Chris Bruckert - Women and Gendered Violence in Canada: An Intersectional Approach

On December 6, 1989, Marc Lpine entered the cole Polytechnique at the Universit de Montral and massacred 14 women; it was, undeniably, an act of horrific gendered violence committed by one man. It was also an act informed by gender scripts and the visceral enactment of everyday misogynya punishment of women who did not know their place. In this regard his selection of an engineering class as opposed to, for example, a teachers college, where there would have been more women, is telling. In Lpines words, Youre women, youre going to be engineers. Youre all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists (). And another generation of women confronted the reality of gendered violence.

The Montral Massacre shattered not so much Canadians collective innocence as our collective denial. The aftermath, however, speaks to resilience, resistance, and further repression as those with political capital endeavoured to undermine womens gains. On the one hand the tragedy that unfolded that wintery day in 1989 was the impetus for a societal awakening that gendered violence is not a womens issue but a much larger social justice imperative. It led to a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, the federal Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women ( by those who attribute individual rather than societal responsibilityfor them Lpine was not the ultimate manifestation of deeply entrenched misogyny but a madman. Of course individual men must be held responsible, but when we fail to appreciate context we squander the possibility of making meaningful change.

This book endeavours to develop a more holistic understanding of gendered violence by elaborating on the connections between the violence women experience and the historical, social, discursive, and legal contexts in which it unfolds. To that end, an intersectional and interdisciplinary approach employing concepts from diverse theoretical traditions and drawing on a range of disciplines, including criminology, history, sociology, political science, legal studies, economics, critical race studies, and, of course, gender studies, is used. In order to provide a point of departure for subsequent chapters, this Introduction begins with a historical overview of feminist resistance to violence and inequality, which, as we will see, has been characterized by vigorous debates about the project(s) of feminism and what it means to be radical. From there, we move on to present the conceptual point of departure for this book; we conclude with an overview of the volumes four sections.

Feminism: A history of conflict, contestation, and resistance

Western history is littered with examples of gendered violence: from the burning of women outside of patriarchal controlwise women, midwives, healersas witches, to the gossips or scolds bridle where chattering or otherwise troublesome women were physically punished by having their (wagging) tongues pinned in place (see