Conference turris::womannotes-v2

    
    I've found it hard to find the words to enter a reply here.....
    
    I heard about this on my car radio at 6.30am this morning - I pulled
    over and just sat there. I've never been so affected by a news headline
    before... 
    
    Many feelings....sorrow, anger, solidarity, pity, shock, support.
    Grief.                                                
    
    'gail
    
    
    

    
    North American News
    -------------------
        
    A gunmen wearing a hunting outfit has killed 14 women and injured 12
    more at the University of Montreal, Canada. He walked into a classroom
    and singled out the female students before opening fire with a .22
    calibre rifle. He was heard to say he wanted to get feminists. The
    gunman then went on a rampage through a cafeteria, a computer room and
    a hallway before committing suicide. 

    re .0
    
    The story in the Globe says the man was in his early 20s. What is
    your source for the man's daughter being included among the dead?
    
    Also, do you have any further information on the note he left?

    re: .2
    
    I wish those questions had "good" answers, but, sadly, I don't
    think they do.  And I'm afraid it gets worse.  How do we explain
    to ourselves that there are terribly derranged people who would
    kill us just because we're here, whether that's on a college
    campus, in a schoolyard, or at the local McDonald's?  And what
    can be done to reduce the instances of such insanity?
    
    Steve

I heard this on WBCN this morning on my way to work.  I was sorta
dumbfounded for the rest of the trip...not sure *how* I felt.  How
do you react to something where the pain and grief of the people
involved is so far beyond even your comprehension?

.4>    The story in the Globe says the man was in his early 20s. What is
.4>    your source for the man's daughter being included among the dead?
 
WBCN said the same thing.  FWIW.

Best wishes to the (I'm sure) heartbroken family and friends of a roomful
of young women.

D!

    it's sick and it's sad.
    
    If somebody wants to kill randomly and violently, there is very
    little we can do to stop them hif they give no "warning signals".
     
    We can curtail weapon sales, check backgrounds, look at mental records,
    refuse to release the unbalanced of our world, but there are some
    very cagey, very sick, very hurt people out there with a strong
    need for a TARGET for their fury.  
    
    And, sadly, humanity is often that target, or an unfortunate
    subsection.  I see no concrete solutions for the silent, stalking
    lunatics.  But I can live without fear (hopefully(), and live life
    fully, and live to the last minute, and that will be *my* minor
    victory against those who take what is not theirs....(sounds like
    another topic, I admit)...
    
    -Jody

    Re: .4
    
    Not that it makes any great difference in times of tragedy but the
    father daughter relationship as on the news bulletin I heard, was
    that the daughter in question was that of a police officer who
    originally attended the scene
    
    Glyn
    

    I'd like to know what happened to this guy to make him decide he
    hated all women (especially feminists) before he went crazy and
    shot these people.
    
    (I had a quick thought that if so many divorced men in Massachusetts
    keep having to pay such huge, and in many cases unfair, child support
    payments, there will probably be more cases of bitter men flipping
    out and killing women.)
    
    When I heard this news this morning while taking a shower, I thought
    it was horrible, of course, and first thought (which I quickly stopped
    thinking because I couldn't stand to think it) how I would feel
    if my daughter was one of those killed.
    
    But, as far as shock goes, I really wasn't even that shocked.  I
    just thought it was horrible.  I was shocked when President Kennedy
    got killed, when Martin Luther King got killed, when Robert Kennedy
    got killed, and I was shocked by the Kent State killings and by
    the Mai Li (spelling?) massacre.  It's been years since a news item
    shocked me.  After awhile I just stopped feeling shocked.
    
    Lorna
    

    re .8:
    
    I read the same thing in this morning's Worcester Telegram and
    Gazette - one of the women killed was the daughter of one of
    the police officer's first responding at the scene.
    

    
    
    .9 Thank God someone else didn't feel shocked. Don't call me inhuman,
    I am not, I am saddened, and upset. But shcoked NO! Many senseless
    things have happened over the past 5-10 years that have lowered
    my shock ability, all the terriosts acts against Americans etc.
    
    We in America are fighting Gun control as in the Constitution it
    states a basic right to bear arms. But where do we draw the line??
    
    

    by Racoona Sheldon (a.k.a. James Tiptree Jr., but born Alice Sheldon)
    
    						Ann B.

    
    Re .2
    
    I guess you would explain it the same way for being female as for being
    blond, being tall, being anything. This is just one incident that will
    be repeated until the end of time. The next time it will be for some
    other reason.
    
    Truley sad.....
    
    ed

	 Made me sick reading the article in the paper today.  They
	 said he went into a classroom, separated the men from the
	 women, then just gunned down the women (6 dead in that room
	 alone).

	 This hits too close to home...it was an engineering school,
	 and these were engineering students.

	 I'd also like to point out here that the man used an
	 automatic weapon--in Canada--where such weapons are against
	 the laws.........goes to prove that some laws don't deter the
	 lawless, but rather the lawful.  If you want the weapon,
	 you'll have no problem getting it.

	 Very upsetting indeed.

	 kath

    I don't have a problem with anyone who tells me they're anti-feminism. 
    That's their business.  I have a great deal of problem with someone who
    tells me they're anti-feminist.  That's my business.  
    
    What concerns me about this incident is that it was not in a vacuum. 
    This wasn't like the deranged individual who went into McDonalds and
    started blasting.  The campus has, I've learned, been experiencing a
    lot of anti-feminist attitudes.  I do hope some of those who have been
    vocal will now consider whether they may have contributed to this
    tragedy.  We don't know the power of our words.
    
    *sigh*
    Marge

Re: <<< Note 888.14 by SSDEVO::GALLUP "as I go along my way, I say hey hey..." >>>

>>	 I'd also like to point out here that the man used an
>>	 automatic weapon--in Canada--where such weapons are against
>>	 the laws.........
    
    Kath, where'd you get this?  I'm kinda laying low to let the media stop
    falling overthemselves (and the facts) in the name of being "first"
    with a tidbit of news...  I've heard the first stories come out of some
    shooting claiming that a full-auto weapon was used when in the end it
    turned out to be a *revolver*!
    
    I'll predict from what I've heard, that it was a semi-automatic rifle
    firing a 22 Long Rifle round (a very small, under-powered round mostly
    used for target shooting and some small-game hunting -- such as rabbit)
    that was involved.  We'll know accurately come about Saturday or
    Sunday.  I wouldn't even trust the Friday news.
    
                                Roak

>    The story in the Globe says the man was in his early 20s. What is
>    your source for the man's daughter being included among the dead?
    
    As usual, the early breaking stories got everything about half right. I
    don't remember which source made that particular statement, but it was
    either (Boston) channel 4, channel 5 or WBCN (Radio) news. So evidently
    that part of the story was incorrect. Sorry for the crappy info. :-(

>                          -< "The Screwfly Solution" >-

Oh, God, that is *the* most depressing analysis of the situation I have
seen yet.  I sure hope you aren't serious, Ann!  I don't think it is *that*
bad.

For those who didn't get the reference...(spoilers follow)

It is a short story about how an alien race clears out the population of
earth by introducing a hormone which inhibits the inhibiting of natural
violent male sexual aggression, and turns all the men exposed to it
into violent, woman-hating killers/rapists.  Society collapses as more
and more men go on gyn-killing sprees.

Ick.

D!

<<newsgroup i.d. removed>>
    	 
Subj:	Oh my God - NO!!!!!

Right now I am so stunned, angry, and frightened that I cannot even begin
to tell you about this in my own words.  The following is an excerpt from
this morning's edition of the Montreal Gazette (our major English language
newspaper):
 
===========================================================================
Fourteen women are dead after a gunman went on a rampage at the University
of Montreal late yesterday afternoon - on the last day of classes of the fall
term - and then killed himself.
 
The gunman walked into a classroom in the engineering building, cried
"You are all feminists!" and began shooting with a .223-calibre semi-automatic
rifle.  The man appeared to aim mainly at women.  "I heard the gunman say:
'I want the women!' " said student Francois Bordeleau.
 
The shooting spree began sometime after 4:30 p.m. during the last class of
the afternoon.  The Ecole Polytechnique on Edouard Montpetit Blvd. was crowded
with students attending class or studying for exams, which were scheduled to
begin tomorrow.  The 14 slain were found on three different floors of the
six-story building.
 
Thirteen other people - nine women and four men - were being treated for
bullet wounds in three hospitals last night.  Two were in critical condition
at Montreal General Hospital.
 
"What we saw is indescribable.  There was blood everywhere," said an
Urgences Sante doctor, one of the first on the scene.  It was the worst
shooting massacre in Canadian history.
 
Early this morning, police could provide only the first name of the gunman
- Marc.  Apparently he had no identification papers on him.  But in his
pocket police found a three-page letter in which he blamed women for his
failures in life.
 
"All of the words he uses are what you would call anti-feminist," Jacques
Duscheneau, head of the organized-crime squad, told a news conference at
2:25 a.m.  "He often seems to blame women for a certain number of failures
in his life," said homicide chief Andre Tessier.  The gunman, 25 years old,
said in the letter that he would kill himself, Tessier added.  Police have
positively identified 10 of the 14 slain.
 
...
 
Eric Chavarie stood in his shirtsleeves in the drizzle that was turning into
snow, telling his story.  An hour earlier, Chavarie had been giving a
presentation on heat transfer to a class of about 60 students at the Ecole
Polytechnique.  It was about 5:15 yesterday afternoon, on the last day of
school before exams.  Then the man walked in.  He was wearing blue jeans,
work boots, a hunting jacket and a cap.  He spoke French.  And he was carrying
a semi-automatic rifle.  "He came in quietly," Chavarie said. "And he told us
to stop what we were doing.  Everyone thought it was a joke.  He was smiling
at us.  He was very calm."
 
The man told the students to separate into two groups.  Women on one side,
men on the other.  He was still smiling, and no one moved.  "Then he fired
a shot, right by my ear," Chavarie said.  The students separated.  Men in
one corner, women in another.  They couldn't have known it, but they were
being separated into victims and survivors by a man who came to kill.
 
The killer forced the men to leave the classroom.  For a moment or two they
waited outside, and then the shots began.  Three, maybe four shots, as the
terrified men sprinted down the hall, hoping to get away.  At the end of the
corridor they stopped, until the killer came out and began firing at them
from a distance of about 100 feet.
 
...
 
According to one account, he was moving and firing systematically, hunting
humans, firing and advancing and cocking his weapon and firing and advancing
again, a calm and relentless killer.
 
Someone heard the gunman say, "I want the women."  ...  One of the wounded
survivors said that "the gunman made a chauvinistic remark.  He said,
'Why should women be engineers and not men?'"
 
==============================================================================
 
Doris Kochanek
mcgill-vision!onfcanim!doris
National Film Board of Canada
Montreal
 

No words could possibly express the grief, and more so, anger, that I felt
when I first read of this horror.   And what's worse is that I don't know
how to stop something like this from happening again and again.

					Steve

>              <<< Note 888.16 by PEAKS::OAKEY "Support the 2nd" >>>


	 Hi Roak!  (So, come beat me for lying.....)

	 Actually, after I wrote that (and I know nothing about guns,
	 and BSI already emptied my garbage with the paper in it) I
	 realized that the article actually said "semi-auto" something.

	 And I believe it said there was more than one gun involved,
	 but I don't have the article here any longer to make sure.


	 Either way, Canada has VERY STRICT gun laws, I believe.



	 kath

	 

    RE .21

    From what I've heard on the news - by the way, like you I know very
    little about guns - Canada has a gun control law which requires one to
    have a gun permit.  With the permit one can buy a gun (or guns) anytime
    and probably any place.  I don't know what the requirements are for a
    permit. 

    
    I can hear the chauvinists now...
    
    <to high-school aged girl>:
    
    "you shouldn't be an engineer, dear...you'll be shot at and killed
    by some loony case"
    
    "you shouldn't go to college, dear...you'll be shot at and killed
    by some loony case"
    
    "you shouldn't attempt to do anything you want to (or even need to)
    in life, you'll be shot at, killed, raped, beaten, molested, harassed,
    threatened, .... <insert more traumatic, physically harmful things
    that the patriarchy uses to keep women from doing soooooo many things
    and "keep them in their place">"
    
    Ick...
    

    Remember the women;
    
    This is a terrible thing to happen to women who strive to excell.  They
    chose to learn, to better themselves, to accomplish and create.  For
    this they should be remembered. 
    
    The man that did this deserves to be forgotten.  His name does not even
    deserve to be printed in the paper.

    Yeah, don't use his name at all.  
    
    The public offing of multiple people is becoming a habit.  The murderer 
    gets all sorts of publicity.  I can well understand that someone who 
    is screwed up would view the publicity as a vindication of their life
    experiences.
    
    Instead of providing the pseudo-glory that these people look for, we
    might try depicting them as the sleazy cowards they are and publicily
    pointing out how they were whiners and blamed others for the problems
    they created in their lives.  Treating mass murderers/suicides with the
    contempt and ridicule they deserve might make the idea of a media
    blitz about their murders and then suicide a hell of a lot less
    attractive.  That just might result in less tragedies of this type.  

For what it's worth, which is -- of course -- very little, the murderer
had a gun permit for his rifle (as a semi-automatic weapon, it required
closer scrutiny and a waiting period).

I would agree with the suggestion that his name not be printed (though
it already has), but not so he isn't glorified, but so that his relatives
and others who share the same family name can rebuild their own lives.

Martin.

 MONTREAL: (AP) - A young rifleman invaded the Univ. de Montreal engineering
 school on Wednesday (about 5:20 pm EST) and singled out females for his targets
 killing 14 women and wounding 12 people before committing suicide.
 Montreal Police Director Claude St. Laurent said the killer, clad in hunting
 outfit, rushed into a packed classroom in the 2nd floor and yelled,
 "You're all a bunch of feminists" before beginning his murderous rampage.
 Witnesses said he divided the students in the classroom by sex and sent the men
 into the corridor before opening fire on the women.
 Six women were shot dead in that room, and a seventh in another room. The man
 carrying what looked like a .22-caliber rifle, left in search of more victims.
 The gunman prowled the halls, killing three women in the cafeteria and four 
 more women in the corridor of the third floor, where he shot himself.
 Re: *One police officer who was called to the scene found out his daughter was
 among the dead.
     One male student said a bullet passed his leg and he brought his hands up
 in a pleading gesture, the gunman left him alone. Student Francois Bordeleau  
 said he had to drag people by the collar to keep them from going in the man's
 direction. "Who could have thought that something like this could happen in a 
 peaceful student world" said Ba Madou, 35 an engineering student.
 At the Montreal General Hospital Doug Lemm, assistant director of security,
 said the hospital's staff were at a Christmas party in the cafeteria when the
 first victims began to arrive. He said the timing could not have been more 
 fortunate. "The party was scheduled from 3pm to 8pm and there *was no booze.
 We called all the doctors and nurses to the operating room at once." 

>    
>    (I had a quick thought that if so many divorced men in Massachusetts
>    keep having to pay such huge, and in many cases unfair, child support
>    payments, there will probably be more cases of bitter men flipping
>    out and killing women.)
>    
Where do you get the idea that men pay huge, unfair child support payments?
For the most part child support payments are ridiculously low compared to the
cost of supporting a child.  Children are expensive.  I can understand that
child support payments are a burden to the divorced party making the payments,
but they in no way cover the cost of supporting a child.  Usually a woman is
lucky if child support covers the cost of food.  

Why is it that divorced men feel that their child support payments are going
to their ex-wife?  They should focus on the intention of the payments.

    Not only are they ridiculously low in the first place, over 50%
    of the divorced men in the United States don't even bother to
    pay (help support) their children.  For some selfish reason, they
    have decided that they aren't going to "help that bit** any more
    at all".  What they don't seem to realize is that by having this
    attitude, they are really hurting their own children and themselves
    more than their ex-wife.  The children grow up believeing that 
    "Daddy doesn't care about me, he never sends any money to help pay
    for my food, or clothes or anything, therefore Daddy doesn't love me."  

    Isn't it a shame that SOME men can't see past the end of their nose??    

    When I first heard of the shooting, the report said the gunman blamed
    all __WOMEN__ for his problems.  
    
    The next report I heard said the gunman blamed all __FEMINISTS__ for
    his problems.  I was furious with this second radio station, to slur
    a subset of women like this.  I thought the second station was 
    pinpointing only the outspoken, strong minded women among us, and 
    I experienced this as a very gender-racist slur.  I almost called
    the station...
    
    Turns out, the gunman's note did use the word "feminist," not just
    the generic, "women."  I applaud the first radio station in keeping
    the report generic.  This tragedy sets up a potential for devisiveness 
    here--making a distinction between feminists and women.

    Re .28, *sigh* *sigh* *sigh*, I really did not include that with
    the hope of diverting this sad topic into a discussion of the fairness
    of child support payments.  However, since you insist.....
    
    I got "the idea that men pay huge, unfair child support payments"
    (that should really be *some* men, BTW) from talking about this
    with the men who are paying them.   It seems to me, that, in the
    past, the child support payments awarded to women were often very
    low, and that, now, and only to the women who can afford a good
    lawyer, child support payments are ridiculously high.  I have a
    close male, friend, a divorced father of two, who is currently having
    55% of his take home pay awarded as child support.  His wife
    is just a few credits short of her masters degree, while he has
    a high school diploma.  She makes $2. more an hour than he does,
    yet she gets over half of his money.  He can barely afford to live
    and, in the past year, she bought a new car and all brand new furniture
    for her house.  He can't claim the child support on taxes, yet she
    doesn't have to claim it as income.  Now, I am one of the first
    to admit that "men are scum" but even I can see that what happened
    to my friend is not fair.  Also, unfortunately, because of the way
    he was mistreated by his wife and the legal system of Massachusetts,
    I believe he is developing a deep underlying hatred and bitterness
    towards all women.  I am afraid that continued unfairness of this
    type will result in some sort of backlash against feminists, and
    all women, eventually.  (Who knows, maybe he'll flip out someday
    and shoot a bunch of innocent women?)
    
    Lorna
    

    Please discuss child support in a new topic if you wish to continue
    discussing it, as this discussion is for the gunning incident and its
    ramifications...
    
    -Jody
     
    
    

    Yesterday I reported that the gunman killed his own daughter. The
    information was indeed incorrect, and has been since properly
    addressed. Just so that no one will think that I made that up, WBCN
    radio today aired an apology for incorrectly passing on that
    information. It seems they misunderstood an ambiguously worded release
    from AP. Sorry I relayed incorrect information.
    
     The Doctah

Yeah; he thought women who went to technical colleges were feminists,
obviously.
	Mez

It might have been interesting if we could learn whether the women he blamed for
'ruining his life' would have been more objectively viewed as feminists - or if
they were just assertive, capable, more qualified, um, <insert positive
adjective> women who had succeeded where he failed?  Or even if they would have
viewed themselves as feminists....

Amid the horror I felt at hearing it, I was also saddened to think that he found
so few women in the engineering school after what sounded like a pretty, um, 
reasoned (?) and systematic hunt for them....  Yeah, that's irrational, since
it would only have increased the tragedy.  I also found it frightening that he
decided that all women in engineering *had* to be feminists (Arts students 
weren't? or it'd be harder to spot the ones that were?)  

There's no way of insulating yourself from crazies who will decide that some
subset of humanity is responsible for all their woes.  We've already seen race,
religion, politics, and now sex as criteria - and some just don't care about any
reason more than their victims happened to be within firing range.  If you spend 
your time worrying about and protecting yourself from all the possible insane
killers, there'd be no time left to do anything else....  And how do you explain
insanity, anyway?  

		Helen

    re .37
    
    Who says he was insane to blame all his woes on women? That's not
    exactly a shockingly new viewpoint in our society -- remember Eve?

>It might have been interesting if we could learn whether the women he blamed for
>'ruining his life' would have been more objectively viewed as feminists

It's quite possible that he was using a definition of feminist that merely
called every woman that he saw as competing with him as a "Feminist".
Nevertheless, it was his *perception* that these women were feminist, and
so in examining his motives (if we choose to do so, which no one has so
far) it doesn't really matter if they labeled themselves as such.

It does seem that he thought the fact that they were in engineering school
as proof positive that they were feminists...perhaps that gives a clue as
to his def'n of such?  Or perhaps his definition of "Feminist" is more
stringent, but he was paranoid, and thought he could see that each of those
women he killed fit his definition.  (So hard to outguess the thought
processes of someone so obviously crazy.)

I haven't heard anything specific about the killer, but I could easily
imagine that he was an engineering student or engineer himself, who
failed at his job, failed out of school, failed to get into school, or
something like that, and women, who "don't belong in engineering school
anyway" seemed a convenient target to blame his failure on someone else?
especially if he said (as someone claimed) "Why should women be engineers
and not men?"  Perhaps he thought to himself "I should have gotten that
job but they hired a woman, and since I *know* I am more competent than
any woman, it must be that the Feminist won't let men be engineers anymore"
or some such.

>Amid the horror I felt at hearing it, I was also saddened to think that he found
>so few women in the engineering school after what sounded like a pretty, um, 
>reasoned (?) and systematic hunt for them....  

Perhaps he didn't find many students at all.  It happened late in the day...
I know that the RPI campus, for one, is almost deserted around 4 o'clock.
(the classroom part of it, anyway).

My heart goes out most to the parents of these kids.  Especially to the
cop who had to find out the "hard way" - by *seeing* his daughter dead.
What respite for the frustration and anger and grief at a senseless,
unpredictable and useless death of their children?  Are they blaming
themselves, perhaps, for encouraging their daughters to pursue a "man's
career"?  *sigh*

D!

	I am going to take a big chance with what I am about to write.



	I am angry about the horror that happened - BUT women are killed
	every day by men - just for being women - Are we horrified by
	this?

	What can we do?  We can all work towards making it TOTALLY 	
	unacceptable for anyone to treat women as anything but TOTAL
	members of society - you know - status as full human beings.

	_peggy

		(-)
		 |
			The horror is that we talk about it
			happening again and again....

    I felt the same way, Peggy.  It wouldn't surprise me if nearly
    all the men in our society had some level of "you're all feminist
    bit**es" in them.  Men are loosing their top dog position to equality.
    It's not surprising that some will feel as if they are being backed
    into a corner and we all know what animals do when backed into a
    corner.  I've been reading this string so fast I forgot who wrote
    just a few notes back that women are killed by men every day just
    for being <pick an adjective> women.  The New Bedford killer was
    no different except he was angry at a different kind of woman and
    killed them one by one.  It's sad, it's frightening, but it isn't
    surprising to me in the least.  I know personally men who would
    just love to "wring our little necks" for no longer being the silent
    subservient love-slaves they were raised to expect.

    Marge, was your note to suggest that women should be less vocal
    because of this?  That if we didn't know the power, (and will),
    of man before, we do now?  We cannot accept this as "punishment"
    for our words.  Absolutely not.  THe connection between feminism
    and murder is HIS connection.  We'll make a serious mistake if we
    attempt to give validation to his warped thinking by suggesting
    that we ought to alter our behavior in any way because of it.  Society 
    should treat him as the rabid dog he is and we should continue in our 
    fight for equality.

    I don't think he killed any *male* feminists.
    

Re .18 on the "Screwfly Solution" - 

For a real-life study of how "natural violent male sexual aggression" 
gets translated into the politics of terrorism, see The Demon Lover by Robin 
Morgan (1988 I think).

We are a society that has become numb to gratuitous violence.  We read 
newspaper accounts, listen to radio broadcasts and watch news clips filled 
with violence of all sorts.

We feel sad, we feel outraged when something like this happens.  How many 
of us really feel shocked that it has happened?  We are growing accustomed 
to living with violence.

Teenagers today are inundated with graphic depictions of gratuitous 
violence.  They are probably even more numb to its impact than adults are 
in this day and age.  They spend hours in the movie theaters watching the 
useless garbage called "movies" that Hollywood produces.  "Slice and dice" 
horror flicks make them laugh.  Movies that are filled with violence 
against women are common place.  Do we ever question the value of producing 
them?  Violence begets violence.  People pay money, billions of dollars a 
year at the box office, to go watch Hollywood violence.  People say, "oh, 
but that kind of violence doesn't count, it's *only* a movie."  How many 
violent movie scenarios have been recreated in real life?  Many.  How often 
are real life violent crimes recreated in made-for-TV-movies or movies 
produced by Hollywood?  Very often.  Did we need to have a docu-drama about 
the Big Dan's rape to figure out the horrors of being raped?  I think not.

It is no surprise that a man in his early 20's could calmly walk onto a 
college campus and gun down women.  Violence is an acceptable part of our 
culture.  It can be a school yard in Stockton, a McDonald's anywhere in 
the country, a high school corridor, a college campus, it could happen in 
the lobby of a DEC facility.  Gratuitous violence does not discriminate.  

It does not surprise me when a man in his early 20's, or a group of 
teenagers raised on a steady diet of graphic violence, or any individual in 
this society commits an act of gratuitous violence.  It may depress me, it 
may bring me face to face with fear or despair, but it has long since 
ceased being a surprise.

Laura
    

>It wouldn't surprise me if nearly
>    all the men in our society had some level of "you're all feminist
>    bit**es" in them. 
    
    I can't tell you how happy that makes me feel, that you have such a
    high opinion of men. It seems shockingly symmetrical to the misogyny so
    profoundly exhibited. If men and women hate each other so much, how can
    we possibly expect to survive, or even coexist? Or isn't that important
    anymore?
    
>    It's not surprising that some will feel as if they are being backed
>    into a corner and we all know what animals do when backed into a
>    corner.
    
    And we all know all men are merely animals. To comment further would
    probably get me into trouble...
    
>I know personally men who would
>    just love to "wring our little necks" for no longer being the silent
>    subservient love-slaves they were raised to expect.
 
    And that must be a statistically valid sample, right?
    
>We'll make a serious mistake if we
>    attempt to give validation to his warped thinking by suggesting
>    that we ought to alter our behavior in any way because of it.  Society 
>    should treat him as the rabid dog he is and we should continue in our 
>    fight for equality.                                    
    
    Hooray! Something I can agree with. He was completely and utterly wrong
    to express himself in that way. To give any credence whatsoever to his
    "reasoning," if you could even call it that, would be a huge mistake.
    
    re: Dorian
    
     I don't know if any of the deceased happened to be male. I know that
    several of the injured were. What is your point?
    
    The Doctah

    From today's L.A. Times....
    
    Montreal_Police on Thursday identified the gunman....as Marc Lepine,
    an unemployed 25-year-old who "had few friends of the female gender"
    and who once aspired to study at the engineering school where he
    went on his murderous spree. 
    
    The police....also said the young man was obssessed with war movies.
    
    There were other signs of unhappiness in the young man's life- feelings
    the killer wrote about in a three-page suicide note that the police
    found in his pocket after the bloody rampage. Police say his father,
    whom they believe to be Algerian, left his family when son Marc
    was 7 years old.      
    
    Lepine went on to complete several years of college. He took night
    courses, and police said he wanted people to think that he loved
    to read. But "we know he had some failures in his academic record
    in school".                                                      
    
    They also said that in his relationsips with women, Lepine would
    "Just cease the conversation" and "go back in his room when things
    didn't go his way"- an observation on the misogynist nature of the
    crime.
    
    Police said that Lepine was born Gamil Gharbi but adopted his mother's
    name in 1982. They declined to speculate on the reason for the switch.
    They said he was a non-drinking, non-smoker who alway wore a baseball
    cap to control his unruly hair.      
    
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
         
    The article also says that the police have released some of the
    information from the suicide note, but are keeping the names of
    fifteen prominent women named in the note a secret so that "we
    don't give bad ideas to other people". Lepine, in the note, blamed
    his problems on "feminists who had always ruined his life". He
    also stated in the note that he had "political reasons" but didn't
    explain what they were. The note further complained of a life of
    unhappiness, especially during the last 7 years. He also stated
    that he had been rejected by the armed forces as "anti-social".
    He also mentioned Cpl. Dennis Lortie, a supply clerk at a Canadien
    Forces base who in 1984 stole two sub-machine guns and a pistol
    and went on a shooting spree in the Quebec National Assembly,
    killing three government employees and wounding 13 other people.
    
    " He was always known to be gentle and courteous with women until
    the relationship didn't go his way," said Duchesneau. "He was known
    to go into his room and stop the conversation right there...He didn't
    have any girlfriends."
                                     
    -roger
    
    

    re .44:
    
    Sandy, that wasn't my intent at all... My reference was to "those who
    have been vocal" (on the Montreal campus in opposition to feminism).
    I should have been specific.
    
    Thanks for asking,
    marge

    Mark, didn't Sandy qualify her words with "nearly all men" and
    "some men" in the two paragraphs you mentioned?
    
    And while I noticed that the killer seems to have only targetted
    female feminists, and not males, as Dorian pointed out, I think
    its more a reflection of the killer's inability to even conceive
    of man as "feminists".  Perhaps had he understood that, he'd have
    gone after men as "traitors"...who knows?  As D! says, it's hard
    to follow the thoughts of a deranged mind.
    
    [We're all upset with this grotesque event.  I don't see any need
    for us to snipe at each other over our differing interpretations
    as we try to come to grips with it...agreed?  Mark, this is not
    targetted solely at you, either.]
                                             
    DougO

    At his point, Lapine sounds like the classic profile of the mass
    murderer that we have become all too familiar with during the past
    three decades; an alienated loner from a broken family, who experienced
    personal failures, and struck out in an effort to feel powerful.
    He blaims others for his problems, in this case women, rather than
    accept responsiblity for his life. The act of striking out is
    both an act of anger, and an attempt to get attention from a world
    that doesn't acknowledge him, negative attention being better than
    no attention at all.
    
    This personality type fits John Hinckly, Bremer, Chapman, and others
    who have attempted to assasinate celebrities. There is also the
    similar fixation with violent movies that has popped up in a few
    of these scenarios.
                       
    And the media continues to glorify violence, and make it an acceptable
    social alternative.
    
    And it will happen again.
    
    -roger
    

    re .57
    
    Hey, but you can't *prove* that the glorification of violence in
    the media leads to this kind of tragedy, can you? Any more than
    you can *prove* that sadistic, anti-woman pornography leads to rape...
    
    Sorry, I'm being sarcastic. I think our lives are controlled by
    the media far more than we realize. (Advertisers know this--their
    whole business is premised on it.) And if we glorify violence, and
    hate women, in the media, we'll do it in real life too...

    Ok Doug. I guess I overreacted.

    >I can't tell you how happy that makes me feel, 
    
    I'm pretty depressed by a lot of reality, too but I don't see your
    or my happiness as the goal of this particular discussion.  So
    please forgive me if some things about life, (or the fact that I
    willingly write about those things), make you unhappy.
    
    >If men and women hate each other so much...
    
    I didn't say anything about women hating men or me hating men. 
    Please let's try not to fall in the tired old man-hating accusations, 
    ok?
    
    > how can we possibly expect to survive, or even coexist? 
    
    Since misogyny has been around forever, and we are all 'surviving',
    I guess we can simply expect to.
    
    > And we all know all men are merely animals. 
    
    Yes we do.  As are women.  You've given a nasty connotation to the
    word "animals".  Why?
    
    >And that must be a statistically valid sample, right?
     
    Hardly.  And I didn't even suggest it was.  You seem awfully angry
    here.  Since no collection of any group of people any of us knows
    is a "statisticlly valid sample", then we can't comment on any of
    them for any reason, yes?  It sounds like another note where I was
    told I would need a PhD in order to say the things I was saying.
    When someone doesn't know what to say, but wants to strike down
    something someone else said, this is such a tired old way to do
    it.  Suffice it to say that what I think seems to be bothering you,
    (have I included enough softeners there?), is either the fact that
    there are, yes many, men out there who would "wring our little necks", the
    fact that I know some of them, the fact that I'll admit I know some
    of them or the fact that I wrote it down in black and white.  Which is it?

    >He was completely and utterly wrong to express himself in that way. 
    
    That's such an understatement.  Everyone knows it's wrong.  We're
    now debating the whys and the wherefores.  And in a string like
    this it can become painfully clear to some men that some women are
    not surprised, are not shocked.  If it's true that I (and other women
    here), are unfortunately used to cultural misogyny, must we refrain
    from admitting it?  Why?  You don't have to lump yourself in with the 
    men who have made us used to it.  You seem to be taking this very 
    personally, Doctah.  The bottom line is like it or not, you and
    everyone else on this continent live in a very misgynistic society
    where women are literally, figuratively, symbolically and
    systematically "killed" on a regular basis.
    
    There's a wise old Zen saying that goes, "The finger pointing at
    the moon is not the moon".
    

>Yeah; he thought women who went to technical colleges were feminists,
>obviously.

	 From what I heard this morning on GMA, evidently the man had
	 applied to this very school for admission and his marks were
	 not high enough to gain entrance.

	 Anyway.

	 k

    I grew up believing I could probably do anything I wanted to
    do, if I set my mind to it.  Whether this was a product of
    the changing times (sparked by the women's movement) or of
    the attitudes of my parents, I don't know.  It never occurred
    to me that I couldn't do math because I was a girl, and I
    don't think anyone ever suggested it.  It never occurred to
    me that I wouldn't go to college and become a professional
    (if that was what I wanted), and I don't think anyone ever
    told me I should stay home and be "just" a wife and mother.

    Maybe I was lucky.  Probably.

    So I went to college, and after dithering over what to major
    in (although it was always in the sciences) I settled on
    Computer Science.  My roommate was in Aerospace Engineering.
    When I heard about the students who were shot at in Montreal,
    I thought about the students I went to school with, and I
    thought that some of the women were probably like me and my
    college roommate:  women who were doing what they wanted to
    do, what they were good at doing, because no one told them
    they couldn't or shouldn't.  I imagine how easy it would have
    been for something like that to happen on the University of
    Kansas campus, how I would have felt if I'd been shot at, or
    one of my friends or classmates had been wounded or killed.

    A lot of times I hear about violence against a woman, and I
    think something in my subconscious tries to protect me by
    saying "I'm glad I'm not in her situation" or "yeah, that's a
    bad part of town" or something else that distances me from
    that particular violence.

    That didn't happen this time.

    I'm not surprised.  I was shocked, at first.  I don't think
    I'm afraid (but I'm not sure).

    But I am angry.

    -- Linda

>    I didn't say anything about women hating men or me hating men. 
    
     Your statement lead me to believe that you have a very low opinion of
    men. I would interpret a man with a very low opinion of women to be at
    least on the verge of misogyny. I merely applied that same principle
    the other way. Sorry if I screwed up. Seems to be a bad habit lately.
    
>    Yes we do.  As are women.  You've given a nasty connotation to the
>    word "animals".  Why?
    
    I picked up on the way you said it. Maybe I screwed up again and you
    weren't implying that men are incapable of transcending animal
    impulses. Great. 0 for 2.
    
>    Hardly.  And I didn't even suggest it was.[statistically valid]
    
    It seemed you were implying that there was a huge number of men just
    waiting to wring women's necks. Maybe there are. On a roll now; 0 for 3.
    
>Suffice it to say that what I think seems to be bothering you,
>    (have I included enough softeners there?),
    
    Well, I think you get a demerit for the implication that I need
    "softeners." Then again, maybe I provoked it. Who knows?
    
>he fact that
>    there are, yes many, men out there who would "wring our little necks", the
>    fact that I know some of them, the fact that I'll admit I know some
>    of them or the fact that I wrote it down in black and white.  Which is it?
    
    E) none of the above. The implication (ok, call it my inference) that
    men in general are this way. Say it's a faulty inference or whatever-
    0 for 4.
    
>If it's true that I (and other women
>    here), are unfortunately used to cultural misogyny, must we refrain
>    from admitting it?  Why?
    
    I would have hoped you had known me better than to believe that.
    
>You don't have to lump yourself in with the 
>    men who have made us used to it.  You seem to be taking this very 
>    personally, Doctah. 
    
     Yeah, I guess... It just so happens that I am male (which already puts
    me in the wrong group) and a gun owner. And I am very frustrated about
    the whole situation. And both groups are getting heat. And I, and the
    vast majority of these two groups, didn't do anything wrong.
    
     I imagine I'm being overly sensitive. Call it 0 for 5 and leave it at
    that. It was a dumb reply- had you not been responding to it, it would
    have been deleted.
    
     My fault- end of story
    
    The Doctah

    	         "Vigil protests violence against women"
                  ===== ======== ======== ======= =====
    
    		          by J. Sebastian Sinisi
    
    		       (Reprinted without permission
    		       	    from the Denver Post)
    
    	Carrying candles and red roses, about 250 people gathered on
    	the state Capitol's west steps last night to protest violence
    	against women and to memorialize the 14 women murdered Wednesday
    	in Montreal.
    
    	Representing a wide range of ages and lifestyles, the crowd
    	heard expressions of sorrow and anger as speakers called for
    	changes in what was termed a sexist society that perpetuates
    	violent attitudes toward women.
    
    	Speaker Jan Mickish of the Colorado Domestic Violence Coalition
    	said the "war against women" would continue as long as society
    	minimizes the importance of women's lives.
    
    	U.S. Justice Department figures showing 13 women killed every
    	day in 1988 as the result of domestic violence, she said, 
    	represent only a fraction of the total.  "Women keep dying,"
    	she said, "because our system not only fails to protect the
    	victims - it protects the abusers."
    
    	Noting that the Canadian government's response to Wednesday's
    	massacre was a call to restrict guns, Mikish said the 14 slain
    	Montreal women didn't die simply because of a gun - but due to
    	a society that believes violence against women is acceptable.
    
    	"We want to send a clear message that it's not acceptable, and
    	our outrage will be heard until the abusers are held accountable."
    
    	Nan Mullens said she helped organize the vigil "to help purge 
    	my anger.  It's hard to deal with something like this alone."
    
    	Costs of the vigil were partly underwritten by the Denver chapter
    	of the National Organization for Women.
    
    	Doralee Larson, legal adviser for the Project Safeguard shelter
    	for battered women, said, "Enough is enough!  I'm outraged.  And
    	when you work with abused women every day, the outrage is much
    	worse.  The message I get is that no woman is safe - at home, on
    	the street, anywhere.  It feels like war - but it's a war we never
    	even declared."

    	At this point, I'd like to request that all furthur feminist-
    	bashing (or, excuse me, *speculation* about how some anti-feminists
    	intend to exploit the murder of 14 women to furthur their own
    	hateful agendas) be moved to note 178.
    
    	This is an exceptionally inappropriate place to discuss how
    	and why some people will benefit from the deaths of 14 innocent
    	women.
    

    I don't know what the etiquette of this is, but I kind of disagree that
    that portion of the discussion should be moved to topic 178.  Here's
    why:
    
    This is a topic devoted to discussion of the incident in Montreal.
    Topic 178 is a topic devoted to discussion of "what is feminism."
    
    I don't think speculation about the anti-feminist backlash *related to
    this incident* is more appropriately discussed in 178.  That topic is
    related to exploring what feminism is, not about bashing feminists!  I
    think it is appropriate to explore it here.  This is not a SRO topic.   
    
    Furthermore, I don't think anyone in this notefile is suggesting that
    the gunman was right in what he did.  The notes labeled "anti-feminist"
    have (in my reading of them) simply pointed out that there are some
    segments of the population who might put this incident into the larger
    context of "well, they asked for it."  
    
    I see a little "kill the messenger who bears ill tidings" sentiment
    here...  I know this is a painful topic (I feel the horror of it, too),
    but I don't think we should divide ourselves by ignoring the fact that
    some of the repercussions might be equally unfair/horrifying.
    
    Pam

>                    <<< Note 888.76 by BRADOR::HATASHITA >>>


         Kris........just reading the list of names is making me cry.
         I didn't know any of them either, but I feel that I did,
         because we have something in common.  I can picture myself
         sitting in that classroom and this scenario happening.  It is
         easy for me to understand why he struck at an engineering
         school.....and that makes me feel it so much more. I
         understand the drive these women had to study in a previously
         strictly male curriculum.  

	 I get chills up and down my spine just thinking about it.
	 It's senseless and it hits so close to home.  

	 I can understand the hostility you felt at the vigil.  But I
	 feel that the hostility is WRONG.  Or rather, mis-directed.
	 The hostility should be directed solely at the killer, not at
	 men in general.  Now is the time to bring men into this, to
	 let them feel with us, to let them understand exactly what is
	 going on.....to let them see what we see.
	 

>    I do not know what it is like to live in fear of half the human
>    race.

	 I don't fear half the human race.  I'm told I 'should', but I
	 just can't bring myself to do it.  I feel there are many more
	 men out there on MY side than there are not.  I guess I'm
	 just stupid and blind, but I like to feel that a difference
	 is actually being made, instead of just feeling I 'should'
	 hate all men because of the actions of some men.
	 
>    only ask that it be remembered that, if we give in to our hostility,
>    then the murderer has won. 

	 Yes, ohhh, yes!  To give in, means to lose........
	 
>    There are men, myself among them, who do not take pride in the fact
>    that their sex intimidates the other and who, at this moment, feel
>    intense shame that they share a common gender with the killer. 

	 And this is what leads me to believe I'm not stupid and blind
	 to believe!

	 kath    

		SHHH...14 WOMEN WERE SLAUGHTERED

	     by David Nyhan, Boston Globe, 12/10/89


They were only women.

So it was not such a big deal.

Had it been one West German banker, instead of 14 typical Canadian women, 
or a US diplomat, or a politician from anywhere, or 14 bodies from a single 
affinity group--say, a baker's dozen of blacks, Jews, gays, Palestinians, 
IRA bombers, Beirut street peddlers, fast-food patrons, airline passengers 
or vegetarians -- I suspect much more would have been made of it.

But the deranged gunman who rampaged through the University of Montreal 
while shooting every female in his path very quickly fell into the media's 
"nut" bin. "Just a nut," editors decided. This was almost instantly judged 
to be not a real "terrorism" story, like a plane hijacking, a central 
banker's slaying, a political assassination.

How this story was handled by the media says as much about the relative 
lack of worth of women as newsworthy victims as does the slaughter itself. 
There are some things too big, too simple, too obvious to think about. The 
random mass murder of 14 women -- because they were women -- is one of 
them. The big news is that terrorism against women is not real big news. 
Why? Because it's so common, ingrained, so garden-variety every day.

What does it say about the status of women in 1989, not just that this 
could happen, but that it could be so quickly shunted off into the "nut" 
bin, as in: "Oh, we don't want that for page 1, for the top of the 
newscast, because it was just some nut with a gun, happens all the 
time"?...

What kind of hatred triggers that kind of act? How is it that such an 
obviously troubled individual not only can concoct but then methodically 
execute such a diabolical plan? To what extent was he influenced by forces 
at large in society that conspire to keep women down, to oppress and 
exploit them, to reduce them via pornography to lifeless cartoons? And why 
was so little made of the misogyny?

This mass murder, an incredible and horrifying event that blasted its way 
into our comprehension despite all these years of film-at-11 massacres, 
took place only 331 air miles from New York. ABC's very competent 
Canadian-bred anchorman, the estimable Peter Jennings, didn't air the 
story till after the first commercial break, almost 10 minutes into the 
newscast.

The Wall Street Journal, America's biggest newspaper, the journalistic 
colossus of the continent, 2 million copies sold daily, trumpeting itself 
as "the daily diary of the American dream," kissed off the story in a 
measly paragraph, 47 words, including "the worst mass murder in Canadian 
history."

Five of the seven page 1 stories in Friday's New York Times were about 
foreign events -- but none about Montreal. That was left to a sketchy 
wire-service story. The Times was consistent; the massacre was via AP on 
page 5 one day, AP on page 14 the next. It's easier to sort out the meaning 
of what's happening in Leipzig than in the psychic wastes of our own 
society's demented.

Montreal Mayor Jean Dore, whose regular baby sitter was one of the victims, 
refused to devalue the crime simply as the workings of one deranged 
"madman." After taking in the grisly scene, the mayor said what had to be 
said:

"...a certain amount of men in our society have not accepted the 
requirement of civilization that is perfect equality of men and women."

Here is the real news out of Montreal, ratified by the media's treatment of 
the story: Men don't want to know. Men do not like to hear what the mayor 
said. It's easier to repress than to shove that mental pitchfork into that 
mound of feelings and turn it over and let the sun and the air get to it.

"Why are the women always bitching?" is what men in positions of power 
always ask themselves when women rant about oppression. Of the 1 billion 
humans who cannot read or write, most are women. Women caring for children 
without men, and usually without money. Try this: Women now head 44 percent 
of all black families in the United States; 23 percent of Hispanic 
families; 13 percent of white. When nearly half of all black families, a 
quarter of Hispanic, a seventh of white, are headed by women -- mostly 
poor, mind you -- you've got big trouble.

The '80s were Reagan's era, a screw-the-poor, to-hell-with-the-women's-
issues time. Feminism was forced to retreat; the media took the
government's measure and went back to the old ways. Abortion, birth
control, equal pay? Men don't want to hear. It's too uncomfortable. What's
the latest from Leipzig? 

    On monday (today?), the university will have a new chair of engineering
    -- a woman from montreal.  she'll be flying in from having attended the
    funerals to say a few words.  some of the university clergy will have
    something to say as well, then there will be a candle-light
    procession.  She's the first (i think) woman chair of engineering 
    in the country

    -Jody
    

Thank you Kris, for posting the names of the victims. 
	Mez

    	RE: .77 Kath
    
    	Out of respect for the women who died in Montreal, I'm not going
    	to continue to respond to your notes in this topic - I *will*
    	respond elsewhere, however.
    
    	At this time, I would like to ask you to cease and desist repeating
    	the negative sentiments you have expressed about feminists in this
    	topic (yes, I did notice that you claim these sentiments are *not*
    	yours, yet you repeat them over and over and over, I also noticed.)
    
    	Please stop saying that some people will think that these women
    	(and/or feminists in general) asked for what happened.  It is
    	offensive and I would prefer not to see it expressed here again.
    
    	It is quite telling that even in *this* conference we have to label 
    	a note about the mass murder of women as "SRO," but I would like to 
    	ask that this topic be given SRO status from this minute forward.
    
    	Thanks to all who are willing to be considerate at this time.

Feminism is the response to what happened in Montreal, not the cause.

Feminists did not cause this troubled man to kill women, his father 
was the biggest influence.  Their attitude towards women (and towards
themselves) was unhealthly (to say the least) and, tragically, is reflected
in parts of our society.  There is a huge problem with our society and 
the feminist movement is a response to that problem.

To blame feminists for anything is absurd.  You may as well blame doctors
for disease.

I'm new to this notesfile, and have a lot of catching up to do.

Kurt

The note posting the names of the women (I mistakenly called them girls
in a previous note, for I assumed they were undergraduates...the ages listed
made it clear they were all adults and it was probably a grad class) made
me cry.  That is what *I* think of first, whenever I hear about anything
like this - mass murders, place crashes, even one lone car accident...each
person in that list was an *individual*...now they are just "one of 14
women killed...".

As for the hostility against men at the Canadian vigil...I would like to
think that this would be a time for *bonding* between the sexes against
such insanity.  Do any of you think that the husbands, sons, brothers, 
fathers and boyfriends of the women who died are any less devastated than
their mothers, sisters, daughters and girlfriends?  Surely those close to
the women who died feel a common bond, and unity in anger against the
mudrous madman?  Cannot the rest of us who grieve do the same?

As for whether it isn't "supportive" to discuss possible anti-feminist
benefits in this discussion - I think if we don't talk about neagtive
effects of a negative situation because it "hurts" to hear about, we are
hiding out head in the sand.  Yes, it hurts.   Yes, we are adding insult
(and more injury) to injury.  But it is there, and it needs to be discussed.
Making this discussion less *painful* for those who grieve for 14 Canadian
women will *not* help prevent this happening again.

Personally, I think it is true what Kath and Roak have said...some people
out there will say "Look what the feminists drove that guy too."  Or
even worse "Those poor girls weren't Feminists, but they were killed
*because* the Feminists drove this guy to insanity."  But I think more
people, *many* more people will look at his actions against feminists as
being worse than anything else, and maybe they will realize that violence
against women is real, condoned and deplorable.  Do you think any of the
women's fathers are saying "My darling was killed because the feminists
drove this guy insane?"  I doubt it.  More likely, if he was on the fence
before, he is now infuriated that *anyone* would dare to stand in his
daughter's way, and perhap even see's the Feminists as being the ones who
can stop this sort of thing from happening again.  (They are certainly
the most vocal group against anti-woman actions of which this is such an
extreme example.)

Or, perhaps, like Suzanne, I am being overly optomistic in my assesment
of humankind.

Does anyone know if there is any sort of fund or some such set up for
the families of the women killed in Montreal?

D!

    re .85 -
    
    Society itself is sick, not just this guy.

    
    
      this is one woman's account of the vigil held last week (thurs eve?) in
      montreal
    
    ============================================================================
<usenet.group deleted>

CC:	 
Subj:	Update from Montreal

Your notes, messages, and vibes of support have helped a lot - not just from
sappho, but the outpouring of solidarity from women all across North America.
Some of you asked whether I knew anybody who was killed or injured.  No,
I didn't, but I think I have never felt a stronger sense of connectedness
with the victims of any crime.  I just keep thinking, as a woman, a feminist,
a lesbian, a computer scientist - that could have been me, or you, or any
of my women friends.  I feel like 14 of my sisters were brutally murdered
for no reason other than that they were women (this is not meant to minimize
the grief felt by those who lost loved ones and friends - it's just to
say that many of us were touched by this violence in a very personal way,
even if we didn't know any of the victims personally).
 
Last night I joined the candlelight vigil at the University of Montreal.
We started at the subway station at the base of Mount Royal, walked up the
road which winds its way to the university near the top, stopped in front
of the building where the massacre happened, and eventually continued
around the side of the mountain (hill?) to the St. Joseph's Oratory.
It was the coldest day we've had so far this winter, with a freezing wind
whipping up the exposed side of the hill.  With the windchill the
temperature was about minus 25 Fahrenheit.  I was afraid that the cold,
the short notice, and the early starting time (5 pm) would result in a
low turnout, but when I got to the subway station, I saw lots of people.
I found a couple of my lesbian friends right near the front, and we walked
up the mountain together, linking arms, talking, shivering, and crying
a lot.  When we got to the last turn near the top, we looked back below and
saw that the candlelight procession reached all the way back to the base
of the hill - in spite of the freezing cold, over 15,000 people had come!
 
When we reached the Engineering Building, the area in front was
crawling with media - local, national, as well as American TV crews,
radio crews, print reporters, vans with satellite transmission dishes.
I was glad to see the amount of attention the media were giving to this
event, but at the same time I could not help but wonder why at our
annual Take Back The Night march, we are lucky if we even get one of
the local TV stations to pick up the story on the evening news.  Why
does it have to take the brutal murder of 14 women to get media
coverage of violence against women?  Suddenly all the reporters with
their bright lights scrambled, and we saw a very grim looking Prime
Minister Brian Mulroney and his wife Mila getting out of a limo.  They
disappeared into the building, but most of the people outside didn't
really pay any attention to them anyways.
 
The women who had organized the rally had a megaphone, and asked people
who wanted to come up to say a few words.  A number of people went up to
speak, but most of them could not get past the first few words before
they started crying or getting so angry that they could not continue.
A male student from the university came up and expressed his sympathy to
the families and people who had lost friends in this terrible massacre.
However, he made no reference to the fact that these were WOMEN who died,
as a result of an act of violence directed very specifically towards women.
At one point he referred to "nos amis qui sont morts" (for non-French-speakers:
"our friends who have died" - where "amis" and "morts" are the
masculine or at best gender-neutral terms).  A number of women got very angry
at this point and started shouting a chorus of "mortEs! mortEs!"
(the feminine adjective for dead), and "they were *WOMEN*!"
 
The guy tried to say that he was talking about personal grief, that gender
made no difference in that, and that anybody could have died here.  Needless
to say, this started some very heated shouting from many of the women,
which resulted in some more comments from men about how "you feminists
shouldn't try to turn this tragedy into a political issue!"  At this point
I got into a very heated shouting match with a guy standing next to me,
and finally yelled at him "WHAT THE FUCK IS A POLITICAL ISSUE, IF NOT SOME
FUCKING ASSHOLE MOWING DOWN 14 WOMEN WHILE SCREAMING 'I HATE FEMINISTS'???"
I guess I lost my temper...  He didn't say anything else - maybe I looked
like I was about to punch his lights out (no, I'm not usually a
violent person).  One TV camera caught our exchange, but I didn't see it
on the evening news - I guess it wouldn't have made it past the censors.
 
Many of the women were huddling together in small groups, hugging, crying,
some screaming at the top of their lungs, all of us shivering, from cold,
from anger, from rage, from fear...
 
When we finally left, we stopped at one of the university buildings for
a couple of minutes to thaw out, and the lobby was filled with people with
their shoes off, massaging toes, hands, ears.  I think quite a few people
got frostbite - I thought my earlobe had frozen, but eventually sensation
did come back.
 
Later on I watched the national news on CBC, and I was quite impressed with
their coverage.  They spent probably more than half of the newscast on
various stories connected with the massacre, and most of them were quite
well done, not as sensationalist as I had feared, but more analytical.
What particularly impressed me was that most of their coverage was NOT
from the angle of "this psychopath who committed a brutal mass murder and
then killed himself", but rather "this brutal killing of 14 women which
we should look at as an extreme example of the violence against women
which our society condones every day".  While they did cover some of the
more personal stuff (interviews with survivors etc.), they did make it
quite clear that the motivation behind this massacre was political, and
that the killer had intended his act to be a political statement.
There was also some coverage of a number of the solidarity vigils which
were taking place all across Canada at the same time (one I found particularly
moving was from Toronto (I think?), where all these women were singing
Holly Near's "We are gentle, angry people, and we're singing, singing for
our lives" - it has never seemed more appropriate!)
 
One of the survivor's stories which I found most freaky was this woman
who had hidden crouched between two desks in a hallway.  The killer walked
by as her heart almost stopped, but then he saw her.  He looked straight
at her, then aimed his gun, and pulled the trigger.  However, miraculously
he missed her.  He continued walking, but after about 5 or 6 steps, he
turned around, came back, and shot at her again.  The incredible thing is
that he missed her the second time, too, and that after that he just went
away.  This was particularly bizarre because he was apparently quite a good
shot, and most of the other women died from a single shot in the head.
That woman's guardian angel must have been doing overtime that night!
I suspect she will need a lot of psychological counselling to try to get
over this nightmare.  She just kept saying "I don't understand why I'm still
alive!".  A lot of the students at the university will require counselling
- the university has set up a staff of psychologists, group sessions, and
exams have been cancelled.  The administration also mentioned how this
was a big blow against their efforts over the last several years to get
more women into engineering.
 
Anyways, I have to go.  Thank you all for being there - it really helps
just to talk about some of this.
 
Doris Kochanek
<address deleted>
 

    It's so bizarre to read these notes talking about Feminists driving
    men to murder, or Feminists this or that - as if Feminists were some
    unified tribe all wearing battle fatigues and grim expressions
    and issuing propaganda from their stronghold.  Feminism is an idea,
    an idea that women are equal to men and should be treated equally.
    And like any idea as broad and wonderful as this, the people that
    support it are varied, spread all over the world, and not immediately
    identifiable.  My mother is in her late sixties, bent over
    from osteoporosis, and a card-carrying Republican.  She considers
    herself a feminist (even if I feel her politics are misguided).
    My oldest daughter is a skinny thirteen year-old who loves "Gone
    with the Wind."  She says she's a feminist.  My husband and I
    are typical frazzled working parents and we're feminists.  None
    of us looks particularly threatening and we've never issued
    any public bulletins that might drive men to murderous rage.  We
    don't attend secret meetings plotting the overthrow of the
    patriarchy (although, I might if I knew of one and actually
    believed the patriarchy could fall from a coup).  The only thing
    thtat unites us as feminists it that we
    know that women are as fully human as men and try to promote
    that idea where we can.
    
    Sue Kallas  
    

    Could I ask that we all move away from personalities again?  It
    certainly looks to me as though everyone here has strongly condemned
    the murders and the mindset that produced them.  Nobody should have to
    use particular terms to get credit for a position, should they?
    
    						=maggie

    
     A memeber of the larger noting community did lose a family member
    in Montreal. See Pear::soapbox note 139.60.
    
    Bonnie

     It is obvious that many people feel a great deal of pain and anger
    caused by this tragedy.  (and rightly so, in my opinion).  Some of the
    anger has been directed inwards towards the womannotes community and
    some of it outwards.
    
     OK, so what are we going to do with all this anger? What constructive,
    positive thing are _you_ going to do towards ensuring that the energy
    caused by this senseless slaying is not wasted?
    
     Me, I don't know.  I'd like ideas, suggestions, propositions... I'd
    like people here to think about the future, and how (if at all) you are
    going to change because of it.
    
    					Nigel
    
    ps: The thought of everyone going out and buying a gun doesn't thrill
    me either; I'm not sure it is any worse to be killed by a lunatic with
    a rifle than by an enthusiastic vigilante with a pistol! 

I agree totally with .83. Feminism is not the cause of, but the response
to, the murders of the women in Montreal; not the cause of a severe problem 
in society, but the attempt to correct that problem.

Far from blaming feminists for what happened in Montreal, we should be
applauding them for recognizing the incident for what it was -- not just 
some "nut" who went berserk, but a terrorist political assassination of
women because they dared to aspire to be fully human. David Nyhan is a good
example of such a feminist (see .79). 

Feminists are the ones who recognize sexism for what *it* is -- a deep wrong 
in our society, so deep and so wrong that it is indeed a disease. Feminists
are the ones who have the awareness, the intelligence, the sensitivity, the
dignity, the compassion, and the sheer guts to attempt to right that wrong,
to cure that disease. 

Dorian

>         <<< Note 888.102 by 2EASY::CONLIFFE "Cthulhu Barata Nikto" >>>
    
>     OK, so what are we going to do with all this anger? What constructive,
>    positive thing are _you_ going to do towards ensuring that the energy
>    caused by this senseless slaying is not wasted?

	 I'm focusing my anger on the man that did it, not others that
	 have the capability to do what he did (ie, men in general).

	 I'm discussing the WHYs of why he did it with people that are
	 Anti-Feminist (and to show that it wasn't Feminism that
	 caused this, but rather the man and his own deep rooted
	 problems).

	 I'm trying to analyze in my mind WHY someone would reach this
	 far and go over the deep end.

	 I'm trying to analyze what it is about our society that
	 causes some people to do things like this (whether it's
	 women, children, blacks, jews, etc).

	 I'm doing what I can to enlighten those around me to what is
	 really happening and what can be done.

	 I'm learning that no one is responsible for protecting me but
	 myself.

	 I'm doing what *I* can do to promote equality with everyone.=
	 (not just between men and women).

	 

	 Just for starters.

	 kath

    May I suggest that when we are, ah, out in the world, and encounter
    such people as Roak refers to, that we counter their [putative]
    claim that ~if feminists hadn't been there, then no shooting would
    have occured~ with something like:
    
    If women *had* been kept out of engineering schools, he would just
    have shot anyone who looked vaguely African, Asian, [Amer]Indian,
    or Jewish.  When someone wanted to blame his failures on someone
    else, there's always a scapegoat to be found.
    
    							Ann B.

    	RE: .102  Nigel
    
    	> What constructive, positive thing are _you_ going to do towards 
    	> ensuring that the energy caused by this senseless slaying is not 
    	> wasted?
    
    	As for me, I plan to take a more active role in working for equal
    	rights through Feminism.
    
    	I will raise my feminist voice more loudly and more often (at every
    	available opportunity.)
    
    	I will not focus my anger on men, but rather on a culture that
    	considers violence against women acceptable.
    
    	I recognize that this massacre was a political statement, and not
    	merely the raging act of a mad man.
    
    	I will not be silenced.

    re .107
    Excellent!
    
    re .108
    Also excellent, and I agree with your assessment of the killer.
    
    Bud

    	RE: .112  Kris
    
    	Thanks for the article and the newspaper headline, Kris.
    
    	> If anyone is worried that this is about to become yesterday's 
    	> news, or that the media is looking at this as "just a bunch of 
    	> women who got shot", then I'd invite them to take a trip to Canada 
    	> and take a check on the psyches of the people and the intensity of 
    	> the media coverage of this.  It's not going to go away overnight 
    	> and it's not going to go away without changing things.
    
    	The biggest collection of articles I've seen about this (in the
    	Denver Post) were *very clear* about the political implications of
    	this massacre (regarding the sexist way that society treats women.)
    
    	Thanks again for your reply.

Re: >> Men are loosing their top dog position to equality. It's not surprising    
    >> that some will feel as if they are being backed into a corner..>>
                                         .. Re:45
FOR THOSE WHO ARE LOOKING FOR EXAMPLES:
 
McGill University Montreal, was founded in 1821 and classes began in 1829. 
However **women  were not admitted to McGill until 1884. It appears the
"founding fathers" never considered women as "capable of achieving in academia".
Perhaps they were being influenced by "experts" such as  Gustave Le Bon.
About one hundred years after the admission of women at McGill Univ. during 
1983's  Convocation a "miracle" happened. The Faculty of Engineering broke a
long established tradition of giving 3 gold medals to top engineering graduates.
The unusual thing was that the Engineering Sch. awarded FOUR Gold Medals instead
of three. The recipients were: Anne Mcqueen in Chemical engineering, Margaret
Furst & Caroline Firstbrook in Elec. Engineering & Diane Durnford in Mech.Engin.
No male student was able to qualify for a gold award in engineering during 1983!
Every so often you hear supposedly educated/informed(?) men saying things like: 
"Women don't like engineering, becuase of the work load." => Beliefs of bigots!
As long as the daughters are given mechanical toys instead of cabbage-barbie-
dolls female engineering graduates will also collect gold medals at McGill Univ 
and elsewhere. => (FACT, ready or not ! 1983 McGill Univ. Convocation )
Furthermore...
As of mid-1989, the percentage of full-time McGill students who are WOMEN: 50.6    
From zero female enrollment in 1883 to over fifty percent in 1989.   
                                  ( McGill - Alumni Quaterly,Summer '89 )

          re: .102 (Nigel Conliffe)

 > What constructive, positive thing are _you_ going to do towards ensuring 
 > that the energy caused by this senseless slaying is not wasted?

          Wish I had a good answer for that question, Nigel.

          I'm having a hard time dealing with the murders of the women
          engineering students in Montreal.  Reading about the motives for
          the murders is like listening to a more general rehash of the
          case which the defense attorney of the man that raped me used in
          court...  Where women (mother and girlfriend) "wronged" Him, and
          His raping and beating me was an expression of His generalizing
          this rage towards women; an expression that He was "compelled" 
          to do.

          I think the acts of Mr. Lepine represent one form of the extreme
          end of a continuum.  This continuum consists of the various ways
          in which male anger and resentment _of_ women is manifested
          through violence _to_ women.  At the other extreme of the
          continuum, I would place catcalls, whistles, etc., which some men
          feel should be interpreted as compliments, but which are actually
          (IMHO) intrusive and unwanted.  At other places on the continuum
          would be wife battering, date rape, stranger rape, marital rape,
          etc.

          Recent local (to Boston) crimes, *barely* covered by the press,
          that could be added to the continuum include the 2 Boston men who
          were accused of torturing and raping 2 female _roommates_ in a
          dispute over an $80 debt.  Or the strangulation murder of a woman
          whose nude body was found in the snow in front of a freight yard.

          Perhaps this tragedy will force the phenomena of male violence
          against women to be (finally) officially recognized by non-
          feminists.

          My general concern is that some men with a propensity towards
          violence and agression who empathize with Mr. Lepine's anger
          towards women/feminists will soon perform a kind of less extreme
          "copycat violence" of their own against women.  It would not
          surprise me if a spike occurred in a graph of the FBI Uniform
          Crime Reports victimization studies (in the category of female
          victims of violence) for the next month or two.

          My specific fear is that He_who_was_just_let_out_of_prison now
          feels new validation with His anger towards women.  This newfound
          anger-energy, which may have been previously dampened because of
          incarceration, will enable him to begin raping and beating up
          women again, or decide to seek revenge against me for the three
          years He spent in prison.


          Trying to put myself in His shoes, trying to imagine how He would
          be reacting to these murders of women, trying to imagine how
          other men like Him are reacting... this is what I think.
          [ Mez_the_Insightful, you thought I looked tense at the =wn=
            party ?? ]

          Would someone please tell me I am just over-reacting and being
          paranoid ?

                                                       nancy b.

    I've moved the notes discussing whether or not this tragedy will cause
    an anti-feminist backlash to their own string, 892.*
    
    I think I got them all, but please accept my apologies if both strings
    now seem somewhat disjointed; the excision job was a difficult one.
    
    						=maggie

    
 
"From the Women of San Francisco to the Women of Montreal"
 
Several organizations in the SF area have joined together to offer aid and
comfort to the victims' families and to the survivors of the shooting.
 
Tax-deductible donations can be sent (by 12/15) to:
 
	San Francisco Women's Centers
	3543 - 18th Street, Box 24
	San Francisco, CA  94110
 
	make checks payable to SFWC, mark MONTREAL on the memo line
 
A FRIENDSHIP BANNER is being sewn to be sent to the school. For more
information or to help create the banner, call San Francisco Women's
Centers at (415) 431-1180.
 
Both of these are joint project of: SFWC/Women's Building, The Women's
Foundation, Women's Initiative for Self-Empowerment, SF NOW, and other San
Francisco women's organizations.
 
 

    
    
    	     Well, looks like I've changed my mind a little. I WILL be
    	getting more into this conference a bit.
    
    	I read all replies and still haven't heard the one I'm looking
    	for:
    
    		What if ONE other person in that mess was a law-
    		abiding citizen, had a gun, and managed to stop
    		the murderer?
    
    	Each and every incident I read in where victims were HUNTED
    	DOWN and then killed (ex. the Post Office murders in the USA
    	where some victims hid) I wonder what difference it would
    	make if LAW-ABIDING citizens were armed and could stop these
    	individuals?
    
    	The incident on a ferry in New York where someone with a
    	sword started hacking people to death UNTIL HE WAS STOPPED
    	BY AN OFF DUTY OFFICER WITH A GUN.
    
    	I agree with other entries. YOU are responsible for your
    	own safety WITHOUT BEING PARANOID. Law enforcement cannot
    	be EVERYWHERE so law-abiding armed citizens MUST.
    
    	I am NEVER more than a few feet from a gun EXCEPT when at
    	work (and that BOTHERS me sometimes). My wife also is never
    	more than a few feet from one (at home, in the car, etc.)
    	and since she works late at night and was almost robbed
    	GOING TO HER CAR FROM WORK the other night we will both
    	start CARRYING ONE ON OUR PERSON.
    
    
    	I don't wish to start a gun/anti-gun debate here but the
    	truth is that if just ONE of those on that campus had been
    	able to intervene there may have been less deaths. I know that
    	the people who survived on that ferry in NY were GLAD that
    	off duty officer JUST HAPPENED TO BE THERE.
    
    							Warren
    
    

    re .118
    
    Warren,
    
    Why does the solution have to be one of violence against another
    person?
    
    The deadly use of weapons against another person is an immediate,
    instant solution which cannot be changed.  What the h*ll are we
    supposed to do when a person gets to the point where violence is the
    only means of expression?  It affects all of us, especially the
    children who no longer flinch when sirens go by, or they see a dead
    body on the street.
    
    What does this say about us as a "civilized" society, when we can no
    longer protect ourselves against each other?
    
    Why did a man of 25 blame all of his problems on women, and then take
    out that anger in such a violent manner?
    
    I just don't understand!
    
    Judi
    
    

    re.119 Judi, I don't understand either. Frankly,
    dissecting the bastards motives would take a stomach
    stronger than mine. But whether we understand him or
    not, he and his kind *do* present a real problem which 
    *can* be solved by judicious use of countervailing force. 
    
    Trying to reason with a homicidal maniac is futile. The 
    immediate problem is to STOP him, right now. 
    
    In the long run, we can all work for a world where hatred
    and anti-(whatever)ism no longer drive people to insane
    violence. In the short term we deal with it as best we can.
    For some of us that means forceful self-defense. For others
    it means passive non-resistance. 
    
    Dana

    Please folks, lets keep notes on guns in the gun note and leave
    this note for dealing with the Montreal tragedy.
    
    Bonnie J
    =wn= comod

>    Why does the solution have to be one of violence against another
>    person?
    
    It doesn't have to be. However, it can sometimes reduce the amount of
    suffering and the number of casualties.
    
>What the h*ll are we
>    supposed to do when a person gets to the point where violence is the
>    only means of expression? 
    
    Tough question. Ignoring this person seems to be a non-solution,
    though.
    
>    What does this say about us as a "civilized" society, when we can no
>    longer protect ourselves against each other?
    
    Actually, it's not like we used to be able to protect ourselves and
    suddenly cannot. It remains an ongoing problem in protecting innocent
    people from anti-social people. And it probably always will. The key
    (to me) is to reduce the likelihood of anti-social beings to commit
    acts against other people.
    
>    Why did a man of 25 blame all of his problems on women, and then take
>    out that anger in such a violent manner?
    
     Let's list the possibilities: Low self esteem, jealousy, misogynous
    upbringing, previous bad experiences with women, mental disease, a
    feeling that society expects him to prevail over women and resultant
    rage when such is not the case, the list goes on...
    
>    I just don't understand!
    
    Join the club, Judi. One thing to keep in mind, don't fall into the
    trap of trying to analyze this guy's actions in the context of
    rationality. It has been my experience that rational human beings do
    not generally seek vindication for failed lives by murdering groups of
    people who's live appear better. Realize that something was very, very
    wrong inside this individual's head, and that he is not representative
    of society in general, rather, a symbol of how bad society can get.
    
     the Doctah

        re: .118 (Warren Kemerer)          -< What if.....?? >-
    
	I've lamented that more than a couple of times... 

	That the women could be herded, like sheep, into a group 
        and slaughtered.

	That not _one_ of the women (or men) was carrying a concealed
	handgun.  Worst case, it would have taken but 3 seconds for
	a woman to reach into the velcro'd inner compartment of her
	purse containing a holstered handgun, draw, and shoot.  In
	that particular situation it could have been done much slower 
	and very discreetly as Mr. Lepine was herding them into a group.

	Of course, the woman would then be arrested for illegally 
	carrying a concealed handgun.  Past precedents (in the US at
	least) indicated the charges would more than likely be dropped.  

							nancy b.
    

	re: .119 (Judy Hutchins)

	>    Why does the solution have to be one of violence 
	>    against another person?
 
	What other method could have been an effective counter
	against Mr. Lepine? 

        >    The deadly use of weapons against another person is 
        >    an immediate, instant solution which cannot be changed. 

	True.  The result of Mr. Lepine's unchecked actions will be
	the unmutable fact that 14 women are dead.

    	>    Why did a man of 25 blame all of his problems on women, 
	>    and then take out that anger in such a violent manner?
    
	I'm curious about that too...  The specifics of why.
	Has any newspaper article explored this at any depth?

							nancy b.
    

    >Why does the solution have to be one of violence against another
    >person?
    
    Mainly because in situations like this, it's either you die or he
    does.  I know which one I'd choose and I wouldn't take a lick of
    responsiblity or feel a smidgeon of guilt for the fact that he forced 
    me into that choice.
    
    >The deadly use of weapons against another person is an immediate,
    >instant solution which cannot be changed.  
    
    Yup.
    
    >What the h*ll are we supposed to do when a person gets to the point 
    >where violence is the only means of expression?  
    
    In this country, we pay our taxes to support them for the rest of
    their lives, or until they make parole, unless they have the decency
    to kill themselves and spare us the expense.
    
    >What does this say about us as a "civilized" society, when we can no
    >longer protect ourselves against each other?
     
    That "civilized" is the wrong word to use.
    
    >Why did a man of 25 blame all of his problems on women, and then take
    >out that anger in such a violent manner?
    
    Because the definition of manhood is generally dependent on the
    behavior of women.  When a woman doesn't behave as expected, the men
    in her sphere sometimes feel that their identities as men have been
    compromised.  That's why they tease each other with such "insults"
    as being hen-pecked or pussy-whipped.  Generally, the definition of 
    male-ness includes in large part, control over the women in his life.  
    Equal autonomy then, what women now see as merely obvious and normal,
    is still a serious threat to manhood.  Marc Lepine merely took back
    his male-ness from the "feminists", the women who didn't behave
    in male-superior validating ways, who "stole" it from him.
    
    >don't fall into the trap of trying to analyze this guy's actions in 
    >the context of rationality. It has been my experience that rational 
    >human beings do not generally seek vindication for failed lives by 
    >murdering groups of people...  Realize that something was very, very
    wrong inside this individual's head, and that he is not representative
    of society in general...
    
    Not to butt heads with you again, Doctah, but I think this thought
    is the crux of the problem many women have with the evaluation of
    this tragedy.  Many, many men "seek vindication" on women.  He is
    not so "irrational" as someone who tortures animals or rock stars
    who trash hotel rooms.  These things are random and with no underlying
    justification.  *That* is irrational.  What did a hotel room ever
    do to Motley Crue, anyway?
    
    But male anger against women, and the expression of that anger, is
    common and everyday.  He is guilting of merely overstepping the
    boundary and *not* of being an irrational nut.  He is not "very,
    very wrong", according to society, he just carried perfectly acceptable
    misogyny a little too far.  Were it simply rape of 14 women in
    Montreal, you would never have even heard of it. It wouldn't be
    newsworthy.  It would be within the boundaries. The mere expression of 
    hostility against women isn't newsworthy.  So I'm just perplexed when 
    people wonder at his misogyny and how it got to "that level".  In my
    mind, it's simply not a far cry from the guy who expresses his
    hostility daily at a "tolerable" level like raping and beating only
    his wife or his lover.  The leap between that and killing women
    is far smaller than the leap between accepting women as equal people
    and hating them.
    
    >rather, a symbol of how bad society can get.
     
    It is no symbol.  It's an outright example of how bad society HAS
    gotten - for women anyway.  We no longer have droit du segnuier
    or however you spell it, but we have this.  Rapists and killers
    of women - the footsoldiers in the war between the sexes, the ones who 
    do the dirty work to keep us all in line.  All men "benefit" whether 
    they personally want to or not, from men like Lepine and the zillion 
    others who terrorize women every day, keeping them in fear of the
    world and a little less 'haughty' with men.

RE:
   .124> ..I'am  curious about that too...The specifics of why.
   .124> Has any newspaper article explored this at any depth..?

itc:  From The Montreal Gazette - comes the following:


[ Marc Lepine, the mass killer who blamed feminists for his failures in life 
  grew up with a father who had a total disdain for women....his mother told 
  a 1976 divorce hearing....  A three page letter that viciously condemned 
  feminists was found on the killer's body.  Monique Lepine (mother of .. )
  testified at the divorce hearing that her ex-husband gave her his view of
  women one night after he angrily threw a glass of liquor in her face as 
  punishment becuase she came home late after an outing with friends. They
  were married in 1963. Monique Lepine told Superior Court Justice Jeanne
  Warren that her husband used to beat the children (son & daughter)..when
  the tots sang too loudly in the morning or when they refused to say good
  morning to him. 
    "He was a very abusive man who did not seem to have any control of his
     emotion. He had no control in punishing the children. It was always
     a physical gesture, a violent gesture and always right in the face.."
     - Monique Lepine related on OCTOBER 4th, 1976.
Monique Lepine filed for divorce in 1974. The divorce was granted in 1978.
The couple had married in New York State, when she was 26 and  he was 31.      
The two separated in 1971 when the boy was 7 and the daughter was 4.
At the divorce hearing the husband said he was property and real estate broker,
the wife said she was director of nursing at..(St. Mary's Hospital, Montreal).
Monique testified at the divorce hearing that: "he would resort to violence
against me and the children for the least reason, to the point of sometimes 
making the children's noses bleed. He would stop me from taking them in my arms 
and consoling them.." She added that, her husband was particularly violent
with Marc: "He would hit him right in the face which sometimes left marks up to
a week." Monique claimed that Marc feared his father so much that when the boy 
realized that his mother was driving to visit him (the ex-husband)  Marc...
"was so afraid of seeing his father that he hit the steering wheel and almost 
 caused an accident.."

When asked about his abusive behavior during the divorce trial this is what he 
said: "It is certain that occasionally in life someone can receive a slap, but
to hit someone and hurt them, no."
But Monique's sister, Pierrete said she saw Marcs's father beat Monique infront
of the kids, shaking her and frequently slamming her against a stone wall of a
cottage in Ste. Adele, Quebec. The incident occurred when Monique's parents were
visiting during a period in 1969. 
In 1975, four years after the couple had separated, Monique said she and her
children took psychotherapy under the care of Ste. Justine Hospital. She said
the therapy, which lasted for a year, was necessary becuase the family..
.."had difficulties to love and to be loved" 
The man claimed in a testimony that the worse punishment he imposed on 
the children was to make them stand straight for ten minutes with their hands
at their side. 
                                                                          contd.
      
** Extracted in parts...to comply with US=WN=Copyright Regulations.**
(From page A-1 and A-7 of the December 9th 1989 issue of the Montreal Gazette)
Under headline: "Killer's Father Beat Him As a Child" - front page. 
The original article was written by: Rod Macdonell, Elizabeth Thompson
                                     Andrew McIntosh, William Marsden.

    
    
    	     I didn't imply this in my earlier reply so I will state it 
    	now. 
    
    	I am *NOT* pre-disposed to violence to stop violence. In fact 
    	I have TALKED my way out of violence intended on my person
    	no less than four (4) times in my life. But those four times
    	were with individuals who had merely temporarily "lost their
    	head" and wanted to do violence. I was able to talk them out
    	of it because deep down inside they were really rational
    	individuals "on overload".
    
    	But let's face it. Some people cannot be reasoned with. Therefore,
    	the only other choice is to fight fire with fire.
    
    							Warren
    

        -------------------------------------------------------------------
	[posted with permission of author]
	To:	SYSENG::BITTLE
	Subj:	The anecdote about hatred of women	

	Hi, Nancy.  I just got off the phone with my friend.  He said the
	story came from Canada, from the university where the killings
	occured last week.

	It seems that one of the campus women's groups was having a cam-
	paign against date rape.  The put up posters that said, "NO MEANS NO."
	Immediately, grafitti and bumper stickers began appearing all over 
	the campus in huge numbers.  The grafitti said, "NO MEANS MORE BEER."

	The newspapers claimed this to be proof positive of a rampant hatred
	of women, and called on the government to do something about it.

	I'm afraid I must not have been paying enough attention to that part
	of the conversation.  It was one of those sit-in-a-circle-and-talk-
	to-the-person-across-from-you deals.  There were definitely points
	made with substance, such as statistics on rape and violent assault 
	against women.  In my opinion, though, this grafitti business is not
	what the papers tried to make it out to be.  It is sexist and crude,
	and no mistake, but it is a long way from mass murder.  This was also
	the point my friend meant to make, and which I totally missed.

	The most alarming aspect of the story was, to me, the fact that so
	may people take rape as a joking matter.  The "...MORE BEER" approach
	equates violent assault with indescretion.	
        ----------------------------------------------------------------------

>    Not to butt heads with you again, Doctah, but I think this thought
>    is the crux of the problem many women have with the evaluation of
>    this tragedy.  Many, many men "seek vindication" on women.
    
    I don't think you are contradicting what I said. Yes, many (far too
    many) men abuse women to heighten a deflated sense of self esteem.
    However, I submit that anyone who goes on a murderous rampage is not
    rational. So your saying that many men seek to vindicate themselves by
    abusing women does not refute my assertion that rational people do not
    generally murder groups of people. Dah?
    
>    But male anger against women, and the expression of that anger, is
>    common and everyday.
    
    Frankly, I'd extend it to say that male anger and its expressions are
    common and everyday- and are not confined to women. Obviously, in this
    forum, it makes the most sense to deal with the aspects of things that
    pertain to women, but perhaps we ought to examine the larger issue of
    male violence (in general) in order to better understand its nature.
    
    I believe that the root cause of the problem lies with men's inability
    to express displeasure in socially acceptable manners. People, and men
    in particular, seem less and less able to deal with the frustrations of
    everyday living in the modern world. Too often men deal with their
    frustrations by lashing out at their surroundings- by breaking things.
    While it is nominally acceptable to break inanimate objects, it is
    always unacceptable to vent your frustrations on living things. But it
    continues to happen. This does not mean it is ok!
    
>He is not "very,
>    very wrong", according to society, he just carried perfectly acceptable
>    misogyny a little too far. 
    
    I disagree with this statement completely.
    
>The leap between that and killing women
>    is far smaller than the leap between accepting women as equal people
>    and hating them.        
    
    I want to point out that accepting someone as an equal person does not
    prevent one from hating them.
    
>All men "benefit" whether 
>    they personally want to or not, from men like Lepine and the zillion 
>    others who terrorize women every day, keeping them in fear of the
>    world and a little less 'haughty' with men.
    
    And we all lose too, though I don't expect you to want to accept that.
    
    The Doctah

    re: 129
    
    To me, the MORE BEER graffiti promotes the act of overpowering a woman 
    rather than pomoting an act of indescretion (or am I missing something)?  
    It conjures up a picture of getting the woman sufficiently intoxicated so 
    that either
    (1) her defenses are down and she agrees (or at least stops resisting)
    (2) she gets too drunk to know what is going on.
    
    Still sounds like rape to me, in either case.

	A friend mentioned to me this morning that on CNN's debate
	hour with Kenney and James Buchanan last night was Nicholas 
	Davidson(?) and Eleanor Smeal, debating the causes, etc., 
	of the tragedy at Montreal.

	Supposedly our friend Nicholas has these things to say:

	o  Marc Lepine was a "victim of feminism and feminists".
	o  Feminists make "lousy lovers"
	o  Women do not deserve = pay for = work because...

	Did anyone see this or tape it?
							nancy b.

    Yes, Doctah, I know we all loose.  If Lepine didn't loose his very
    life because of it, he certainly lost his happiness because of it
    a long time ago.  Seven years ago, I think he said.
    
    But telling a man sexism is his loss too is rarely an effective approach
    to ending it.  Most, (and we're talking about sexist men here, because
    you don't have to say this to non-sexist men),  would just chuckle back
    at you.  I have said many, many times in notes, men have nothing
    to loose and everything to gain by working toward a world full of
    happy, fulfilled women who can freely express their talents, their
    ambitions, their dreams, their love and their lust.  They would
    reward their men a thousandfold.  Doesn't it sound wonderful?

>	o  Marc Lepine was a "victim of feminism and feminists".
    
    Bull. He was a victim of his own failure to deal with his frustration
    in socially acceptable ways. He chose to fail- and did (in spades).
    
>	o  Feminists make "lousy lovers"
    
    I'm sorry, but for some reason, I find this notion endlessly amusing.
    :-) 8^)
    
>	o  Women do not deserve = pay for = work because...
    
    That time is long since past.
    
    The Doctah

>I have said many, many times in notes, men have nothing
>    to loose and everything to gain by working toward a world full of
>    happy, fulfilled women who can freely express their talents, their
>    ambitions, their dreams, their love and their lust.  They would
>    reward their men a thousandfold.  Doesn't it sound wonderful?
 
    Sounds fine to me. :-)
    
    The  Doctah           

    I think it was in this note, but with all the shuffling around of notes
    (which was necessary) I don't know if the question is still here...
    
    The question was: "Has a woman ever comitted a mass murder?"
    
    Who:	Priscilla Ford, age 51
    
    Where:	Reno, Nevada
    
    When:	Thanksgiving Day, 1980
    
    Casualties:	7 people dead, 23 injured
    
    Why:	She told officials that the victims were all "Pigs and
    		Beasts" and she had hoped to get 75 of them.
    
    Conclusion:	Convicted in 1982.  The Nevada Supreme court upheld the
    		death penality on April 8, 1986
    
    			   FWIW,
    				Roak

    Sharon- 
    
     I think any attempts to explain what I meant are likely to get me in
    further hot water (deeper?). I did feel uneasy when I put it in. I
    agree that it has never been right. Ok?
    
    The Doctah

RE: 888.129
>> It seems that one of the campus groups was having a campaign against 
>> date rape. They put up posters that said.."NO MEANS NO."
>> Immediately, grafitti, and bumper stickers began appearing all over the
>> campus in huge numbers. The grafitti said "NO MEANS MORE BEER."

Furthermore...OR in addition.

From a M/Gazette issue under a column: BOUQUETS and BRICKBATS,

 Here is a BRICKBAT....=>
[For sexism, to a group of male students at Queen's University, Ontario,Canada.
 During the annual No Means No Rape awareness campaign, they displayed signs
 and banners in residence windows ridiculing the campaign. Among the messages
 on the banners: No Means D*k*, and No Means Tie Me Up 
    ( from page B-2, M/Gazette of Nov. 4th 1989 - near the Editorials)
                   ---confirmingly---a-dangerous-precedent---(?)

    re. 'feminists make lousy lovers'
    
    If this is so, I wish to extend heartfelt thanks to those in my life
    who have spared my fragile ego and kept their complaints to themselves.
    
    	Ann

Nathalie Provost described yesterday how she tried to reason with the gunman
seconds before he embarked on a killing rampage that claimed the lives of 
14 schoolmates. Provost is among 11 people still recovering  in hospitals
from the wounds suffered during the rampage at Univ. de Montreal's engineering
school. Provost said that after Lepine had entered her class - and had forced
men to leave - he pointed his high-calibre gun at the women and asked whether
they knew why he had come. 
       "Obviously we said no. He said, `I am against femisism. That's why
I am here.' He was still pointing the gun at us."  Provost said she told 
Lepine the students were not necessarily feminists and, even if they were
it did not mean they had anything against men.
"Maybe he answered something but I didn't hear it - becuase he began to shoot
at us."  She said it would be too morbid to describe in detail what happened.
She said there was nothing about Lepine's physical appearance that struck her
as unusual, except the determined look on his face. He was described by a
broadcaster of CBC (who had contacted the mother) as being about 5-feet 9inches
tall and weighing about 160 lbs with brown hair and blue eyes. 
In his letter lepine said that he was going to have to die on Dec. 6, then 
blamed his problems on "feminists who had always ruined his life", according
to Jacques Duchesneau, head of the Montreal police. The letter, which has not
yet been released in full, also included a list of women in Montreal. Police
would not disclose their names or speculate on why they were mentioned in his
letter.  Provost who answered repoters questions in French and English said:
"I can't understand that there are still men who think like that."  
She decided to speak to reporters - the only hospitalized student to have done
so to deliver three messages. 
"Everybody did their best; that's the essential thing. There is only one guy 
 that's guilty, and he's dead."  Second, she said it's important for students
 at the Ecole Polytechnique to continue their lives, pick up their studies
 where they left off. She addressed the third message to women in general
 who had thought about pursuing an engineering career - or any other male-
 dominated career for that matter. 
                "I ask you to envision that possibility with the same
 enthusiasm that you had before what happened Wednesday." 
 Provost, who hopes to go home from the hospital in the next few days plans
 to graduate in the spring. Dr. Edmond Monaghan said Provost is progressing 
 well as is the other 23-year-old woman recuprating at the Royal Vicotria
 Hospital, France Chretien. 


Ironically: Benoit Trembley - Member of Parliament was in the building during
the murderous rampage, he had just finished accompanying William Winegard 
federal minister of state for science and technology, on a tour of the 
engineering school. Winegard had left 15 minutes before the first shots were
fired. Among the topics they discussed was a federal scholarship program that
aims to bring more women into engineering and the sciences, the MP said.
The Ecole Polytechnique affiliated with the Univ. de Montreal is the largest
engineering shool in the nation. Of about 5,000 students at the engineering
school figures released showed that - 18 percent are female. 
"The Concordia(Univ.) Women's Collective is a high-profile activist group..
 We don't understand why it wasn't us he went after" said  Michaele Morrison.


The gunman: Police said they were able to get a line on the gunman's identity
by tracing the purchase and registration of the weapon he used - 
a .22 calibre Strum Ruger semi-automatic rifle, a gun commonly used in hunting.
They said that they had learned where the gun was purchased and that it appeared
to have been registered properly.

Excerpts of Interview from someone named Belanger who said he knew lepine very
well. "He used to live practically next door to me, we went to the same school
together.. he was a shy person who kept to himself...but I got to know him
and it was a long time before he opened up..he refused to talk about some
subjects - especially his family life,... the(parents') divorce appeared to
have had an impact on  him."  Belanger also said their favorite pastimes
were cycling and camping at Oka. The pair were also fascinated with electronics
- bulding "everything from light tracers to mini-computers. Belanger said lepine
was not good in languages - (English/French) but was very good in the sciences.
In fall 1983, lepine switched to a three year program in electronics technology.
His instructors in that department remember him as an above average student who
kept a low profile. Instructor Jean Sepeldjian taught lepine for two 15 week
terms in 1985. "He was very shy,.. he had high marks. But there was an 
unexplained drop in his marks at the end of the fall term in 1985."
     Electrotechnical department head Marcel Leroux - 21 years at CEGEP -
St. Laurent taught lepine and 32 other students in a 1984 class that included
two women. "Lepine earned the fourth-highest mark in the class at the end of
the term,"  Leroux stated in the interview.  Another instructor at the school
said: lepine excelled in electrotechnology but...failed courses in humanities
including French literature and philosophy --  Claude Boily the CEGEP's 
director general stated.

From what the instructors are saying about lepine, the statement:
"You don't have to be a dummy to be a bigot/hate-monger" reminds, of what
Dr. Elie Wiesel (an '86 Nobel winner) said about the bunch of sadistic men
who got together at the Wannsee Conference to formulate plans for liquidating
millions of people. <--- My opinion BTW:

[The key word that I always rely on when I consider hate is `memory'. When
 you consider the effects of hate, the tragedies that stem from hate, this
 is what puts hate in perspective. It's difficult to say if Hitler's brand of
 hate is unique, becuase somehow that will *abslove all the little hitlers
 (like lepine, bundy, ramirez, et al) still around. ]
 The above by  - Elie Wiesel -  a nazi death camp survivor in an interview.
  P/s  * Names in parenthesis are my insertion *
 
Article contd:
"Misogyny - hatred of women is not acceptable. It's gotten to the point where
 a man wrote a three-page letter of hate and got a semi-automatic rifle and
 killed 14 women." - M. Morrison of Concordia Women's Collective.

Belanger said lepine probably got his earliest firearms training when they were
teens and shot pigeons with BB guns. 

An Almost Forgotten Precedent - The Nature Of Misogyny.
------------------------------------------------------
 On an October afternoon in 1975, a quiet 18 year-old named Robert P.... 
 walked into an Ottawa, Ontario classroom and began shooting at Grade 13 
 students he found there with a sawed-off .12 guage shotgun. He then turned
 the gun on himself and blew off his head.  Anne McGrath  was in the room
 when that shooting occurred. McGrath said her intitial reaction to lepine's
 rampage was, "Oh no, not again !"
 "The similarities between the two cases are too striking" she said in an
 interview. "lepine like robert p. was an introverted ..Noboby knew him"
 Robert p. abducted a teen-age woman, took her to his bedroom assualted and
 then murdered her. He poured kerosene on the body and set it alight.
 Then he rode a bicycle to Pius X High School his shotgun tucked in a gym bag.
 After the shooting and the suicide Police found the woman's charred remains.
 They also found a diary in which he listed all women, including his mother
 who he fantasized about assaulting and killing.
 Anne MaGrath (the '75 survivor) joined other women's rights activists across
 Canada in saying that society must view lepine's attack on women at U de Mont.
 as an act of misogyny - hatred of women rather than as "just a crazed killer"
 beause - "Although he may have been extreme in his vengeful actions, he is not
 alone as a man in being unable to accept that women are gaining in equality."
 ..said Marie-Andree' Bertrand a professor at Univ. de Montreal.
 
  Re: 888.128 >> What if scenario >>
 
 My question: What if all or most of the men in the classroom had refused to
 leave their fellow classmates  behind ?  
 
 o What if the male students had stood firmly infront of the female students ?

 o What if the male students had put the *sense of connectedness* into practice.
   (Instead of the post-tragedy abstractions of "If I was there ..")

 o What if the male students had collectively rushed on him as they were leavin
   the classroom? Sure, some would have been killed along with some females but 
   that could have saved the females in the cafeteria . 

 p/s
 *Due to -phobic vibes will THEY become reticent ?  Response to the questions?
 
  "These manisfestations of irrational hatred for hamrless people and....
   anti-women sentiments are all around us, take a look" 
                                                          Bertrand, U de Mont.


   (Main article culled from M/Gazette 12/9 & F/Pres 12/8/89.)
    Written by: Mary Lamey/Walter Buchignani/Kathryn Haralambous, 

	Why has the massacre of the 14 women not been mentioned on 
	**any** year-end wrap-up I've seen or read ??

							nancy b.

>	Why has the massacre of the 14 women not been mentioned on 
>	**any** year-end wrap-up I've seen or read ??


	 Were any of the massacres that happened last year listed?  I
	 haven't seen any, in fact, everything seems to be
	 overshadowed by the good things happening in Europe.

	 In fact, with everything that happened in the 80's, the big
	 wrap-up of the 80s seems to be biased toward '89.

	 Perhaps we should start our own wrap-up?


	 kath

    re: .143
    
    Perhaps because beside revolutions, invasions, earthquakes wiping
    out thousands of lives around the world, terrorists blowing
    airplanes out of the sky, and the other wonderful details of
    modern living, a little mass murder doesn't count for much.
    
    --bonnie

    
    re. 143 -
    
    "They were only women. So it was not such a big deal."
    
    	-- from David Nyhan's column in the Boston Globe

I got this from somewhere on the net.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: soc.women,soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Tragedy at University of Montreal
From: hott@anthrax.Solbourne.COM!hott (Brandt Hott)
 
>From article <10047@zodiac.ADS.COM>, by charleen@deimos.ADS.COM (Charleen Bunjiovianna):
> The whole point?  What point?  They were killed because Lepine was
> mentally ill.  I hate to disappoint you, but there is no point.
 
Oh but how often we try to write off the crimes of death as being caused
by those stricken with mental illness. And what is this thing we refer
to as mental illness?  Is it to be described as a mind state which causes a
person to take the lives of others?  So we should feel sorrow for Lepin since
an uncontrollable state of mind caused him to take the lives of those so 
young and innocent? Just as much sorrow we should feel for Hitler and those
who made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on the civilians of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki? Or how about those such peoples who support animal abuse and
factory farming? How about the heads of corporations who invest in slavery
stricken south africa and support the destruction of the tropical rainforests?
How about those who slaughter elephants for ivory and those who buy the ivory,
the fur coats, the animal tested cosmetics? How about those who rape womyn
and beat their children and dwell in child pornography? How about those people
who support atomic weapons of massive death? The factories which dump major
pollutants into the environment that end up causing cancer - killing people,
killing animals, killing the earth?
 
Perhaps Lepin was no more insane than anyone. Perhaps he
was frustrated with his existence and tried to place the blame elsewhere
just as so many others. In a world so full of hate and self denial the 
innocent are always the ones to be blamed/hurt. Lepin hated his life and
he needed a reason. He looked to society and society pointed him to
the womyn. Indeed we live in a society whose predominant religion has as a 
part of its doctrine a belief that the womyn is repsonsible for bringing evil
into the world.  Since platonic existance the womyn has been thought
inferior. Man has always been threatened by the womyn though the reasons
have always been unjustified and deeply rooted in male dominated history. 
 
As long as the people of this society continually try
to persecute others for their own problems such things as the Montreal
Massacre will continue to have the possibility of happening.
As long as we refuse to stand up for each other and let it be known that
everyone has just as much right to live as everyone else such things will
happen. Our society provides a platform for such devastating events to 
occur. What Lepin did was not out of the norm of how womyn have been
treated since the beginning of recorded history. He may have been insane
but the society in which he lived is just as much to blame for his actions.
As long as we be silent and let people look upon others as less than human
the pain will continue.
 
People need to let themselves be heard and educate those who
support prejudice/hatred agaisnt others. It must start with the children.
They need to be brought up with the basic belief that everyone has
the same intrisic dignity and worth as everyone else. The school education
system at K-12 level needs to include the womyn, especially in history.
Books need to be re-written such that references to he,him,his that are
meant to be genderless also include womyn {s/he,her/him,her/his,people,them}.
For example Eli Whitney did not invent the cotton gin, rather a womyn did.
Such errors need to be corrected. Feminism needs to reach everyone to the
point that they understand everyone in this world is in it together and
everyone has the right to live a life without having unjustified harm pain
inflicted upon them by others. 
 
	May the Montreal tragedy be the spark for a human rights movement
more powerful than this world has ever known...
	May we stop waiting for our popularity role playing governmental
braindead leaders to lead and become ourselves leaders.
 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
//Brandt Hott//////////////////Tired yet? Its only the beginning....
//Diagnostics Engineer////////I have no reason for being me I just am 
//Solbourne Computer Inc./////////////////////// //////\\\\\
//email: hott@Solbourne.Com //Hmmm..............///////\\\\\\\
//boulder!zeppo!hott//////////////////////////////////////////////////
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

    RE:
    .147> In a world so full of hate and self denial the innocent are always
    .147> the ones to be blamed/hurt...
    
    Exactly ! 
    
    .147> People need to let themselves be heard.....
    
    I strongly disagree with the statement. Becuase choosing to be reticent
    is oftentimes the only way for self-preservation.
    

[reprinted with permission..]


From:	DECPA::"amdcad!hxe@rayssde.ssd.ray.com" "Heather Emanuel" 27-JAN-1990 00:28:41.08
To:	fml@rayssde.ssd.ray.com 
CC:	
Subj:	Group Messages 2257 to 

 
January 26, 1990		Message 2257 from Brunilde Sanso
 
                                     Montreal, Jan 25 1990
 
Terry [a femail member] has suggested to me to tell other people the
story of what happened on December the 6th, 1989 at the Ecole
Polytechnique de Montreal.  I apologize for my clumsy English.  Here
is my story:
 
The Ecole Polytechnique is the engineering school of the University
of Montreal, a French Canadian university.  Physically, it is
located on the highest place in Montreal, on the top of the mountain
called Montroyal, and it is a building completely separated from the
University's other buildings.  In other words, you have to want to
go there to get there.
 
It was the last class of the term, in two days my students were to
pass the final exam of my course.  I gave a terrible class...  To
fix things up, I stayed half an hour longer but things were as bad
as at the beginning, I did not know what was the matter with me.
Now, I guess, my students would never remember how bad was my last
class.  I left the Ecole at 4:00 pm, at 4:30 Marc Lepine entered the
first classroom.
 
He asked the girls to be separated from the guys.  The students
thought it was just a joke.  It was the last hour of the term and
many were soon going to be graduated, jokes were not unusual.
Lepine showed his gun and shot, it is not a joke, he said.  Later,
he asked the guys to get out of the classroom.  The male students
were so scared that they ran out of the classroom right away, nobody
asked anything.  When the men got out, Lepine told the girls that
they were a bunch of feminists, "Why women have to be engineers?",
he said.  One of the girls tried to reason with him, she was shot,
fortunately, she did not die.  Then Lepine opened fire on the other
girls.  They tried to protect themselves as well as they could but
four were killed in that first classroom (and many injured).
 
He then went out to the corridor and walked freely between the
students, he went downstairs to the cafeteria and, at random, shot
several girls who were there.  Next, he went upstairs again and shot
some girls in the corridors.  I do not remember exactly what
happened after that, I think he entered a classroom once again and
shot, again, the female students.  Finally, in the last classroom,
he entered and, without notice, he shot the girl who was giving her
presentation.  She was with two other students, guys, but he shot
just the girl.  In that classroom, the students hid under the
tables, when Lepine stopped to recharge his semi-automatic weapon,
some of the students escaped thru a back door.  Since they were
hidden, nobody really knew what was going on, it seems that Lepine
jumped from one table to another trying to find the hidden girls.
In that classroom, one girl, a police officer's daughter (her
father, later, without knowing that his daughter was one of the
victims, entered the Ecole and found that she died), was not shot
but stabbed, nobody knows why or how.  After he shot one more girl
he said "shit" and he shot himself.
 
At the Ecole, the word had spread that the mad guy was shooting just
the women.  The guys organized an escape from one of the windows of
the first floor, some girls at the cafeteria were saved because of
that.  Some guys were injured trying to protect their girlfriends.
It seems that 911 was called many times, but nobody could give an
exact assessment of the situation.  The police, that got there at
5:30 (they say Lepine entered at 5:00 but a professor said he saw
the classroom watch and it was 4:30), would not entered the building
before 6:00, they did not even let the ambulances in.  In fact,
there was a rumor that there were not one but two or three gunmen
and, therefore, the police did not dare to get in.  Montreal is not
very proud, now, of their performance.  Some girls died from
bleeding, doctors say that many could have been saved had the
ambulance technicians let in when they got there.
 
The Ecole will never be the same.  There is now a huge corridor in
which walls display signatures and condolences from all over the
world.  The most touching thing are the portraits of the 14 girls,
many of them in graduation togue, who lost their life because they
wanted to be engineers.
 
We are very proud of them, we are very proud of ourselves.
 
That's my story,
 
It has been difficult for me to write it. 
 
                 Brunilde.

Re:888.150>>...  A French-Canadian University ...

Universite' de Montreal is NOT a French-Canadian university. It is a 
Francophone university. This simply means that the *medium of instruction at
U de Montreal is French(language). "A French-Canadian university" could mean
to some that, it is for French-Canadians only. IT IS NOT !  One lesson from 
this tragedy is that stereotypes can kill.    

Re.150 >> ...he asked  the girls to be separated >>
                           ****
I'am quite sure the writer meant to say: "female/women" - students. It has to
do with the translation and not a conscious choice on the part of the writer in
using the "g" word.
    
    Re:150 >> I apologize for my clumsy English >>
    
    Prof. Brunilde would you please stop "pandering" to US ? 
    Even the anglo-prince Charles speaks and writes "clumsy English" in
    relative comparison to "American English". 
Also no one on this earth possesses an infinite knowledge in every field.
    So, Prof. Brunilde RELAX ! Would you :-?
    
RE:150 >> Behavior of police..>>
Peter Kuitenbrouwer filed the following account for the M/Gazette.
              Suvivors Angry Over Police Behavior - 
              -----------------------------------
Some students of the Dec. 6th tragedy bitterly attacked Montreal Urban
Cummunity police for what they called cowardly behavior during the shooting.
"We waited for 20 minutes locked in the cumputer room of the second floor" said
a woman in third-year mechanical engineering who lost classmates in the rampage.
"After I heard 30 shots I realized, there is no police officer here...Then we 
got out and none of the police had gone in. The Police were all standing 
crouched with their guns around the outside walls of the building.." 
"Some deplored the slowness of the police,.."
When police first arrived at the school, they believed at least one more gunman
was hiding in the building. 
     The TACTICAL SQUAD arrived at the school about 20 minutes *after the last
ambulance had carried away the wounded - AN HOUR AFTER THE KILLER marc lepine 
shot himself.  At a news conference just after the tragedy Station XIII director
Claude St. Laurent had defended the police performance, saying:
"We reacted as quickly as we could."   (From page 1 and 7 of Dec.9 '89 M/Gazette

It may seem that the Montreal police  "are slow" - relatively speaking they 
are NOT.  On September 3rd 1989 I parked my car on Parc avevue infront of
Club Checkers at about 2:45 am. When I returned to the car about 3:45 am. there
was a $35.00 parking ticket on my windshield. The reason was stated as:
"Stationne Zone d'autobus.." funny becuase I was three parking spaces behind the
supposed bus station. Not only that, the ticket was written at 3.17am  BUT the
buses stop running on that street at 2:30 am. and do not resume till about
5:00 am.  And there is no statute of limitation on parking tickets !
La Police are everywhere at anytime 'xcept when you need them the most ?
(BTW: The above paragraph is my personal experience and not that of the Gazette
 reporter.)  

During the night of the tragedy the only person who got arrested at the U de M
was Guy Spronken a physics professor who was handcuffed and taken in a police
cruiser to a police station for questioning. Two hours later, Montreal Urban
Cummunity police realized that they had made a mistake and apologized. 
He was arrested at the campus becuase when he was asked for an I.D. he *only
had a driver's permit and a credit card.  Who said La police in Montreal are
slow ? To "them" "they" are alll the same ?

From a headline on page A-6 of the Dec. 9th 1989 issue of the Gazette.
"Shocked Police Officers Have Sought Counselling In Wake Of The Slayings"

    
    I apologize if this information has already been entered in one of the
    two Montreal tragedy notes already.  I searched and missed it, if so.
    
    Ecole Polytechnique and its Student Association (AEP) have created a
    "Memorial Fund for the December 6, 1989 Victims".
    
    The Fund's general objective is to promote and support the study of
    engineering for women at the Ecole Polytechnique.  Its specific
    objectives, admissibility, and other criteria will be defined together
    with representatives of the victims' parents, the students, and the
    donors.  The Fund will be managed by the "Foundation de Polytechnique."
    
    Contributions should be sent to:
    
    Ecole Polytechnique
    "Fonds des victimes du 6 decembre 1989"
    C.P. 6079, Succ. A
    Montreal, Quebec
    H3C 3A7 CANADA
    
    For more information, contact:
    
    Mr. Bernard Lavigneur, Eng		Mr. Roland Dore, Eng
    President				President
    Foundation de Polytechnique		Ecole Polytechnique
    Tel: 517-737-0647			Tel: 514-340-4704
    					     514-340-4333
    
    Furthermore, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) will
    administer a Pan-Canadian trust fund for the support of women students
    in engineering.  For more information, contact:
    
    Mr. Donald Laplante, Eng		Ms. Claudette McKay-Lassonde, Eng
    Executive Director, CCPE		Northern Telecom
    Tel: 613-232-2474			Tel: 416-238-7296
         613-230-5759			     416-238-7431
    

    The Ottawa Citizen newspaper is publishing (yesterday and today)
    a special report on Marc Lepine, killer of the women in Montreal.
    
    Don't ask me to enter it, I can't.  Yesterday's section was over
    two pages, and I just don't have the time at the moment.
    
    However if anybody is interested in reading the article, send me 
    mail and I'll forward you a copy.
    
    Bob

    The following excerpts are from an article written by Meck Groot and
    published in the March, 1990 newsletter of the Women's Theological
    Center in Boston, reprinted here without permission:
    
    My illusion of safety shattered, I am a woman strongly afraid.  They
    tell us we have nothing to fear but fear itself.  But they lie. Fear
    can paralyze, yes, but not so thoroughly as naivete and denial.  They
    tell us they will protect us.  But they lie.  Those who offer
    protection are those most likely to hurt us.
    
    "Where there is fear, there is power," writes Starhawk.  Fear can
    release the power within us and between us.  We can do *anything* --
    laugh, strategize, cry, speak, remain silent, give birth, write, dance,
    breathe fight back -- and be fearful at the same time.
    
    This is an invitation to the fearful among us to claim our fear.  Dance
    with it.  Own it.  Love it.  And know it well.  "Until we are all
    strong, a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid." (Marge Piercy)