Remembering the montreal massacre
It couldn’t have been worse
MEREDITH MITCHELL
Wednesday, Dec. 6 marks the 16th anniversary of the Montreal massacre wherein 14 women were murdered for being women in the engineering faculty at Montreal’s L’Ecole Polytechnique. Instead of reiterating the facts, I would prefer to use this space to briefly address the reality of violence against women, which 16 years later has not yet been able to acquire a sufficient remedy.
Many reports have shown that women experience more violence than men, including emotional, physical and financial abuse. For instance, the study done by the Ministers Responsible for the Status of Women in 2002 stated, “On average, approximately 74 women are killed each year by their husbands and common law partners in Canada. In 1999 about 220,000 Canadian women were threatened, slapped, kicked, punched, choked, beaten or sexually assaulted.” It is important to mention that much of the violence women experience goes unaccounted for because of normalized levels of violence in many people’s lives and the repercussions for speaking out. Furthermore, violence against women is experienced differently by aboriginal women, being coupled with legacies of colonization and racism that have made them nearly invisible. The Stolen Sisters Project by Amnesty International highlights this epidemic well.
In talking to women about violence in their lives, it is often excused by the phrase “it could have been worse.” While it is great that the experiences were not “worse” than they happened to turn out, why is a certain level of violence “normal” to experience? We need to take notice of women who are satisfied because it “could have been worse” and recognize that current support systems need to be expanded and new ones created with empowerment in mind. As well, those concerned with violence against women need to work towards eliminating this normalization of violence. We need to listen to the people working on the front lines of this issue because often they are the ones who have the best ideas for changing the current system.
In debates about violence against women, it is hard to ignore the pressures from some groups to address violence against men as epidemic, or as someone once put it to me, the “gendercide” experienced by men in terms of war. No doubt that men are the majority of the “fallen soldiers” but this argument ignores the fact that dying in battle is still considered noble; think of the funerals for soldiers and compare that to the funeral of the woman and mother (described in the media only as “prostitute”) who was stabbed to death by an angry customer in a West End back lane. There is no comparison because she was not given a funeral and the media has not spoken of her violent death since. This argument is insulting to the facts on the heightened level of violence experienced by aboriginal women, women in poverty and all other women for whom violence is a normalized reality and so many are comforted daily by the excuse that “it could have been worse.”
The Womyn’s Centre on Campus held a candlelight vigil as well as an information session in Campo on Wednesday, Dec. 6 as a way to remember those for whom the situation was worse.
Meredith Mitchell is a volunteer at the Womyn’s Centre at the University of Manitoba.
