Thread by @sunnshiiny

The story of Marc Lepine resonates with current politics.

Typically avoided on this day in Canada, many seek to suppress his story to honour the women he killed mercilessly, rather than glorify his actions and give him acknowledgement. But that’s a mistake. Here is why.

https://twitter.com/rodgersresearch/status/1202454211243446272

Levine’s biography reads like the modern version of a conservative incel.

He was shy to the point of antisocial behaviour. Desired a relationship with a woman, but overcome with fear & self doubt.

Externalization of responsibility for his circumstances led him to blame women.

Fascinated by Hitler and authoritarianism in his formative years, he revelled in the fantasy of wielding that form of power, & blamed feminism for his inability to achieve success. A suicide letter states he knew he would commit these crimes long before he ever carried them out.

Drifting through life, angry, belligerent, with a heightened sense of entitlement to the position in life he desired, he blamed others, women, for his character flaws and the limits to success they presented.

Sounds exactly like a modern incel.

Raised partially by his mother’s family, as she pursued education to better support her family, after her divorce, it can be extrapolated that exposure to strict Catholic dogma was presented during part of his upbringing. During turbulent times for the Catholic Church in Quebec.

His mother had originally been a nun before she married. Signifying a likelihood of a devout faith family background.

But she abandoned the faith and the church at a critical time in Quebec. During the Quiet Revolution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Rev…

A pivotal moment in time in Canada when “la belle province” made a decidedly abrupt and intentional move towards secularism and shunned the shackles of Catholic Church’s control of daily existence. His mother was definitely part of that movement. That’s significant.

There’s much written about the abusive nature of his father, an Assyrian Arab. Lepine’s actions were a product of his father’s misogynistic culture, is the common belief.

Little is known about Lepine’s mother’s family, or his mother’s abandonment of the Catholic Faith.

The family dynamics between his secularist mother and presumably traditional Catholic relatives must have been ideologically confusing and severe. Neither Lepine nor his sister matured into well adjusted adults. That’s significant.

Lepine changed his name as a youth, abandoning his father & influence he may have had in favour of his mother’s identity. Yet he is attributed to have misogynist beliefs and values from his father. He barely saw his father or was influenced by his father’s culture after age 7.

Yet he harboured a deep hatred towards feminists and women who were moving into traditionally male dominated work spheres. Completely consistent with traditionalist Catholic faith and dogma that is the current foundation of CPC beliefs and values. That’s significant.

Both Scheer & Kenney are devout Catholics. As is a significant portion of the religious faithful that are much of the US Republican base that support Trump. Catholics also make up the majority of SCOTUS & much of the current administration.

Far Right Evangelicals are the dominant Christian group in the US, but Catholics hold many of the most prestigious positions in government.

You’ll find a similar pattern in Canada. Examine the PM position. Leader of the Canadian nation.

Every Prime Minister, except Harper, has been Catholic, since the 1960’s. P. Trudeau; Mulroney; Chrétien, Martin, & now J. Trudeau. All Catholics. Incidentally, all Québec Catholics. And incidentally all Catholics influenced by the Quiet Revolution of 1960’s. That’s significant.

The Quiet Revolution’s influence did not stop at the Quebec border. Far from it. The influence of the move towards secularism & humanism is national.

A backlash has been credited to Evangelicals, but it includes Traditionalist Catholics. Kenney, Scheer & Carpay prove that.

What was also happening in the late 1980’s? The creation of the Reform Party and the far right traditionalist & religious based movement pushing for regression to traditional patriarchal society, using libertarian values & economic conservatism as a uniting belief system.

The backlash from the far right was after 20 years of modernist Catholic leadership of the nation. Pierre Trudeau had established a trajectory towards humanist ideals, & Reformists were severely opposed to the social and economic influence Trudeau and Mulroney were implementing.

Lepine wasn’t crazy, a lone wolf or profoundly influenced by a foreign Arab culture. He was a harbinger of current global politics. Smack dab in the middle of the Quiet Revolution & the Catholic Church trying desperately to maintain autocratic control of Quebec society.

His murderous actions are a direct result of those opposing ideologies and the battle for control of Quebec society.

I remember Dec 6, 1989 well. I remember the sadness and the fear. I was 22 and in university.

There was much effort at the time to write Lepine off as crazy.

A mentally unbalanced man severely influenced by his father’s misogynist views of women.

But that didn’t fit with any of the young or older women with whom I discussed the tragedy. Lepine was a sign of the times. He hated women and feminism. We were scared. Palpably.

Quebec wasn’t the only post secondary campus to experience misogyny. The UofA was a campus with visible misogyny. Many young male peers jeered and laughed at the Montreal Massacre. Refused to label it as a hate crime. Minimized the pain, anguish and fears of their female peers.

It was heart wrenching then. And every year I’m reminded of the dominant patriarchal system that discounts women’s experience as relevant.

It was a hate crime. Women were specifically targeted because they dared to enter a STEM program. Displacing several males at the time.

One of my acquaintances was an Engineering major. He laughed because the line woman in his course was visibly shaken by the news of the day. He didn’t understand how she could be so impacted by events that took place in Quebec.

She dropped out at the end of the semester.

The commentary by my acquaintance at the time was good riddance. She didn’t belong there anyways.

I always wondered what happened to her.

Today, December 6, is a day of remembrance in Canada. A day the women of my generation will never forget.

It was the day we found out how precarious our move into a male dominated workforce really was.

It was the day we discovered our lifetimes would be fraught with endless battles for relevance and equality.

It was a day of remembering what feminism means. The right for women to self determine their future.

A sharp painful reminder of how many were and still are opposed to women being anything but an obedient housewife and mother.

It was a precursor to current Canadian politics.

So many young women cameand succeeded after the generation that experienced December 6 in real time. Many are oblivious to the hatred that my generation endured. Many are thankful their daughter didn’t have to fight that systemic misogyny. Yet here we are today.

Conservative Governments creating legislation to punish women, force women back into dependence on men for financial support. Cancelling child care funding, moving to create trades training for males in schools, devaluing jobs primarily filled by women, forcing women ...

... to consider homeschooling as an option to preserve the integrity of their children’s education, many of them girls.

Attacking women’s body autonomy, denying access to medical care, etc.

There are legions of provincial and federal representatives lined up & prepared to turn back women’s progress in the labour force and political realm several generations in one fell swoop. It’s not just one maladjusted young man, it’s several. They legislate vs shoot guns.

Women grew complacent, indifferent to the entities that conspire to remove our presence in upper echelons of power. We wrongly believed that we had made gains in labour and narrowed the pay gap. We made progress. Confident in our earning power and political power.

But we can be complacent and indifferent no more. It’s obvious that those who opposed women in power then are the same group forcing regressive legislation now. The same ones who laughed off Lepine as a crazy. A “one of” nut unduly influenced by a foreign religion and culture.

Lepine was never crazy. Mentally unbalanced and confused yes. But not affected by a mental illness that caused his actions. More like a personality disorder caused by an inundation of competing ideologies that fed his evil fantasies and enabled him to embrace violence.

He was influenced by the beginning of the backlash to the secularization of Canadian society. He was a canary in the proverbial coal mine. He terrified an entire generation of young women. Who were then dismissed and called hystrionic for their concerns.

That allowed the proliferation of this backlash to metastasize into its current iteration.

The CPC party of Canada and a support base of nearly 1/3 of eligible voters who seek to remove every bit of progress women have made since 1989, and push women back into the kitchen.

Wake up ladies! Your concerns were warranted then & now!

It’s time to join forces. Create our own backlash. We will not be terrorized by the Marc Lepine’s of the world.

We will not allow the systematic removal of rights we fought for by misogynists using open discrimination.

We will not sentence our daughters and granddaughters to servile obedience to a man. We are well beyond that distant past.

Faith aside, we will not succumb to the creeping power grab by Catholic and Evangelical faith leaders in Canada.

We will fight this with all our might. And if Lepine is any indication, we will be persecuted, but we will continue to fight and resist the authoritarian regimes currently consolidating power in Canada and across the globe.

We are the majority and we will never concede the rights we have, no matter what or who the force is behind the autocratic surge. Ever.

Take note women of Canada. Today is the day of remembrance for the fallen. Women removed by hatred and a weak man.

There are thousands more we will need to battle for our freedoms, rights and self determination. I know Boomers and Gen X are on board, it’s the millennials we need to remind of the past. They are our progeny. Our future and it is for them we continue this battle.

We are women. Fierce mother bears who protect their young and battle fiercely for our freedoms.

Hear us roar!

You will not terrorize us.

You will not silence us.

You will not defeat us.

We are women. Hearty, strong and naturally interdependent.