Violence against women takes many forms
Thirty years after the massacre at École Polytechnique there remains much work to do, Leona Heillig says.
On the evening of Dec. 6, 1989, I was in a meeting with my fellow co-ordinators of the Montreal Assault Prevention Centre, David Singleton and Lisa Weintraub, when we heard that there had been a mass shooting at the École Polytechnique and several women had been killed. Gradually it emerged that the shooter had gone into a classroom, ordered the men to leave, and yelled, “You’re all feminists!” before shooting into the group of women.
As the co-ordinators of an organization providing assault prevention education for women, children and other vulnerable groups, we tried to come to grips with what this attack meant in the scheme of our work.
The next morning, I arrived at the Centre and learned CBC radio wanted me to participate in a nationwide panel show discussing the massacre. On the spot, we had to decide on the message we wanted to give to the women and men trying to come to terms with such an unthinkable tragedy: yes, this was an extreme attack, a disturbed individual, but it was still part of the spectrum of violence against women.
That morning was only the first of many instances when I and my fellow feminists had to explain and defend the position that, when a killer separates a certain subgroup of society, be it women, Jews, gays or others, and then kills those people, strangers to him, solely because of who they are, that is by nature a hate crime; a political act. The resistance to accepting this truth was huge and shocking. On the radio that day and at the vigil outside the Polytechnique that night, angry men were yelling at us, accusing feminists of “profiting” from the grief of the families, of using the tragedy for our own ends.
At the same time, we were barraged by calls from women who were living in great fear of violence, and from men terrified for the safety of their loved ones, wanting to know how they could help. Attendance in our self-defence classes was at an all-time high; women had no trouble making the connection between the tragedy at the Polytechnique and the violence they were experiencing in their daily lives, most committed by the people closest to them.
Early in 1990, we were contacted by Heidi Rathjen, a Polytechnique student who had decided to transform her grief and outrage into action, and who was working with families of the victims and others to strengthen gun control in Canada. She informed us that the weapon the killer had used was legal and asked us to join the campaign. Little did we think that we would still be fighting this battle 30 years later.
Looking back, I can see much that has changed for the better in the years since the massacre. The notion of a spectrum or continuum of violence is much better understood, and thanks to social media, women and other victims of all forms of violence are able to speak out and be heard. As a society, we are being forced to face what women have always known: we experience violence, be it subtle and undermining, or obvious and dangerous, on a daily basis. The fear of violence often keeps us from participating in life as we would like to. Every girl and woman has been harassed, discriminated against or assaulted in some way, be it emotionally, physically, sexually or economically; and racialized, disabled and otherwise marginalized women experience more violence.
As we mark the 30th anniversary of the worst massacre in Canadian history, perpetrated against 14 young women just because they were women, let us reflect on how far we have come, and also how much work there is still to do.