But what time and in which room does my next class take place? Why is it now impossible to find this practical information on the university website? Because it’s 2023. Because it’s dangerous. Because rabid, anti-feminist people, sometimes nostalgic for Marc Lépine (the author of the Polytechnique massacre) can appear in a class, weapon in hand. Paranoia? Talk to Katy Fulfer.
On June 14, she gave the course Philosophy 102 to around forty students from the University of Waterloo. According to the course description previously posted on the site, it was to examine “the construction of gender in the history of philosophy through contemporary discussions. What is gender? How to “do” gender? How can we “undo” gender — and do we want to? »
It was too much for the young Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, 24 years old. At 3:30 p.m., he entered the classroom and asked the teacher, “Is this a psychology class?” » No, she replied, “it’s a philosophy class, we talk about gender”. She asked him to leave. He put down his bag, removed a long knife, took it out of its sheath and, with a hateful smile, according to one student, lunged at the teacher.
Ella ran to the back of the room. He chased her. A student threw a chair at him, “at least to hurt him,” he said. Others tried to intervene. He injured two, a young woman and a young man, and tried to hit a third. He left the room and wanted to blend in with the crowd. He knew the place well, having done his baccalaureate in physics there. The police easily found him. He is notably accused of attempted murder and terrorism. The injuries were serious, but not fatal.
For the police and friends interviewed by local journalists, his motivation was clear: he targeted feminists and gays. The choice of class, and teacher, was deliberate. For what ? Relatives report that he came from a conservative Ecuadorian family – he immigrated in 2018 – that he had an aversion to gays and that he had difficulty forming social connections. In addition, June was in the middle of celebrating Gay Pride Month. But from there to wanting to kill?
There has been a lot of talk, in France and here, about the assassination of Samuel Paty, the French teacher who died for wanting to teach tolerance of criticism by showing caricatures of Mohammed in a high school, the very ones that earned the death to the editors of the magazine Charlie Hebdo. Here we find a similar case, arising from another form of extreme intolerance. Feministicide or, in this case, attempted feministicide.
Words have meaning. Our collective decision to call the murders of women “feminicides” dates back only a few years. This simple change projects awareness into the collective mind. What was yesterday obscured, minimized, is now under the cruel light of the semantic spotlight. A first step.
I will never forget the place where I was on the morning of Thursday, December 7, 1989, the day after Marc Lépine took the lives of 14 young women in a rage, not anti-feminine, but anti-feminist. I had courses. Feminism and communication. At UQAM. My classmates were devastated. But they felt dangerously close to the kind of target that the killer had sought the day before and that another madman of his caliber could still target tomorrow.
“You are all feminists,” Lépine famously shouted before shooting, leaving behind a note in which he fantasized about eliminating 19 feminist personalities: journalists, screen personalities, trade unionists. If he had known of the existence of the course Feminism and communicationwe said to ourselves that morning, or if one of his followers wanted to come and crack down there, what would we do?
The only man in the group (there were five of us in the first class, the others had deserted early in the session – cowards), I didn’t dare say out loud what was on my mind. Wouldn’t this Lépine 2 find it shocking that a man betrayed his gender by submitting to this infamous ideology, week after week? I wondered if, during the assault, I would have had the guts to intervene, to interpose myself. To throw a chair, at least.
The desire to silence feminists, on campuses and elsewhere, as well as the spread of hatred towards them, is now a worrying social phenomenon. It exists on campuses, of course. And the president of the University of Waterloo, Vivek Goel, is right to write that the attacker certainly targeted people, but “also plunged his knife into the heart of the most important value of academic institutions: academic freedom “.
But it extends beyond academic circles. Montreal blogger Jean-Claude Rochefort encouraged his 60,000 subscribers to prepare well for the celebration of “Saint Marc Lépine Day”, the day commemorating the killing, by not forgetting to “polish their rifles”. He is serving a one-year prison sentence for inciting hatred.
A toxic junction occurs between the sexual distress of men who are not successful with women, incels for “involuntary celibates”, nostalgia for a time when men dominated, hatred of feminists and gays.
In Toronto, five years ago, an Alek Minassian drove his vehicle onto a sidewalk, mowing down 26 people, 11 fatally. His goal: to take revenge on women. He said he hoped that his gesture would be followed by others who, like him, are still virgins, not by choice, at 25 years old. He is in prison for at least 25 years.
We are therefore not safe from the emulators of Marc Lépine. On the contrary. There are more of them than ever. Vigilance, prevention and a real strategy are essential. And let’s at least practice chair throwing.
Jean-François Lisée led the PQ from 2016 to 2018. He has just publish Through the mouth of my pencils (Som All/The Duty). [email protected]