Why I Won't Wear A White Ribbon
by Adam Jones (1992)
[Published in the MERGE Journal, 5: 5 (1992.)]
On a frigid December day
three years ago, while Marc Lépine was roaming the classrooms and hallways of
l'École Polytechnique in Montreal, I was a couple of kilometres down the road,
laughing and sharing a few drinks with friends.
We heard the first reports
on the evening news. But the real horror sank in only the next day, as the
dimensions of the slaughter became clear, and the analyses - and recriminations
- began.
Several days later, I
joined tens of thousands of Montrealers who queued, some for hours, in subzero
temperatures to file past the caskets of the victims. The crowd was a
cross-section of Quebec society: male and female, young and old, anglophone and
francophone. For a day, Quebeckers were united in grief.
The dignity of those
proceedings stood in stark contrast to TV images of demonstrations across the
country: the megaphones, the slogans, the wild assignations of blame. I was
struck by many protesters' readiness to exploit the trauma of victims' families
and friends for their own narrow, exclusionary political ends.
The sour aftertaste of the
diatribes lingers on in many of the commemorative projects surrounding December
6. It's the main reason I refuse to join in the national White Ribbon Campaign
organized by a Toronto men's group. The campaign seems based on a notion of
universal male guilt. It's a framework that does little to honour the victims
of the massacre, and nothing to acknowledge the real pain most men felt in the
wake of Lépine's rampage.
The claim that all men must
share responsibility for the violence some men do to some women has become a
veritable mantra over the last several years. Almost no-one has bothered to
examine its foundations, or criticize the hypocrisy of its exponents.
White Ribbon campaigners
seem to think the pain a man feels over December 6 is suspect or illegitimate,
unless it's accompanied by guilt. In the aftermath of the massacre, it was all
too easy for men to imagine their wives, daughters, lovers, or friends among
those mown down by Marc Lépine. For some men, that loss was a sickening
reality. But men - all men - are now urged to feel kinship with the
Polytechnique assassin. Their grief is only valid if some of it is devoted to
mourning the part of them that's allegedly capable of such acts.
To counter this framework,
let me make a couple of brief but, I hope, obvious points.
- Marc Lépine is as remote from most men as Lizzie Borden
is from most women. Most people are not brutalizers, terrorists, or
murderers. And someone who purports to define an entire group in terms of
a supposed latent "potential" for violence deserves to be
denounced for the bigot that he or she is.
- "Male" is an ascriptive trait. Marc Lépine
was also Caucasian, francophone, heterosexual, lower-middle class, and
(crucially) a survivor of child abuse. Should all these groups likewise
share responsibility for his actions? Are men any more responsible for
Marc Lépine than gays are for Jeffrey Dahmer?
- It's said December 6 serves as a powerful reminder to
women of the fear of male violence they must confront every day.
Undeniably, that fear is tangible, and solidly grounded. But don't forget:
the large majority of murder victims in this country are men. All
the victims of the two non-domestic mass murders in Canada this year
[1992] were male: the nine miners killed in Yellowknife; the four
professors hunted down at Concordia University.
If men
don't share the fear, it doesn't mean they don't share the risk. What does the
White Ribbon campaigner say to men who have been brutalized by assailants who
are also male? Are those men responsible, in some way, for their own
victimization?
The White Ribbon campaign
is attractive to those of both sexes who view "female" sensibilities
as superior to "male" ones. Among feminist activists, the campaign
seems to appeal mainly to those who consider male violence against women and
children the only violence that matters. These activists often view progressive
men as mascots or token presences - not as allies with diverse and critical
perspectives to contribute to a common cause.
And when will the men
behind the White Ribbon Campaign realize that their apologies for being born
the wrong sex can never be abject enough to satisfy the extremists? We saw
vivid evidence of this in last Friday's Globe and Mail, where two
members of the Toronto-based Nurses for Social Responsibility accused White
Ribbon folk of indulging in empty symbolism that "minimized and
trivialized" male violence against women.
I'm not dismissing the
explicitly political dimension to Marc Lépine's actions. Nor do I deny the more
subtle and personal politics of domestic relationships that leave many women
wounded or killed by men terrified and infuriated by "their"
partner's desire for independence.
But given the pervasiveness
of violence in our society, there's something tawdry about the simple-minded
formulations of the White Ribbon campaigners.
On December 6, I will
remember the victims of l'École Polytechnique in my own way. I'll commemorate
them as precious and courageous human beings cut down in their prime. I'll
honour them, too, as pioneers: women whose presence in a Faculty of Engineering
was positive and liberating.
But I won't be wearing a
white ribbon. For me, it would be a badge of shame - a shame I don't feel.
Created by Adam Jones,
1998. No copyright claimed for non-commercial use if source is acknowledged and
notified.
adamj_jones@hotmail.com
Last updated: 12 October 2000. 