(no subject)

[rivka]

As our ministers prepare to retire, they're re-delivering some of the sermons they consider to be their greatest hits from the past. On Sunday, Phyllis preached a sermon she'd given on the fourth anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique massacre, in which fourteen female engineering students were killed by a gunman who announced that he hated feminists. She talked about the massacre in detail, and the complexity of issues involved: should we think of it as a random act of evil by a deeply sick individual, or as part of a massive epidemic of violence against women?

She brought it home and made it personal, from both sides: she talked about being raped when she was thirteen years old, and she talked at length about the experience of finding out that one of her close friends ("a good liberal Unitarian-Universalist") had beaten both his wife and his daughter. She talked about how hard it was to report him, and how no one in that family - even the victims - will speak to her anymore. She talked about the necessity of taking action even when the problem is overwhelming and you know your actions probably won't be enough.

At the end of the sermon, she placed fourteen white roses in a vase while her husband and co-minister, John, read out the names of the fourteen women killed in Montreal. Then the congregation was invited to come forward and place additional roses in the vase in honor of other survivors or victims of violence against women. We closed with one of my favorite chants from the hymnal:

I know this rose will open
I know my fear will burn away
I know my soul will unfurl its wings
I know this rose will open.

It was one of the most intense services I've ever been to. I cried and cried. But it didn't just feel dismal. It felt like important emotional work.

---

Afterward, I've found myself stuck with one piece of the story that I hadn't known before. The Montreal gunman walked into a classroom and ordered the fifty male students and professor to leave. After they did, he shot the nine women who remained. It horrifies me to think of all of those men filing out of the room, knowing that they were leaving their classmates to be murdered. I can't help but contrast it with the elderly professor at Virginia Tech who blocked the classroom door with his body, sacrificing his life to give his students time to escape out the window. What would have happened if they'd tackled him? Sixty to one makes such different odds than nine to one.

Then I thought about all the times I've read in a news report about female hostages being released while men continued to be held. I've never asked myself whether women in that situation were wrong to leave.

I still don't know the answer. To either scenario.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I think it's wonderful that your church marked this occasion. I'd never heard about the event at all until moving to Canada, and I find that pretty horrifying.

-J

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Michael and I had an interesting conversation about that, after church. He was a student in an engineering department when it happened. He said that everyone was aware of what happened, but that there was absolutely no discussion of any potential larger implications.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I was also a student when it happened. I remember talking about it with some of my fellow students at the time. I don't remember talking about it with men. In retrospect, that's bizarre...at least 75% of my usual "us" at the time were men, but not for talking about this.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

It is not uncommon that writing on the internet brings tears to my eyes or shivers to the back of my neck. It is very unusual that it brings shivers to the base of my spine or has me running to close the office door so I don't have to see people.

I thought I could comment on the extra part of the story you wrote about, but I can't yet.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry to have upset you so.

I've edited to add a cut and a warning, and I apologize for not having done so before.

Reading about the 14.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Neither the apology or the cut-tag was necessary for me. If I had been thinking more clearly, I would have thanked you directly for your writing instead of expecting you to take a compliment out of my describing its effect on me.

As you probably already know, I was a Canadian female engineering student in 1989, and my sister was in Grade 13 and applying to engineering schools. I have felt and thought many things about and around this horrible event over the years, and am not finished either the feeling or the thinking. Or probably the posting.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

There's a play out that won the Governor General's up here that's a fictional account of the aftermath on one of the young men (a fictional character) and his family. It's The December Man (L’homme de décembre) by Colleen Murphy.

Speaking from the viewpoint of a Canadian who was in school not far away at the time ('89) I think it's important to remember that this was before a lot of school shootings. I know several of the young men expressed then and afterwards that it didn't even occur to them that that was his plan.

There's a good news clip here that's a 1989 interview with one of the young men that expresses that: http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-70-398-2243/disasters_tragedies/montreal_massacre/

[marith.livejournal.com]

Then I thought about all the times I've read in a news report about female hostages being released while men continued to be held. I've never asked myself whether women in that situation were wrong to leave.

That *THONK* sound was a large clue bat hitting the top of my head. I'd never thought about it that way before either, despite self-defense classes and thoughts on such situations.

...I think somewhere in my deep-set assumptions is the idea that if the terrorists send the women away and keep the men, it's some kind of mercy. But if they send the men away and keep the women, it's specifically to make it easier to assault and kill them.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

In re your dilemma, I've never (to my recollection) heard about a situation where the women and children were sent out so the men could be immediately slaughtered as a specific act of vengeance against their gender. I've heard of plenty of situations where men were held as hostages while women and children were allowed to go, but I don't think I know of anything analgous to that massacre.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

except in the implicit assumption that women and children (notice how they are always lumped together) are always "innocent" while men aren't. Gender bias hurts all of us and it runs in many different ways.

It is interesting that there is a high level of tolerance for violence against boys and men (just as there has been traditionally a high level of tolerance for domestic violence against women or parental violence against children). There is often an assumption that men either brought it on themselves, deserved it, or can fight back, in ways that women/children cannot - since the assumption is that women and children are "weak" and men, well, aren't.

This was brought home to me when a good friend told me about how he was routinely beaten up at school from age 7 to age 9 by boys 2-5 years older than him. Once, they broke his arm. And no one did anything about it because "boys will be boys", "he needs to toughen up", "he brings it on himself by being a smart ass".

Violence begets violence. Those who feel weak prey on those they view as weaker - be they other men, or women or children.

This was a fitting service for the 16 days of activism against gender based violence.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I never said, nor implied, any of those things. Please don't put words in my mouth or project your stuff all over me and my comment.

I'm well aware of how patriarchy affects men. I still stand by my comment that I've never seen men singled out for slaughter (I should clarify, in a North American context) in the way the women students were during that massacre.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Please be polite when you're talking to my friends in my journal.

I still stand by my comment that I've never seen men singled out for slaughter (I should clarify, in a North American context) in the way the women students were during that massacre.

This is true, although I also can't think of any additional examples in which men were released in order to single out women for slaughter. Montreal seems to be a singular example.

I was thinking, more generally, about whether any moral qualms attach to accepting a reprieve knowing that others are put in greater risk thereby. I'm not sure that the motives of the attacker make much difference to the victims, although they certainly may to the survivors.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I deliberately crafted my comment to be a calm, neutral response to what seemed to me a bunch of the other commenter's projections.

What about the girls murdered at the Amish school recently? And of course the girls at Platte Canyon high school just a week or two before?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'd forgotten that in the Amish school the boys were sent out. And Platte Canyon I hadn't heard of at all.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Some of us who receive violence choose not to put ourselves in positions where we might ourselves be violent.

[phantom_wolfboy]

Every December 6 I post a memorial to those women.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, rather I jam ust exploring some other thoughts on the subject. Feel free to tell me where there are holes in my statements - I am sure there are plenty.

My only point is that perhaps our assumptions about men and women are so ingrained in us that we don't need a massacre which singled men out in order to have equivalence. After all, only men are required to sign up for selective service in the US. Does this mean that men are singled out to be forced to fight, kill, and die in military service?

What happened in Montreal was horrible and evil. But it was pretty unusual - usually gender is hidden as a cause of violence. Gender-based violence is pretty insidious - it hides as lots of things, and usually isn't so clear cut targeting of one group based entirely on gender.

And I find it useful to remember that it isn't only women who have gender, after all. ; )