If There's Nothing Women Can't do, Why Aren't we Doing It?

I often come down pretty hard on the women in the Harper government. But it's because they have an opportunity to make a difference, and instead allow themselves to be manipulated by the boys in the party, instead of trying to leave their mark.

Whenever there is something controversial that Harper wants to promote, he uses them as a front. Scrap the gun registry, use Candice Hoeppner. Cut funding to the Status of Women. Bring out Bev Oda. New Censorship laws; Josee Verner. Want to blame young girls for date rape because they are hypersexual, Helena Guergis.

There is a piece in the Toronto Star that suggests that despite the strides we've made, we are gradually being pulled back down. Then there is a rebuttal in the Globe and Mail written by Margaret Wenthe, who I believe is a woman, though I have my doubts. It was horrible.

Twenty years on, little has changed
Toronto Star
December 6, 2009

On this night 20 years ago, a small group of heartsick Toronto women gathered at city hall to hold the first vigil for the 14 young women slaughtered that day at l'École Polytechnique in Montreal by a gunman screaming about "feminists." Every year since, women have marked Dec. 6 with memorials, vigils, reflections and vows never to let it happen again.

On the second anniversary, a vanguard of prominent men stood in solidarity with them, wearing white ribbons to show their determination to end violence against women. The chief organizer was Jack Layton, then a Toronto mayoral candidate. Each year, the numbers grew....

Montreal massacre death cult
Margaret Wente
Globe and Mail
December 08, 2009

It won't have escaped you that Sunday was the 20th anniversary of the Montreal massacre – that horrific day when a man walked into the city's l'École Polytechnique, separated out the female students, screamed “You are all a bunch of feminists!” and shot them with a semi-automatic rifle, leaving 14 dead. As always, the day was marked by memorials and candlelight vigils across the country, affecting interviews with families and survivors – and a large helping of overheated nonsense.

“Twenty years on, little has changed,” opined the Toronto Star, which cited the fact that women continue to be killed “in their homes, on the streets, on university campuses and on lonely stretches of highway.” It blamed the government, for cutting aid to violence-fighting groups and for voting to scrap the long-gun registry. “But the government is not solely to blame,” it said. So who else is? “We all are.” Why? Because we tolerate a viciously misogynist society ....

The Death of the Gun Registry Was a Slap in the Face to the Victims of Gun Violence

I can't believe how many people are suggesting that the gun registry is based solely on ideology. Is it ideological to have to obtain a driver's license, to register your car or your pet?

Now 20 years later, the victims of the Montreal Massacre have been violated again, in part because of the horrendous comments that are being posted at the end of accounts, that commemorate this horrible day in our history. But mainly because the 'old boys club' Reform Party has won.

William D. Gairdner, one of the early Reform Party mentors and co-founder of the Northern Foundation, along with Stephen Harper and several other, what were then referred to as 'right-wing extremists'; set the tone for the party's views on women.

In 2007, Donna L. Lillian, Assistant Professor of Discourse and Linguistics in the Department of English at East Carolina University, wrote a paper entitled: A thorn by any other name: sexist discourse as hate speech, which centered around Gairdner, "...analyzing Canadian neoconservative discourse as racist, sexist, and homophobic." According to author and journalist Murray Dobbin, Mr. Gairdner's The Trouble with Canada functioned as ‘the de facto manifesto for Preston Manning’s Reform Party’ (Dobbin, 1992: 134).

So I thought I'd be brave and see if he weighed in the topic. And of course he did.

On his blog he refers to it as gender bashing. "Feminists argue it was "patriarchy" that made him do it. But it was male-hating feminists that upset Mr. Lepine so much. So in his mind he was retaliating. Feminism made him do it." and "And "violence against women" is a myth because human violence - of which there is not a great deal in Canadian society - is a matter of wicked people of either gender who are strong, taking advantage of the weak."

I see not much has changed. And remember when this man refers to feminists, it can mean something as simple as women with jobs. And in the same way that Stephen Harper is hiding behind our soldiers to avoid being associated with war crimes, he is hiding behind two women, Candice Hoeppner and Helena Guergis, and they are too naive to realize that they are being used.

'A slap in the face' for victims
The Globe and Mail
Ingrid Peritz
December 05, 2009

To the sisters and mothers and survivors marked by loss, it remains the single most tangible legacy of the bloodshed at the École Polytechnique. It's also the most tenuous. Twenty years after a gunman took the lives of 14 women - after the trauma, the mourning, the anger and the soul-searching - families seeking to create some good out of tragedy thought they had found it with gun control.

Yet as those families gather at a Montreal ceremony tomorrow to remember their lost daughters and siblings, they are girding for another fight - after the House of Commons voted last month to abolish the registry on long guns ....

The Montreal Massacre and a Noisy Minority. Taking a Look Back

The video above is a look back at the horrible day twenty years ago, when Marc Lépine went on a rampage in a Montreal university, killing 14 women and wounding another 13. It is still fresh in many minds, including my own.

My boss at the time had a daughter attending that school, and was having a great deal of difficulty trying to obtain information. Just before leaving Kingston for Montreal, she received a call that her child was OK, but it did not mean that she didn't grieve.

I came across an article that was written at the ten year anniversary of this horrific event. It also tracks the history of the gun registry and includes an interview with Wendy Cukier, then president of the Coalition for Gun Control.

At the time it was believed that Ms Cukier's work was done, but she still lived in fear of "...what a noisy minority can do to change things", so never gave up her diligence. Her fears have now been realized, because a "noisy minority", has done the unthinkable.

I wasn't surprised after reading this that Garry Breitkreuz led the charge by Reform to oppose new gun legislation, but the article also states "so does about half the New Democratic Party caucus." Why did I assume their views would be in favour of women? I guess that's why so many voted to scrap the registry. They never agreed with it in the first place.

Lépine Massacre Ten Years After
Macleans Magazine
December 6, 1999
By: ANTHONY WILSON-SMITH

The nightmares that haunted Heidi Rathjen for such a long time seem to have disappeared.

For years, she snapped awake at night, tormented by remembered sounds of screams, shouts and the popping of an assault rifle. Rathjen was reliving real life: on Dec. 6, 1989, she spent 45 minutes huddled in silent terror in a student lounge at the University of Montreal, while Marc Lépine, a 25-year-old semi-recluse with a hatred of women, roamed the halls, shooting at any female he saw. "Whenever we thought things had quieted down," Rathjen recalled later, "another round of bullets would shatter the silence, smashing our hopes."

By the time Lépine's rampage ended as he turned the gun on himself, he had killed 14 women and wounded another 13 people. Rathjen, then a 22-year-old engineering student at the university's Ecole polytechnique and now an anti-tobacco activist, considers herself "one of the lucky ones: the nightmares are a small thing next to keeping my life." ...

Women in the Harper Government Must STOP SPEAKING FOR CANADIAN WOMEN IMMEDIATELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If our taxes weren't going to pay the salaries of these women, I would forbid them to ever show up in the House of Commons again. ... on second thought, maybe we should pay them to stay the hell home. They are a disgrace.

We've got Cheryl Gallant suggesting that a soldier dies every time we debate the war in Afghanistan and even accused Jack Layton of being directly responsible for one death. And yet it was discussed two years ago that the way we were handling Afghan Detainees may have directly affected the safety of our men and women in uniform.

Then there's Diane Finley, the second absolute moron in the video, who recently lost passport applications and didn't even advice the victims; caught lying about the cost of EI Reform. Four billion dollars was a lark. The Parliamentary budget officer confirmed that it would be about 1 billion.

And of course she was set up by that little twit Hoeppner, who dared to show her face at the ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Dec. 6 massacre at Montreal's L'École Polytechnique, after presenting the bill to scrap the gun registry that was created in their memory.

They should stick to making coffee and sandwiches for the boys, because these women do not represent us.

I don't know if they are really this stupid, or if the boys demand they look stupid, so they don't get shown up. For Hoppy's information we need a childcare plan, and most working women agree, so never ever, ever; assume you have the right to speak for us on this issue.

I think Gerald Caplan was right. Tories really do hate children. They sure hate women.

Tory `girlfriends' hew to party line on femicide
By Antonia Zerbisias Living Columnist
December 4, 2009

If it weren't so hypocritical, it would be hysterical.

On Wednesday, at a Parliament Hill ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Dec. 6 massacre at Montreal's L'École Polytechnique, Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner co-starred in Status of Women minister Helena Guergis's show of sympathy. Bad enough that, last month, Guergis voted for Bill C-391, the legislation that aims to kill the long-gun registry and Hoeppner was the one to introduce it in the House.

No wonder that Status of Women committee members Anita Neville (L-Winnipeg South Centre), Irene Mathyssen (NDP-London- Fanshawe) and the Bloc's warrior queen of women's rights, Nicole Demers (Laval), boycotted the ceremony. As Neville told me Wednesday, "The Conservatives' record on women has just been abominable.'' ...