a time to reflect (and apparently time to vent for me)

so, today, december 6th, 2004, is the 15th anniversary of the 1989 shooting of 27 women (killing 14 and wounding 13 others) at montreal's l'ecole polytechnique.

they were shot because they were women attending an engineering school. well. to be fair, they were shot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. they happened to be in the class room on the day that a psycho decided to go to school and kill as many women as he could before killing himself.

i do think that it's a good thing that out of this terrible tragedy good movement forward has been made, and at least there is recognition of problems. but really people, saying that this guy shot 27 women because he was anti-feminist is kind of like saying billy shot those kids in his school because of that heavy metal he was listening to, or how jimmy killed himself because he was playing dungeons and dragons. (i know those are both male names, but in truth, i've never heard that kind of argument for when a girl/woman does some crazy thing). i guess i just get frustrated at the fact that it feels like people are saying 'if only women were seen as equals this wouldn't have happened'. the guy was nuts. what society thought didn't so much matter. because no matter how unequal we feel as women in a 'man's world', which was probably worse 15 years ago than it is now, it doesn't mean that world condones the murder of people based on their sex. it means we get paid less on the dollar. it means we deal with a glass ceiling. it means that people call us sluts and men studs. it means a lot of crappy stuff, a lot of double standards. but it doesn't mean disposable life. not in canada anyway, not now, and not in 1989.

i was in highschool when this happened. i remember how horrified everyone was. there was no one saying 'who cares, they were just women'. the guy was crazy. not a product of a misogynistic society.

okay, sorry, apparently i needed to vent. i'm done now.

but yes, take time today to reflect on this terrible tragedy. and to reflect on the hardships other women face. then think about how far we've come. how much strength we've gained. and how much more we'll gain in the coming years. i know i'm an optimist, but i believe that someday, likely in my lifetime, men and women will be seen as equal.