White Ribbon Day was created by a handful of Canadian men in 1991 on the second anniversary of one man's massacre of fourteen women in Montreal. They began the White Ribbon Campaign to urge men to speak out against violence against women. In 1999, the United Nations General Assembly declared November 25 the IDEVAW and the White Ribbon has become the symbol for the day.
Almost 20 years ago, on December 6, 1989, a young man went looking for women at l'Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal. Here, in the middle of this highly civilised Western city, he wanted to find women and kill them. He killed 14 women that day.
The killer's name was Marc Lepine, though he was born Gamil Gharbi, an Algerian French-Canadian whose Algerian father believed women must be subservient to men.
He was 25. By the time he armed himself with a semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife and went to the local university, he had spent years accumulating grievances against women for deserting and neglecting their traditional roles in society.
Lepine walked into a classroom and, at gunpoint, separated the men from the women. Nine women were in the room. He shot every one of them, declaring he was ''fighting feminism''. Six of the women died. During the next 20 minutes he roved the corridors targeting more women.
He killed or wounded 28 people, mostly women, before turning the gun on himself. Twenty years ago, we did not have a wider context in which to place this outrage. Now we do.
Lepine walked into a classroom and, at gunpoint, separated the men from the women. Nine women were in the room. He shot every one of them, declaring he was ''fighting feminism''. Six of the women died. During the next 20 minutes he roved the corridors targeting more women.
He killed or wounded 28 people, mostly women, before turning the gun on himself. Twenty years ago, we did not have a wider context in which to place this outrage. Now we do.
Watch now this video by ALANIS MORISSTTE . Read here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWqvMFGYJKA the lyrics... and think it over.
