J'haïs les féministes. Le 6 décembre 1989 et ses suites

by Mélissa Blais

On December 6, 1989, a man walked into the engineering school Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, armed with a semi-automatic rifle and, declaring I hate feminists, killed fourteen young women. I Hate Feminists, originally published in French in 2009, examines the collective memory that emerged in the immediate aftermath and years following the massacre as Canadians struggled to make sense of this tragic event and understand the motivations of the killer. Exploring stories and editorials in Montreal and Toronto newspapers, texts distributed within anti-feminist masculinist networks, discourses about memorials in major Canadian cities and the film Polytechnique, which was released on the twentieth anniversary of the massacre, Melissa Blais argues that feminist analyses and the killer s own statements have been set aside in favour of interpretations that absolve the killer of responsibility or even shift that blame onto women and feminists. In the end, Blais contends, the collective memory that has been constructed through various media has functioned not as a testament to violence against women but as a catalyst for anti-feminist discourse."

Genres: Feminism, History, Canada, Read For School

220 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Louise Hewett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read. Almost as upsetting as the massacre itself were accounts of men making it all about themselves. From the book, p. 116: "In reaction to this equation between the December 6 massacre and male suffering, Francis Dupuis-Déri says, 'Our genius as males is that everything is about us. It is our joys that are the most important, our pain the most profound.' He then related his experiences as a political science student at the Université de Montréal in December 1989. 'In the days following the massacre, I heard male classmates complaining: "The feminists have co-opted the massacre, and we can't even cruise girls in bars; they don't trust us." He adds: 'Fourteen women had just been killed because they were women. What did the men want? That there be no tears, no cries of anger, and that the women take us in their arms and comfort us?' (Dupuis-Déri, 2009; translation)."