would seem a hell of a stretch, and skepticism demands that someone using such a freak event as evidence for anything generally should be treated with suspicion.

[Night Watchman]

I don't know that it's fair to add the later suicides to the victims list, personally.

But for that man's actions they wouldn't have killed themselves. He contributed substantially to their deaths. I don't think I would add them to any memorials or anything, but they're certainly victims.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

The way I'm reading it is that she's questioning those who want to focus on the one-time nature of the attack, and the shooter's apparent irrationality and loss of control*, despite the fact that he is reported to have said multiple times that he was picking his victims because they were women.

Also, because I know I don't think about intersectionality enough when it comes to events like this, I wanted to point out this very good article about some of the issues we should always be thinking about, even when commemorating a very specific event.

*I'm trying to be careful with my language. There are a hell of a lot of people who are or have been irrational and/or stereotypically "crazy" without going and shooting up a school. There are also those, although we like to think they're less common, who commit violence against others very rationally indeed.

[Xray the Enforcer]

A miserable anniversary. :(

[murphy]

I don't know that it's fair to add the later suicides to the victims list, personally.

If they committed suicide because of the direct impact the shootings had on their lives, then yes, they should be included.

[Datepalm]

I have actually never heard of this. :frown5:

I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but in terms of what she's saying about media coverage and the creation of the narrative, I was very surprised that she mentione that campus womens groups had been recieving threats beforehand. It actually reminds me a lot of the assasination of Yitzhak Rabin. There was a massive wave of death threats and protests calling for his death and so on before the murder, yet afterwards, and for a long time, the story was "It was a fringey lunatic, on his own, representative of nothing, lets all hug and cry together."

Mostly I think thats a natural tendency becuase its a hell of a lot easier to sit down and cry and ruminate about the darkness of the human soul than to get up and tackle the actual problems. Not to mention its comfortable for those who were egging the lone gunmen on before he did something upopular, to leave their agendas untarnished - this proves nothing about femenism, as it was just one crazy guy, who spent entire life on a planet that isnt earth, apparently.

[Bellis]

I can't watch the video, but is she actually denying the bolded part, or questioning denying it? The latter would seem a hell of a stretch, and skepticism demands that someone using such a freak event as evidence for anything generally should be treated with suspicion.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear above. The producer of the video essay claims that much of the coverage of the shooting framed it as a one-time event. The coverage of the shooting, in 1989, deliberately minimized the event as one that targeted women as women who dared to study engineering, instead focusing on it as the work of a lone madman.

I realize now that the vid was made in the mid-90s. By the time I attended university in Canada in the late 90s, the EP massacre was most definitely commemorated at my school as a solemn reminder of the struggle that (we) women had to go through to enter the educational and work environment, especially in non-stereotypical fields such as engineering or the hard sciences. Engineering programs were overwhelmingly male when I was in undergrad (a decade ago). I wonder how much has changed here, 20 years after.

[Shryke]

The way I'm reading it is that she's questioning those who want to focus on the one-time nature of the attack, and the shooter's apparent irrationality and loss of control*, despite the fact that he is reported to have said multiple times that he was picking his victims because they were women.

Also, because I know I don't think about intersectionality enough when it comes to events like this, I wanted to point out this very good article about some of the issues we should always be thinking about, even when commemorating a very specific event.

*I'm trying to be careful with my language. There are a hell of a lot of people who are or have been irrational and/or stereotypically "crazy" without going and shooting up a school. There are also those, although we like to think they're less common, who commit violence against others very rationally indeed.

I don't think the fact that he picked specifically women is any sign of a cultural thing at all.

This isn't some sign of our culture being ok with violence against women, any more then that recent Florida shooting is a sign of our culture being ok with violence against office workers.

Look, everywhere, everyday, peolpe are sexist cocknobs, they are racist fucksticks, they are fired, they are bullied, they picked on and all that other bullshit. But in the end, only a few crazy fuckers decide this is a reason to shoot up a bunch of people. It takes a certain kind of crazy motherfucker to do that.

Which isn't to say that feminism, in this case, wasn't his "reason". But if it wasn't that, it would have been something else. Our culture's various outlooks on women don't have anything to do with what this ass-stain did, it was just another excuse.

Anyone fucked up enough in the head to walk into a school and shoot 28 people will find a reason to do it.

[Yagathai]

If they committed suicide because of the direct impact the shootings had on their lives, then yes, they should be included.

In order to draw a meaningful causative link between the massacre and the suicides, you'd not only have to prove that they killed themselves because of the massacre, but also that it was the only major factor in their decisions to suicide. From what we know about the psychology of suicide, it's almost never just one factor, but rather a concatenation of circumstances and contributing elements that drives a person to kill themself (barring cases of terminal illness or chronic pain).

[Datepalm]

In order to draw a meaningful causative link between the massacre and the suicides, you'd not only have to prove that they killed themselves because of the massacre, but also that it was the only major factor in their decisions to suicide. From what we know about the psychology of suicide, it's almost never just one factor, but rather a concatenation of circumstances and contributing elements that drives a person to kill themself (barring cases of terminal illness or chronic pain).

Lets say at the very least its statistically very unlikely that out of this particular group of women several commited suicide, as compared to a similar random sampling of canadian female engineering students over the same period, who were not nearly murdered in a massacre.

[The Iceman of the North]

I don't think the fact that he picked specifically women is any sign of a cultural thing at all.

This isn't some sign of our culture being ok with violence against women, any more then that recent Florida shooting is a sign of our culture being ok with violence against office workers.

If you look at Canada. How many office workers are killed each year by disgruntled colleagues? How many women are killed each year by their SO or ex?

Don't tell me there isn't a culture of violence at women in Canada that is significantly different from any "culture of violence against office workers" or even "culture of violence against men".

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

Did I say it was "a cultural thing"?

As it happens, I do think culture played into it. (Why else would there be academic studies on whether the man was a martyr for the cause of men's rights, and not just self-defined?) Even if he would have killed some other way, the fact that he killed these victims in this way -- including separating the men from the women, to be sure he did not target the former -- has a certain cultural component. That doesn't mean everyone thinks violence against women is A-OK, especially when it leads to murder, but you might be surprised what gets a pass. Not all violence and subjugation is a stereotypical "honor killing".

Of course, I also think the fact that the guy was a (would-be and in-practice) murderer also contributed. I think that contributed predominantly, in fact. Just as there are loads of irrational and mentally ill people who don't go around shooting people, not all men will, and not all anti-feminists will either. I just don't think there's a single cause, and ruling out culture entirely -- such as refusing to look at the effect culture might even possibly play -- makes it more difficult to prevent things like this from happening again.

[S John]

I don't think the fact that he picked specifically women is any sign of a cultural thing at all.

This isn't some sign of our culture being ok with violence against women, any more then that recent Florida shooting is a sign of our culture being ok with violence against office workers.

Gotta agree here. If you extend blame to an aspect of society for one crazy fucker in this instance then you have to do it every time. In which case Islam gets some blame for Maj. Hasan last month and Marilyn Manson was partially responible for Columbine.

[Yagathai]

Lets say at the very least its statistically very unlikely that out of this particular group of women several commited suicide, as compared to a similar random sampling of canadian female engineering students over the same period, who were not nearly murdered in a massacre.

Oh, sure. I'm not saying it wasn't a contributory factor. I'm just saying that calling those suicides further victims of the massacre is disingenuous.

[Datepalm]

Gotta agree here. If you extend blame to an aspect of society for one crazy fucker in this instance then you have to do it every time. In which case Islam gets some blame for Maj. Hasan last month and Marilyn Manson was partially responible for Columbine.

I don't think Manson is to blame for Columbine (although i'm less sure about the other Manson), but in this instance Islam is to Hasan as Men are to this. Thats wrong - but the culture of violence against women does exist, as does extremist fanaticism in Islam, and glorification of violence in the media works for all three for me.

[Shryke]

Did I say it was "a cultural thing"?

As it happens, I do think culture played into it. (Why else would there be academic studies on whether the man was a martyr for the cause of men's rights, and not just self-defined?) Even if he would have killed some other way, the fact that he killed these victims in this way -- including separating the men from the women, to be sure he did not target the former -- has a certain cultural component. That doesn't mean everyone thinks violence against women is A-OK, especially when it leads to murder, but you might be surprised what gets a pass. Not all violence and subjugation is a stereotypical "honor killing".

Of course, I also think the fact that the guy was a (would-be and in-practice) murderer also contributed. I think that contributed predominantly, in fact. Just as there are loads of irrational and mentally ill people who don't go around shooting people, not all men will, and not all anti-feminists will either. I just don't think there's a single cause, and ruling out culture entirely -- such as refusing to look at the effect culture might even possibly play -- makes it more difficult to prevent things like this from happening again.

How is looking at culture gonna stop it from happening again? How is much of anything we do gonna stop it from happening again?

We can be on the lookout for signs someone is gonna do this, but we can't change our culture to stop people like this from ever existing, and most steps we take towards stopping this kind of shit end up awfully draconian.

Any sort of cultural factors here are just an excuse. They are window dressing for this man's severe mental issues. If not this, there would have been another reason. Another set back in his life to be blamed on someone else.

As someone above said, if we use this as an excuse to look at our own culture, then we should be using Columbine as an excuse to have a look at Marilyn Manson and using Charles Manson as an excuse to have a look at the Beatles.

These things didn't play a factor in these peoples actions, they simply gave them an excuse for them.