This is an important event in history, especially Canadian and feminist history. So I’m going to tell you more about it.
1) The shooter had been rejected from Ecole Polytechnique prior to the shooting. He blamed this on these female students, claiming that they were feminists who ruined his life.
2) In the first classroom he entered, he demanded the men leave before shooting at the women. No man attempted to stop him as they left. Take that as you will. (Later on, several men did get injured trying to stop him in the hallways.)
3) In his suicide letter, he believed that feminists were attempting to be more powerful than men, and were trying to take men’s rights away. 4) Feminists were actually blamed by some for the massacre. The line of logic was “if feminists didn’t make women’s rights an issue, Levine wouldn’t have wanted to kill feminists!” Victim blaming at its finest.
5) The mainstream news media often did not publicize the outrage from women’s groups, and often preferred those who took a calm approach. Ironic, that.
6) Despite him literally having a hit list of feminist icons in his final letter, several newscasters questioned whether or not the shooting was a sexist act, some even denying the idea outright.
8) Many memorials for the victims have been created, and rightly so; however, some prominent ones were erected in poor neighbourhoods where many Native women were killed every day in the same time period as the shooting (see: Marker of Change, Vancouver) (see: Missing Women, Vancouver). Basically, white feminism happened.
The entire event was nothing short of a tragedy, and I recommend that everyone read up on it and the resulting aftermath. It’s… interesting to see how the media tried to turn it into a random act of psychopathy instead of what it was (we know better now, luckily). The reactions (memorials, etc) to the deaths of these 14 White, middle class women as compared to the deaths of 60+ Native, lower class women are also “interesting” to compare. (By interesting, I mean infuriating.)
It’s also an important event because after it happened Canada was like “oh shit better expedite that whole gun control thing” and then did. I feel like this situation is so completely ignored when Americans talk about gun control, like the examples the American left always trot out are like “look at how well gun control works in Europe” and opponents say “well gun culture is completely different here you can’t just take them all away all of the sudden and expect that to work”. But Canada has a lot of guns AND regulates ownership to successfully cut down on gun crime, violence, and accidents. It was a pretty clear line of “this is a problem that requires legislation” and the necessary change was made. People grumbled a lot, but the shift happened.
