Fems’

WAS the Montreal
Massacre symptomatic
of the larger spectre of
violence against
women, or was it
merely a function of
the warped mind of
one individual?

Tf nothing else, we must
agree that the perennial
debate concerning the mas-
sacre ended with neither the
feminist nor contra-feminist
perspective elevating the
issue beyond “Yes it was; no,
it wasn’t.”

CBC host, columnist and
feminist extraordinaire Judy

_ Rebick, expressed dismay
that in both national newspa-
\. pers writers refused to
> append the murder in 1989
~of 14 Ecole Polytechnique
‘female students by a man to
the endemic violence against
women in socicty. She was
= not alone.

.. Like replicating viral
“RNA, gender feminists flood-
ed the media with the same

chilling sentiment; namely
that consensus needs io be
‘achieved on this front.. ©

A failure. of Canadian

society to “make a perma-
_ nent fink? between its atti-
* tudes towards women and

-the need te intensify the
“educational” efforts.
-It was indeed a pity 1 that
commentators were not held
he attempt by feminists
‘ ¢ discourse on a

mplex psy
’ Here. was thé ultimate ©

totalitarianism: accept-one
it pretation of Lepine’s

i din the dock ..
perpetrating more of the |.

d institutionalized

Hana
flercer

fair

comment

But how does the act of a
lone individual come to
stand tor the culpability of all
men?

And how does an abstrac-
tion like the patriarchy come
to be fingered as the overar-
ching cause of this tragedy?
Such post hoc absurdity is
shored up by the flawed cor-
pus of violence-against-
women statistics, which, in
turn, relies on the faulty
premise of a continuum of
violence along which all male
actions can be construed.

“The Montreal
BAassacre,” writes Rebick,
“was an extreme example of
violence women face every
day from abusive men.”

~ Consider that to the gen-
der feminist sexual innuendo
is a form of violence against
women — and it becomes
casy to see how the mild.
mannered man given to the
occasional caustic comment
can get placcd on the same

-axis along side an O. J.

Simpson.
In his book Mora! Panic:
Biopolitics Rising, Professor

. John Fekete, recipient of the
. Distinguished. Researcher

Award at Trent University,
exposes the sub-science that
bolsters the violence-against-
women claims making.

The 1993 StatsCan
Violence Against Women
(VAW) survey together with
other outrageous surveys jike
the CanPan, all prop up the
inflated numbers nobody
questions; the same numbers
advocates bandy about every
Dec. 6; that politicians rely
on for drafting policy and
plumping for resources; and
that Jady Rebick routs when
she says three out of 10
women have been physically
or sexuelly assaulted by their
partners.

The VAW is the building
block in the edifice of the
violence-against-women
industry, not least because it
is stamped with the impri-
matur of Canada’s chief
number cruncher.

With the VAW survey,
asserts Fekete, StatsCan has
traded science for voodoo.
The survey is a single-sex
survey with no input from

- men, thus reflecting an

exclusive ideological focus on
female victimization to the
exclusion, conveniently, of
violence incurred from other
females.

And while research should
certainly be guided by a
hypothesis, it should not be
contaminated by ideology.
Nor were women asked
about their own acts of vio-
lence towards the man in the
relationship even though
dozens of two-sex surveys

“ONE OF A KIND
CHRISTMAS Girts”

bat vert 3rd Street,
Vancouver -

"988-921 5

conducted in Canada and the
U.S. confirm “that women in
relationship with men com-
mit comparatively 3s many

See survey page 9

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