Dec. 6 marked the anniversary of the Montreal massacre. On that date in 1989, a gunman roamed the halls of Ècole Polytechnique, separating male engineering students from females and shooting the latter, ranting about his hatred of feminists as he went. Fourteen women died during his 45-minute rampage. The women were killed because of their gender – or rather, because of the warped attitude the killer had towards women.
For that reason, this horrendous crime has come to symbolize all violence against women – not only attacks against random victims as was the case in the massacre, but also crimes of a more personal nature. The sad truth is when a woman dies at the hands of a male attacker, he is often someone she knows. Many more women have died at the hands of a husband or boyfriend than in acts of violence like the Montreal massacre. The crimes have similarities, however, including a view of women not as people with equal rights but as objects, possessions to be controlled, punished, assaulted, targeted.
As has become the custom, all across this country, candlelight vigils were held on the anniversary of Dec. 6, 1989, for the 14 women killed in Montreal, and the women who have been killed since as a result of gender-based violence.
It is ironic that on this year’s anniversary, a trial has been underway in Kingston for the accused killers of a woman and her three step-daughters. The accused are the girls’ father, mother and brother; the dead woman was the father’s other wife.
Some are calling it an honour killing. According to court testimony, the girls embraced western culture while their father, brother and mother clung to the traditional values of their native country. That sort of conflict is not unusual in families new to Canada, or for that matter, in any family with teenagers. However, typical Canadian families do not kill their rebellious teenage daughters.
In the family’s native Afghanistan, though, traditional values involve extremes in gender inequality. To western eyes, misogyny seems almost an institution in that part of the world. We have heard the stories of little girls getting acid thrown in their faces because they were going to school, of rape victims charged with adultery and thrown in jail, of wayward wives stoned to death and rebellious girls and young women murdered by their male relatives in the name of family honour.
This is Canada. One can hope if there is a finding of guilt, a clear message is sent that the concept of honour killing has no place in this country. Our laws and Charter of Rights and Freedoms do not offer exemptions for those who come from a culture where it is used as a licence to kill women.
In this country, murder is murder. Our courts do not give a hoot about family honour, nor should they.
Nevertheless, our legal and political leaders’ efforts to accommodate various religious and cultural diversity have led some to ambiguity around the matter of gender equality. Witness the Ontario government’s toying with allowing Sharia law in some civil matters if both husband and wife agree – the same law that allows a woman to inherit only half as much as a man, and gives custody of children to the father in divorce. Sanity won out. In 2005, Premier Dalton McGuinty ruled against allowing Sharia law into Ontario’s legal system.
One recent decision demonstrates no uncertainty about gender equality - the British Columbia court ruling upholding Canada’s laws against polygamy, on the grounds physical safety has to take precedence over religious freedom. Legalizing polygamy would harm women and children, according to the judge, who stated women in polygamous relationships are at a greater risk of physical and emotional abuse including sexual assault, and children in polygamous relationships have a higher mortality rate. As well, there is the danger of early sexualizing of girls, and of gender inequality.
While the decision was aimed at a specific polygamous sect in British Columbia, it has wider implications for immigrants who want to bring with them customs that are at odds with the Canadian values enshrined in our Charter – or anyone else who thinks gender equality is optional.
In a democracy like ours, it is not.