Remember them by ignoring them
Oh my god.
First I saw this:
So I dug around (had to dig since U of T had closed everything) and found this:
National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women
which has the subtitle
Care, Healing, and Justice: Addressing Transmisogyny and Ending Gender-Based Violence for All
Even on this one day, even when they’re pretending to talk about violence against women, even then they make it about men who call themselves women. Even then.
U of T smugly goes on:
On December 6, U of T joins communities across Canada in remembering the 14 women killed in a devastating act of misogyny at the engineering school at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989.
This event is co-hosted by the Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office, the Community Safety Office, the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office at UTM, the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office at UTSC, the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Hart House, The Division of People Strategy, Equity, & Culture, the Institutional Equity Office, the Sexual and Gender Diversity Office, and the Sexual Violence Prevention and Support Centre.
Anti-racism, safety, equity, people, gender – but not one appearance of the word “woman” or “women” – as if it’s become the worst blasphemy and filth in the language. But oh yes this is still National Day of Blah Blah Blah about women.
Keynote
CARE, HEALING, AND JUSTICE: ADDRESSING TRANSMISOGYNY AND ENDING GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE FOR ALL
This event will include a keynote presentation from a Toronto-based writer and performer on the rise in transmisogyny and violence against queer and trans women globally. Together, we will co-create a space for healing, and move towards meaningful, intersectional action that prioritizes an end to gender-based violence for all.
Keynote. A keynote from a man, talking about men, on a day – the only day – intended as a day to talk about women.
It’s a deliberate punch in the face. They must all be laughing themselves silly.
They never even mention what happened. Numb with shock here.
On December 6, 1989, 25-year-old Canadian Marc Lépine entered the campus of Polytechnique Montréal and fatally shot 14 women, wounding 10 other women and four men before killing himself on campus. For more than 30 years, the massacre was the deadliest shooting incident in modern Canadian history, until April 2020, when a gunman slew 22 people in the Nova Scotia rampage. Wiki
Wow, this is just deeply fucked up. Canada, we’re looking at you.
And once again, if TWAW, there is no longer any justification for saying that any of Mr. Lepine’s victims were “women” in that same sense. Even if they happened (by accident) to be “women”, it’s unclear to say the least how his actions could be considered motivated by “misogyny” in particular. How could he know the “gender identity” (i.e. the “inner sense of self”) of these people? Was it their pronoun badges? The pink dresses? The head tilt? It was the head tilt, right?
How dare they. (And thanks for the reminder. I work in STEM, and will note the day in my office next week.)
I seem to remember that in 2022 there was a memorial, and the keynote speaker was a TiM, perhaps Juno Dawson.
I don’t know about last year, but I remember this from 2021’s commemoration:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-trans-woman-guestspeaker-1.6274185
And as for this
this is rubbing salt in the wound. As Ophelia points out this is a deliberate, calculated insult. Whoever put this together knew what they were doing. It’s not an accident it’s part of a pattern, a pattern that reveals a plan. Nothing about women without TiMs. Tims get to speak for, about and over women, while women aren’t allowed to speak for themselves.
This keynote speaker could talk on any of the other hundred some-odd Trans Days of Clumpy Mascara, but on this day? That’s evil fuckery. It’s hard to fathom the level of spite and malice that went into this, but I’ll give it a try. It’s not like inviting a White guy as a Martin Luther King Day keynote speaker. It’s not like inviting a white gut who’s a KKK member. It’s like inviting a White guy who’s a KKK member, who announces beforehand that he’s going to talk about how hard it is for White people all over the world, and is offering his speech as part of an effort to make sure that All Lives Matter.
If these men were doing more than using “intersectionality” as a cover, they would know that what they’re doing is (to put it into language they’re all too willing to use against others) appropriative, colonialist, and patriarchal. They’re taking pain and rage and sorrow that is not theirs, degrading it, and maliciously, cynically rebranding it to further their own, selfish desires. They’re redefining the word “woman” without women’s consent. They’re reinforcing sexist gender roles and pushing women out of public life, denying that they have any legitimate needs and concerns that don’t include men.
Again, as Ophelia highlights, they’re erasing women on the very day when we’re supposed to be recognizing the unfinished fight against misogyny and violence against women, and remembering those women who have been killed in the course of this ongoing, centuries-long war. But no. That’s asking too much. They just can’t leave women alone. They can’t take “No” for an answer. Guess what boys; that’s rape culture and you’re promoting it just by speaking over women on this day. For once I’d like these sick bastards to shut the fuck up.
not Bruce there is another thing, too. When they say ‘transmisogyny’, likely it will be aimed against women…those women who refuse to agree that men can be women. So they use a day of commemorating women, and turn it into a day to bash women.
That killing spree was not about ‘transmisogyny’. It was about misogyny. It had literally fuck all to do with trans.
At least the govt of Canada website gets it right, prominently featuring the list of women who were murdered:
Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
(and leaving out the name of their killer, as I prefer to do)
I was a young engineer at the time of the incident, and I (along with many of my colleagues) remember it every year. A bit of good news is that based on my brief scan of (many) commemorative events at universities and other organizations across the country, most are specifically focused on “women”.