Our 19th Anniversary
It's hard to believe, but it's nineteen years now since the Montreal Massacre, December 6th 1989. It's my Remembrance Day, really, because it resonates with me still. I was a few months pregnant with who I assumed would be my daughter - and she was - and I remember coming into our tiny apartment kitchen on what I realize now must have been the morning of December 7th, the Toronto Star (we were living in Toronto at the time) laying on the kitchen table, the funereal headline so shocking I was crying before I'd read a word of the story.
I was a Feminist, I'd be raising my children to be Feminists, and I'd also been a university student at a time when even the biggest university in Canada had very few (any?) female engineering students. At least, the engineering residence was all male, the lack of female only washrooms being the excuse for "no women allowed". It was called "Devonshire" and it was a risky place for a woman alone. I was trapped there once and only escaped being raped by a gang of engineering students by a timely pizza delivery man who held the door while I ran out into the street and safely back to my "women only" residence.
I chalked it up to good luck because in those days (late '70s), to report such a thing would have been ridiculous. I'd been drinking, I was dressed like Magenta from Rocky Horror Picture Show, I'd been polite enough (while I tried to figure out how to escape from "the boys" who were behaving more and more like privileged thugs who had no fear of ever having to face any consequences for any kind of "bad behaviour" - because they didn't) to be accused of being one of those "willing" rape victims one doesn't hear so much about anymore - now that we're not as stupid a society as we used to be.
And young women didn't know their human rights were being regularly violated by endemic sexism, anyway, that a woman should have been able to walk stark naked down Main Street, even in Bill Davis' Ontario, with only the arresting cop laying a hand on her head to prevent a clout as she was lowered into the squad car. Gwen Jacobs proved more than a couple of points (pun intended) about the naturalness of breast feeding and the unequal application of the law with regards to toplessness when she led women on a bare breasted march through the cities of Ontario several years ago.
I'd/We'd all been subjected to a lifetime of "women shouldn't be allowed to" - honestly - and I came from a Feminist home, raised by a widowed mother who'd been happily married to a good man. But sexism was rampant, it was everywhere, the backlash to the Women's Movement popping up in every conversation - all of it well after the '60s - and all of it stupid and nasty and mean, the threatening fist of a dying Patriarchy shaking itself at the endless blue sky.
I remember once making a reservation to fly home to the Sault for Christmas. We'd been raised to call ourselves "Ms", my mother insisting our marital status was no one's business (although she herself was under my father's name in the phone book for most of our lives, even though he died in '63) but when the reservations agent (an older man) asked if I was Miss/Mrs or Mzzz (emphasis his) I thought, "hm, maybe Misses get discounts?" so, my Scottish Presbyterianism once more trumping my Feminism as it has so often in life I replied hopefully, "Miss".
"Ah, finally a woman who isn't afraid of her femininity", he offered, no idea of the grievous offence he had caused, his "compliment" having much the same impact as a big old oniony belch in my face.
Ugh. And of course there was no discount. It was just one of those very minor incidents in my life that has stayed with me because I let that treacherous hope that sexism could somehow work to a woman's advantage trump my better instincts that it never would, that it is the snarling threatened dog best met with a newspaper to the nose.
Every. Single. Goddamned. Time.
But a pre-meditated gunning down of female engineering students because of a hatred of Feminism, the fact that this could be done - and so easily - was a pretty chilling reminder that sexism is no off-the-cuff insult, that the "Women's Lip" complaint of men in the early '70s could/would/did become cold-blooded murder in the dying days of the '80s and that, shocked as most men were by it, there were/are still plenty of men around to loudly deny the connection.
All of which is why December 6th is my chosen Day of Remembrance.
Yes, Virginia, sexism leads to femicide.
