#Montreal massacre

[coochiequeens]

A Canadian college invited a trans-identified male to speak on violence against women in observation of the 33rd anniversary of an act of mass femicide.

Fae Johnstone, a trans-identified male, gave a keynote address today at Durham College in North Oshawa, Ontario as part of the school’s National Day of Remembrance Ceremony marking the anniversary of a massacre that left 14 women dead.

Johnstone, who describes himself as “trans feminine and non-binary,” is the Executive Director at Wisdom2Action, an LGBT-focused consulting firm. Johnstone’s website lists him as a “public speaker, consultant, educator and community organizer on unceded, unsurrended Algonquin territory.”

On Twitter, Johnstone announced his speech was part of the school’s “16 Days of Activism” to end “GBV [gender-based violence].”

The event Johnstone spoke at today is described on the Durham College website as commemorating the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women in Canada.

The Day was first inaugurated by Parliament in 1991 as a way to honor the lives lost during the École Polytechnique massacre, which took place on December 6, 1989 in Montreal, Quebec. On the campus of the scientific university, a man identifying as an “anti-feminist” targeted female students for slaughter. 

Prior to shooting all of the women in a mechanical engineering class, Marc Lépine, born Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi, told the male students to leave the room. He then told the women he was “fighting feminism” and expressed a hatred of women’s rights to an education.

“You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists,” Lépine said, before opening fire on the female students. Lépine later committed suicide on the campus after taking 14 women’s lives, and injuring 10 more people.

In total, Lépine murdered 14 women in an act that has since been recognized an act of terrorism.

After his speech at Durham College tonight, Johnstone was confronted by Jennifer Anne, a Canadian women’s rights advocate who has been working to secure the release of the analysis that was done on gender self-identification legislation in Canada. 

Anne attended the event and recorded some of Johnstone’s address before proposing a question when given the opportunity by the event’s host. 

“Today is the day we mark 14 women who were killed in Montreal by a man who subjected them simply because they were female. It is sex-based violence, not gender based violence. I am a female,” Anne is heard saying, before listing off examples where self-identification lead to the victimization of women.

“I am wondering why, on this day, we would have a man dressed in women’s garb to talk to us about sex-based violence and keeping women safe? How can women stay safe in this environment?”

Johnstone replies curtly: “Thank you. Next question!”

“Really? So you’re not going to answer it because you know I’m right?” Anne responds. The host of the event, as well as other administrators, are then heard trying to discourage Anne from continuing to assert her question.

Anne uploaded the recordings to her Twitter account.

Johnstone’s consulting firm, Wisdom2Action, marked the anniversary of the women’s deaths by posting an infographic titled “Queering GBV,” which asserted that “gender based violence disproportionately impacts 2SLGBTQ+ people who are BIPOC, transfeminine, bisexual, youth, newcomers, disabled, homeless, and/or involved in sex work.”

For Canadian Women’s History Month in October, Johnstone was “honored” by a Government ministry for his work with “2SLGBTQI+” people.

Johnstone had previously slammed the Canadian Femicide Observatory for “retweeting TERF and TERF rhetoric.” TERF is a derogatory term most frequently applied to women who acknowledge two distinct sex groups.

He also claimed the Declaration on Women’s Sex Based Rights was a “roadmap for erasing trans people from public life, denying our rights and restricting our healthcare.”

Johnstone is not the first trans-identified male be given a platform to speak on the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women. 

Last year on December 6, the Prince Edward Island Advisory Council on the Status of Women invited Anastasia Preston, a biological male who identifies as a woman, to speak on “gender-based violence” at a vigil honoring the women murdered in the École Polytechnique massacre.

Preston, a “trans community outreach coordinator” at a sexually transmitted disease resource service, became the subject of widespread outrage on social media after he was interviewed by the Prince Edward Island branch of the CBC and claimed that trans-identified males were not given enough opportunities to speak on violence against women.

“For decades, trans women have been kept out of the conversation around gender-based violence,” Preston was quoted as saying, going on to assert that he intended to “speak about some of [his] experiences of harassment on P.E.I.” at the event memorializing the 14 women who were murdered.

After the article began to circulate, CBC P.E.I was so inundated with backlash they had to turn off their Twitter comment section. Johnstone defended Preston at the time, calling him a “hero and a champion.”

By Jennifer Seiland Jennifer is a founding member of the Reduxx team, writing with a focus on crimes against women and sex-based rights advocacy. She is located in the American south where she is a passionate animal welfare advocate and avid coffee drinker.

[applecath]

It's 34 years today, since the Montreal massacre.

[fanficclub]

Today, 34 years ago, a man armed with a rifle entered an engineering school in Montreal, Canada. Purposefully targeting women, he opened fire, claiming to fight feminism, and killed 14 female students, injuring another 10 women and 4 men. This was undoubtfully an act of terror against women, as many many killings are. This is one of the most glaring examples of punishing women for straying, for crossing an imaginary line, for existing and living like people, and not like slaves. I attach a podcast episode about the attack. It contains a recount of events on that day, and a speech by Andrea Dworkin. I cannot describe the emotions it evokes in me. Please listen to it.

[bisexualpixiebabe]

MONTREAL GOING TO THE PLAYOFFS

🏒🇨🇦❤️🏒🇨🇦❤️🏒🇨🇦❤️

[historyforfuture]

[tankawanka]

We Stole the Rainbow

Fuckin’ right we stole the rainbow Because long before Orlando We taught hatred how to laughAnd we showed pain how to dance Fuckin’ right we stole the rainbowBut we’re not greedy and we’ll share Naked clothed or in underwear Polyamorous gender fluid Let’s get down! Let’s fuckin’ do it! Fuckin’ right we claimed full marriage Because the way you’d disparage Our relationships as lesser  We’ve…

[non-un-topo]

Praying to every deity that my winter course “Female Masculinities” doesn’t get cancelled like all the other queer studies courses

[spookydingus]

I love that hate for New York is a universal thing

[jewish-sideblog]

Adidas said that choosing Bella Hadid to promote their 1972 Olympics shoes was an “accident” and “completely unintentional” but I really don’t think you can unintentionally fuck up THAT badly.

Why have a 1972 shoe revival in the first place? Why that specific Olympics? If they wanted to sell a 1970s style shoe for the Paris event, they could have chosen Montreal 1976, which would have the added thematic bonus of tying the last French Canadian Olympics to the current French Olympics.

Instead, they chose the one Olympic year in history which is synonymous with the massacre of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists. They chose to revive the shoe in the middle of a massive wave of global antisemitism, following a recent and unprecedented massacre of Israelis by Palestinian terrorists. And they chose promote it using a Palestinian-American who is extremely extremely vocal about her anti-Israel hatred, going so far as to frequently post harmful and violent rhetoric and misinformation to her social media accounts.

If that’s truly an unintentional fuckup, then adidas deserves the backlash it’s getting for their sheer incompetence alone. But it really seems to me like they must have done this on purpose. Why choose that Olympics? Why sell them this year? Why her? Any other choice would have made this better. Instead, they fucked up at every turn.

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

Everytime men say something to the effect of "women are all for equality until it's 'women and children first' and then they're all too happy to be put above men" we should bring up the Montreal massacre where a man entered a college class, told all the men to leave, and then shot at the remaining female students. Every single one of those men left their female peers to be at the mercy of a man with a gun. When it was "men first. Men save yourselves", literally all those men were all too happy to abandon ship.

[eretzyisrael]

Who are the Mizrahim? History 101

Where do Jews come from and what is the difference between Sephardim and Mizrahim? Loolwa Khazzoom gives this succint explanation for the Jewish Virtual Library:

A Baghdadi Jewish family

Regardless of where Jews lived most recently, therefore, all Jews have roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Some communities, of course, have more recent ties to this region: Mizrahim and Sephardim, two distinct communities that are often confused with one another.

Mizrahim are Jews who never left the Middle East and North Africa since the beginnings of the Jewish people 4,000 years ago. In 586 B.C.E., the Babylonian Empire (ancient Iraq) conquered Yehudah (Judah), the southern region of ancient Israel.

Babylonians occupied the Land of Israel and exiled the Yehudim (Judeans, or Jews), as captives into Babylon. Some 50 years later, the Persian Empire (ancient Iran) conquered the Babylonian Empire and allowed the Jews to return home to the land of Israel. But, offered freedom under Persian rule and daunted by the task of rebuilding a society that lay in ruins, most Jews remained in Babylon. Over the next millennia, some Jews remained in today’s Iraq and Iran, and some migrated to neighboring lands in the region (including today’s Syria, Yemen, and Egypt), or emigrated to lands in Central and East Asia (including India, China, and Afghanistan).

Sephardim are among the descendants of the line of Jews who chose to return and rebuild Israel after the Persian Empire conquered the Babylonian Empire. About half a millennium later, the Roman Empireconquered ancient Israel for the second time, massacring most of the nation and taking the bulk of the remainder as slaves to Rome. Once the Roman Empire crumbled, descendants of these captives migrated throughout the European continent. Many settled in Spain (Sepharad) and Portugal, where they thrived until the Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion of 1492 and the Portuguese Inquisition and Expulsion shortly thereafter.

During these periods, Jews living in Christian countries faced discrimination and hardship. Some Jews who fled persecution in Europe settled throughout the Mediterranean regions of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, as well as Central and South America. Sephardim who fled to Ottoman-ruled Middle Eastern and North African countries merged with the Mizrahim, whose families had been living in the region for thousands of years.

In the early 20th century, severe violence against Jews forced communities throughout the Middle Eastern region to flee once again, arriving as refugees predominantly in Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and the Americas. In Israel, Middle Eastern and North African Jews were the majority of the Jewish population for decades, with numbers as high as 70 percent of the Jewish population, until the mass Russian immigration of the 1990s. Mizrahi Jews are now half of the Jewish population in Israel.

Throughout the rest of the world, Mizrahi Jews have a strong presence in metropolitan areas — Paris, London, Montreal, Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Mexico City. Mizrahim and Sephardim share more than common history from the past five centuries. Mizrahi and Sephardic religious leaders traditionally have stressed hesed (compassion) over humra (severity, or strictness), following a more lenient interpretation of Jewish law.

Despite such baseline commonalities, Middle Eastern and North African Mizrahim and Sephardim do retain distinct cultural traditions. Though Mizrahi and Sephardic prayer books are close in form and content, for example, they are not identical. Mizrahi prayers are usually sung in quarter tones, whereas Sephardic prayers have more of a Southern European feel. Traditionally, moreover, Sephardic prayers are often accompanied by a Western-style choir in the synagogue.

Mizrahim traditionally spoke Judeo-Arabic — a language blending Hebrew and a local Arabic dialect. While a number of Sephardim in the Middle East and North Africa learned and spoke this language, they also spoke Ladino–a blend of Hebrew and Spanish. Having had no history in Spain or Portugal, Mizrahim generally did not speak Ladino.

In certain areas, where the Sephardic immigration was weak, Sephardim assimilated into the predominantly Mizrahi communities, taking on all Mizrahi traditions and retaining just a hint of Sephardic heritage — such as Spanish-sounding names. In countries such as Morocco, however, Spanish and Portuguese Jews came in droves, and the Sephardic community set up its own synagogues and schools, remaining separate from the Mizrahi community.

Even within the Mizrahi and Sephardi communities, there were cultural differences from country to country. On Purim, Iraqi Jews had strolling musicians going from house to house and entertaining families (comparable to Christmas caroling), whereas Egyptian Jews closed off the Jewish quarter for a full-day festival (comparable to Mardi Gras). On Shabbat, Moroccan Jews prepared hamin (spicy meat stew), whereas Yemenite Jews prepared showeah (spicy roasted meat), among other foods.

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[matan4il]

Daily update post:

The attack drone that hit a school in Eilat yesterday has been determined to have been Iranian, it was launched from Syria (on Israel's north eastern border), flew through Jordan (on Israel's eastern border) in order to reach Eilat (the most southern spot in Israel) and attack there undetected.

I'm still waiting for the global outcry over the fact that Iranian and Palestinian rockets and drones are targeting Israeli hospitals (sometimes repeatedly) and schools.

Word has spread that the Abu Shaker hummus eatery in Haifa, owned by an Israeli Arab family, is being boycotted for having donated to IDF soldiers. Israelis from all over the country have been coming to the eatery, to support the family. A recent poll, conducted after the start of the war, shows 70% of Israeli Arabs identify with the State of Israel, and see its problems as theirs, too.

Antisemitic attacks continue to take place globally. Yesterday, two Jewish school were shot at in Montreal, Canada. In Los Angeles, anti-Israel protesters have attacked Jews trying to reach the Museum of Tolerance for a screening organized by Gal Gadot of some of the footage evidence of Hamas' massacre.

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Twenty four members of the US congress sent a letter to the president of UPenn to denounce the university's refusal to denounce the Hamas massacre. More and more Jewish students have been speaking up about how unsafe they feel on north American college campuses, including at Ivy League universities. Here's anti-Israel protesters referring to Concordia University in Canada, proudly cheering to the statement, "We terrified them!"

In Germany, 85 years after Kristallnacht, they projected the words "Never again is now!" in the colors of the Israeli flag. Jewish people will remember the silence of those who condoned the massacre of our people, but we will also remember those who stood by us.

Yesterday, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published a vid of two hostages, an elderly woman and a kid, 12 years old Yagel Yaacov. Once again, their texts are dictated by terrorists, so the media here is refusing to play along with this psychological warfare, and has not shown the vid. But a screenshot has been shared, showing the difference in Yagel state by comparing a pic of his from before Oct 7 (on the left) and in the vid published (on the right):

This is also a reminder that not all of the hostages were kidnapped by Hamas. While Hamas orchestrated the breach into Israel, the massacre and most of the kidnappings, other Palestinians, both terrorists and civilians, are known to have used the opportunity to infiltrate Israel, too. The PIJ terrorists are estimated to be holding at least 30 of the hostages. This makes reaching a deal that includes the release of all hostages that much harder. It's not known, but is possible, that there are others, aside from Hamas and PIJ, who are holding Israeli hostages as well.

Regarding even civilian Gazans having infiltrated Israel, as one example there's CCTV footage recovered from the entrance to kibbutz Be'eri at 12:16 on Oct 7, almost 6 hours after Hamas first tore down Israel's border fence, where you can see regular people from Gaza coming in, including even an old man with crutches:

I read an account in Hebrew by an Israeli mother of a guy who was there, during the massacre. She asked for her identity to remain anonymous. She wrote: "He's screaming every night, he calls for his friends to return, he screams that he's sorry, he stares at the sky for hours on end, he waits for them to return, my son survived, but he is not with us." Her son was one of the soldiers who fought off the terrorists on Oct 7. There are at least hundreds of Israeli soldiers currently being treating at mental health institutes after what they had witnessed during the massacre. Israel's social security estimates that there are altogether 13,000 Israelis who are being treated for mental health issues following the massacre. And that's just for the first day of the war.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[radfemverity]

Quotes from Andrea Dworkin’s response to the misogynist massacre at Montreal Polytechnic University in 1989:

‘I think that the way we can honor these women who were executed, for crimes that they may or may not have committed – which is to say, for political crimes – is to commit every crime for which they were executed. Crimes against male supremacy, the right to rape, the male ownership of women, the male monopoly of public space and public discourse.

We have to stop men from hurting women in everyday life, in the home, in the bed, in the street, and in the engineering school. We have to take public power away from men whether they like it or not and no matter what they do.

Feminism exists so that no woman ever has to face her oppressor in a vacuum, alone. It exists to break down the privacy in which men rape, beat, and kill women.

What I am saying is that every one of us has the responsibility to be the woman Marc Lépine wanted to murder. We need to live with that honor, that courage. We need to put fear aside. We need to endure. We need to create. We need to resist, and we need to stop dedicating the other 364 days of the year to forgetting everything we know. We need to remember every day, not only on December 6.’

in ‘Mass Murder in Montreal: Life and Death’ (1997) by Andrea Dworkin

Also from Life and Death:

‘Even though I had been tortured and was fighting for my life, I could not see women, or myself as a woman, as having political significance. I did know that the battery was not my fault. I had been told by everyone I asked for help (…) that he would not be hitting me if I didn’t like it or want it. I rejected this outright. Even back then, the experience of being battered was recognizably impersonal to me. Maybe I was the only person in the world this had ever happened to, but I knew it had nothing to do with me as an individual. It just never occurred to me that I was being hit because I was a woman.’

[kochomqwz]

Benjamin Johnson is a Canadian actor, better known for his role as Eric Harris in the 2004 ZERO HOUR TV show.

Benjamin Johnson was born in Toronto, Canada on March 22, 1979. It is known that for 5 years Ben lived with his father in Truro, Nova Scotia, and then moved with his mother to Ontario, Canada.

He attended a school in Guelph, Canada.

It is also known that in 1997 he took a course of study at the National Theatre School of Canada (a higher educational institution in Montreal).

In 2009, Ben lives in Tokyo, Japan, and after that we see photos from the town of Hakone on his Facebook page.

While in Japan, he works as a screenwriter, we learn about this not only from photographs, but also thanks to an article he wrote for Praxis theatre.

BEN AT THE MOVIES.

The year is 2004.

📼 "Columbine High School Massacre." Season 1, episode 3 of the TV show "Zero Hour", consisting of documentaries.

Ben played Eric Harris in this movie.

📼 "One from all of America." Season 2, episode 2 of the TV show "Zero Hour".

Role: Timothy McVeigh.

📼 "Jekyll and Hyde: The True Story."

Role: writer Robert Stevenson.

The year is 2007.

Ben is starring in the movie "True Bond".

I haven't found the film yet, but the IMDb website indicates that he took part in the shooting.

[superstarzolar]

hiii ask game

🎵

🎵 - last song you listened to

can you get the dog please [?] - jack stauber [the leaked one]

[but if you want a full, purposefully released song:] black lion massacre - of montreal [i didn’t like the song. i’m just trying to expand my music taste by listening to new artists . it isn’t working

[danothan]

I think you posted a music rec for Stomach book ages ago, i was wondering if you know fucking werewolf asso, or bondage fairies

If not i think you might like those bands ^w^ they have similar vibes and sound

woah good memory, i’ve been slacking too much on my Obnoxious Music lately that i almost forgot abt them

you’re spot on w the vibes tho bc i was immediately taken in (which is part of the reason this took a while to answer, it was hard choosing faves orz)

top 3 fucking werewolf asso songs:

the tito beltrán massacre

your ex doesn’t mark treasures

my new sneakers could never replace my multi-colored bangalores

top 3 bondage fairies songs:

expectations

clone

nv4.dll

REVIEW (bear w me, idk anything abt music): i like fwa’s high energy/grunginess and bondage fairies’s fun garage sound. they both have whiny voices, but fwa has a vaguely punk band whine that’s also just straight up screaming, and bondage fairies reminds me of of montreal in that nasally sing-speak way (that is also sometimes screaming)

vibe-wise, fwa has a mythological grandness that feels delinquent and teen angsty, like a devilman or akira youtube amv (i have never watched one, just go off vibes). bondage fairies feels more simple and nostalgic, like watching cartoons on the fat box tv w your friend after school, but not before throwing and breaking shit on the fence (good times)

of the 2, i think fucking werewolf asso is my favorite, but i’ll def be listening to them both from now on!