Men's Rights Redditor remembers the victims of Marc Lepine by complaining "we're all supposed to cry about how hard it is to be female. "

So, several things to say:

Bina: “…fall into a pineapple patch with their pants down”…ouch…and awesome. Although I still like cursing people with Legos.

Buttercup Q. Skullpants: I love your username. And you analysis is spot on…it’s frightening how many sociopaths actually exist in this world.

Once I got to an age where I could grasp such things, the story of Marc Lepine was confusing and frightening (I grew up in Canada, I remember seeing stories on the news. Although I was too young when it actually happened). My mum explained it as “bad people doing bad things”–but that doesn’t go into it enough. (Also, you can see news coverage and reactions in the CBC archives online. There is also a neat debate between some random caller and Dr. Morgentaler in the abortion debate archives. He wins).

Speaking of paternity leave: I lived and worked in Germany as an au-pair. The family I worked for owned a hotel (not a “we’re loaded and don’t do anything” type of hotel. More a “We have to work our asses off but it’s ok” type). The hotel was in the mother’s side. Now there’s a feminist role model if I ever saw one!…although I don’t think she’d call herself that. She was looked at strangely in the small town, because she was a working mother, and used au-pairs to help out. She’s strong and smart (and is pro-choice…that came up) and an incredibly nice person. She did most of the work for the hotel–her husband worked as an orthopaedic technician…but then came home and did hotel work as well. When their youngest was born, he took a year of paternity leave. But the best part? The children have her name…she kept hers…and he hyphenated his. (I remember there was an actual reason for it. But still. Awesome)

Just a reminder-mentally ill people as a group are no more likely to commit crimes or be violent than the general population. Anything mentally ill people do is likely to be blamed on their mental illness, even things that many non-mentally ill people would also do in the situation. Mentally ill people are also much more likely to victims of crime or abuse than the general population.
That said, I think Sn0rkmaiden is right that being abused or neglected as a child can do a lot of psychological damage,and can lead to someone doing things that don’t work or are toxic to themselves or others. I have no citations, just an opinion.

I was the same age as many of the victims at the time the massacre happened, so for me it’s a pretty visceral memory. I was also active at the Queen’s University Women’s Centre as a volunteer, so the prospect of being singled out for death threats (and maybe follow-through) as a feminist was very real and frightening for me. Especially since our group had not long before protested against the mockery of the campus “No Means No” campaign by a bunch of dudes in the men’s residences. (They put up window signs reading “No Means Yes”, “No Means More Beer”, “No Means Kick Her in the Teeth”, etc. — and then tried to pass this blatantly violent shit off as “just nice little boys having a little fun, why can’t you humorless feminists take a joke”.) Not to mention that the School of Applied Science (engineering, in other words) was sexist as hell, and also a frequent object of female students’ complaints. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that I’m about as well situated to analyze this thing politically as one can be as a layperson (my major was English Lit, not Women’s Studies or Poli-Sci.)

Anyhow: Lépine was certainly abused by his father as a child, as was his mother as a wife. But none of us ever bought into the idea that he shot up those women just because he was “deranged” or “mentally ill”. As has often been said here by people with personal experience of all kinds of it, mental illness alone is not a cause of political violence. There has to be much more than that to make someone “snap”. And what he did was blatantly political…his own final note confirmed as much. He called feminism a casus belli, a ground for war. So he clearly had planned this as a political assassination. He also had a hit-list of prominent women he planned to “take out” but never managed to kill.

He was undoubtedly warped by paternal abuse (and his own father’s obvious misogyny) from an early age, but he never recognized that as a root cause for his actions. He turned his ire outwards; he blamed feminism for his failures, even though he could not muster the marks to get into the school of his choice, and they did not have a female admissions quota. His actions were not a product of mental illness, but of bad politics and a false assignment of responsiblities for his personal problems. That is how I saw them from the start, and still do to this day.

Edit: Mediocre is probably not the correct word to use, however both men failed to fulfill the academic requirements that were necessary for their advanced programs, and both men externalized their rage over that failure by blaming and harming others. I always get this sense of entitlement coming from these types of mass killers.

vaiyt – By their savage husbands and brothers and fathers, of course!

Next thing you know they’re saying that everyone in India lives in houses made of cardboard and trash.

James Holmes reminded me of Marc Lepine. He also was a mediocre student trying to get through an advanced program and not able to do it, and he also turned his rage at his failures out to the world instead of acknowledging his own responsibility in failing to get through his academic program.

Yes!

I should also add that in my second year, I had a nervous breakdown of sorts. I was in Life Sciences, with an eye to med school, and failing chem and physics. Of course, that would pretty much be the death knell for one’s career ambitions right there. And it was, for me. I ended up in counselling, got tested (MBTI), and found that my aptitudes and ambitions didn’t match. So I switched majors, and wound up acing courses for the next two years, even the really difficult ones like Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon. It was a matter of facing facts, taking responsibility, and not trying to fit the wrong shape of box.

I think my willingness to re-evaluate my goals and change them, rather than going on hitting that wall, was why I didn’t end up dropping out mid-year when the Montréal Massacre happened two years later. I had built up a kind of resilience from my breakdown/breakthrough that made even terror and uncertainty manageable. It was no miracle — I was still scared shitless — but there was no question of my dropping out and chucking my education midway through my final year just because some dude with a gun might walk in at any time and kill me. I had already come thus far, and no way was any motherfucker going to rob me of it.

My success — my ability to complete my education — is, in a way, Lépine’s final failure. He thought he could stick up women students with a Sturm-Ruger and rob them of what he couldn’t get for himself? He thought he could scare them into going back home and being subservient? Fuck that noise. We’re not such fragile flowers as MRAssholes like to think we are. I’m proof of that.

Who told this guy that they are all supposed to cry about how hard it is to be a female?

Also ironically of course they pointed out the “most domestic violence is initiated by women .”Right after the other guy mentioned that most murder victims are male .(and most the perpetrators of those murders he forgot to mention are also male)

Why didn’t he say if men don’t want to be murdered by other men the best way to stop that is for for the murder victim not to piss off the murderer?

Because WIMMENS DID IT WITH SECREEEET MINDPOWAS!!!111!

Canuck – thanks, and that’s a great story about the family you worked for. I especially like that the dad was able to take a year off for paternity leave. Europe is way ahead of the US on that score. MRAs should be lobbying for increased family leave, if they’re really oh-so-concerned about keeping families intact.

I love the argument that “you women should be grateful to us for not raping/beating you mercilessly”, like they should get the biggest cookie ever for not committing crimes. I refrained from simony, shoplifting, and public nudity this week. Where’s my statue and parade?

I love the argument that “you women should be grateful to us for not raping/beating you mercilessly”, like they should get the biggest cookie ever for not committing crimes.

Right like they are sacrificing an entitlement .

I can’t tell you either how many times a bewildered husband not understanding whey his wife is leaving him will say . Im not perfect but I have never hit her or cheated on her.

Really why in the world would a woman ever fathom leaving a man that doesn’t beat her and sleep with other women ? Doesn’t she realize how fortunate she is ?

@auggzillary: I thought it was because Klebold looked up to Harris and did the shooting with him to try to impress him in some way.

Huckleberry is a very cute roommate.

Welcome, delurkers! Have an Official Welcome Package!

@lkeke35

(At first, I did think the cats were deterring the dogs with their Jedi Mind Powers.)

You mean they weren’t? O_o