Montreal Massacre

Today is the 21st anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. In case you don't know about it, on December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine killed 14 women and wounded 13 at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. Lépine couldn't deal with the growing presence of women in the public life of Quebec. He was especially bothered by their presence at the Polytechnique, which formerly was a bastion of male exclusivity. Lépine applied to the École Polytechnique but was rejected. So he decided to take revenge on women, whom he decided to blame for that. Curiously, he had applied to the Canadian Armed Forces before and had also been rejected, which, however, didn't make him want to kill soldiers and army officials in revenge.

This is what Lépine wrote in his suicide note:

Please note that if I am committing suicide today ... it is not for economic reasons ... but for political reasons. For I have decided to send Ad Patres [Latin: "to the fathers"] the feminists who have ruined my life. ... The feminists always have a talent for enraging me. They want to retain the advantages of being women ... while trying to grab those of men. ... They are so opportunistic that they neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men throughout the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can.

The incredibly clumsy language of the message suggests that instead of blaming feminists for his failure Lépine should have looked at his grave intellectual limitations. But as any male chauvinist, this murderer never took any responsibility for his own failings. Instead, he decided to use a very old and trusted patriarchal trick of blaming women for every problem under the sun. So he armed himself with a rifle and went into the Polytechnique insearch of women to kill:

On the evening of December 6, 1989, shortly after 5 o'clock on the penultimate day of classes before the Christmas holidays, Lépine carried a concealed Sturm Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle into the École Polytechnique. His first female victim, Maryse Laganiere, was killed in a corridor. He then proceeded to Room 303, a classroom which held 10 women students and 48 men, along with a male professor. Firing two shots into the ceiling and shouting, "I want the women. I hate feminists!," Lépine enacted a gendercidal ritual . . . Separating the men from the women, he expelled the men at gunpoint, lined up the remaining women students against the wall, and began to fire. Six women died; the others were injured, but survived.

Responding to the massacre, Montreal Men Against Sexism wrote a statement with which it is hard to disagree:

Men kill women and children as a proprietary, vengeful and terrorist act. They do so with the support of a sexist society and judicial system. As pro-feminist men, we try to reveal and to end this continuing massacre, which will go on as long as we do not end sexism and sexist violence, along with all of men's alibis for them.