December 6th

Today is December 6th. I don't always remember the day, but I always remember that this time of year is anniversary of the Montréal Massacre. For those of you who haven't heard of it (I have no idea if anyone in the States ever remembers it), twenty years ago today 14 female engineering students were murdered by some insane jealous guy who thought that they were stopping him from being able to go forward in Engineering. He walked into a classroom, told all the men to leave and then shot the women and himself. I don't know if this is standard, but in my tradition of commemorating this terrible event no one ever mentions his name (in fact when someone in my class asked, our teacher refused to say - good on her, I say), I don't know it, and I don't want to know it. Instead we remember the names of the women. I remember when I first heard about the Massacre (or at least when I was first able to understand about it) my grade seven teacher told us that she had been in University when the attack took place. And one of her teachables was science. Afterwards she took up Tai Kwon Do and by the time she was my teacher she'd reached either brown or black belt (something really high up anyway) and she gave us a demonstration several weeks later. (This is the same teacher who dressed as Trinty from the Matrix for Hallowe'en, she's really cool.)

I'm not in engineering, but I know lots of women who are. And it's the same principle in Classics, it's only fairly recently that there are female professors and most of them aren't high ranking yet. But there are more and more female grad students going into the field. Classics has been an old boys club for about 300 years and we're learning about old boys clubs in the ancient world. and it's often assumed that just because I'm female I'll want to learn about women in ancient society - I hate that. So it still really hits close to home for me. And somehow it's worse that it happened in Canada. I know that in some ways it's irrational, but I just don't associate gun violence with my country.

hobbitbabe, who is actually the first woman in North America to have her PhD in Welding Engineering (go her), wrote up some good stuff about her feelings here. And she names the fallen.

A lot of this commemoration has been sublimated into awareness of violence against women in general, but although I agree with that it also bugs me that no one ever mentions the men who were forced to leave. I don't even know how many of them there were, but I can't imagine how these students would feel. And I don't want to take anything away from the women who were killed, but it always bothers me that no one wants to talk about their plight. Violence against women effects men too, and not just the men who are perpetrating the act. I'm not sure if I can think of many things that are more psychologically scarring than being helpless in the face of violence aimed at your friends.

In Halifax there's a walk to raise awareness about violence against women and at the end of it either in addition to or instead of a moment of silence the crowd has a moment of screaming and yelling, because silence is kind of the problem. That often made me tempted to go, but I never did because while I agree with what is being said I hate how often these things go to extremes. And blanket ideas like "all men are evil" bother me and get in the way of my own observance even when they are only implied.

I have more things I could say that are controversial and explain my views about how gender issues are complicated. But I think that debate would somehow debase the point of this entry.

Twenty years ago today fourteen women were killed because they wanted to learn and be a part of a field of study which is still male-dominated today. It is my greatest hope that things have changed.