It’s a huge honour for him
Please, CBC, tell us more about this insulting and offensive move.
A transgender woman in Prince Edward Island has been invited to speak at a Montreal Massacre memorial service being held today by the P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women.
Monday marks 32 years since 14 women were killed at École Polytechnique.
Since 14 women were killed for being women, by a man who said that was why they were being killed. It was an explicitly, avowedly misogynist massacre of women.
“I was deeply touched,” said Anastasia Preston. “It is a huge honour for myself and it’s a huge honour as a trans woman to be included in an event like this.”
But there shouldn’t be “honour” given to a man on an occasion to mark the woman-hating massacre of 14 women. Preston shouldn’t be “touched,” he should be appalled. The event is not about him and it’s not about trans women.
“For decades, trans women have been kept out of the conversation around gender-based violence.”
No not “gender-based violence” you clueless fuckhead, woman-hating violence. Of course that conversation is about women and not men who call themselves women. Of course it is. It’s not a privilege to be massacred with your classmates you know. A memorial for the massacred women doesn’t need to be “inclusive” of men who want to intrude.
Government data does not have accurate records of the number of transgender women murdered in gender-based violence, Preston said.
Fuck off. This one is about women.
During Monday’s event, Preston said she will speak about some of her experiences of harassment on P.E.I. She hopes her stories can raise awareness.
Oh jesus. He actually is going to change the subject. He actually is going to make it about him and his kink. It’s beyond disgusting, into a whole new territory without adjectives to name it.
There are four more paragraphs in which he talks about himself and his red dress and being groped.
Words fail me.
Of coursed it is. Didn’t you know everything is about trans women? I’m waiting for them to find a way to make space exploration about being trans.
Yeah. How many times you been groped, Mr? Every day? Several times a day? If not, you don’t quite understand what actual young women experience.
I am so tired of these entitled white men (mostly white men) complaining about their “oppression” and citing instances that don’t make their oppression as serious as a hangnail or chapped lips. If there is real oppression, name it. Tell us. Don’t throw out vague “trans women murdered”. Show us stats about how many trans have been murdered, and how many were murdered for being trans. We’ve shown you our data; you just use it as toilet paper while going to the women’s restroom with your penis on display.
This is the same clown that insisted in a recent ‘day of remembrance’ piece that because ‘Canada doesn’t keep good records’ the murder rate for transgender had to be extrapolated from US data, and offered up an imaginary number. This, despite the fact the respective US murder rate is 2.5 times higher, was then used to justify feeling unsafe….on Prince Edward Island. A place that has 0-2 per year.
No prizes for guessing what the leading cause of homicide on PEI is, or what sex the victims are.
Reading the comments to that CBC/PEI tweet, they closed it down because people were expressing anger at the upstaging of this day by someone who isn’t there to actually remember the victims. TRAs have no decency and will attach themselves to any cause and milk it for their own benefit.
https://twitter.com/malegauze/status/1467930207206223875
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Ana
@AnastasiaPres11
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1h
The fact that CBC had to close comments on the article about me being the speaker at the memorial today is exactly why we have to keep working for trans women and other minorities to be included in conversation about GBV.”
Poor you.
It’s not about them though, not on this day. Imagine if you will a Jew for Christ speaking about the Holocaust and making it about how they were saved by Jesus Christ as part of remembering the millions who were killed. It would be damned disrespectful of the dead, that’s what.
I remember the night the Montreal Massacre happened. I knew someone from work who had recently moved to Montreal to go to art school there. Before I was aware of all the details of what had happened and where, I was afraid she might have been involved. Thankfully, she was not. But I was devastated. The killer had targeted women and said he “hated feminists.” I credit feminist women in my life for making me a better person than I had been before meeting them (hell, making me a human at all, as far as I’m concerned). The fall of the Berlin Wall had happened the month before; I was was still riding the vicarious high I’d gotten from witnessing that spontaneous outpouring of joyous freedom from history. This hideous attack felt like a kick in the gut, quite apart from and beyond the momentary fear of too close a personal connection. Even after I learned that my friend was safe, it remained personal, I remained shocked.
I participated in a remembrance ceremony for the Massacre. I think it was the following year, the first anniversary, but I’m not sure. I was in a band at the time, and I’d written lyrics soon after the attack, which my songwriting partner had set to music. One of the organizers of the event was aware of this, and asked us to sing it at the memorial. It was a song written for many voices. I felt very small and unworthy, I had hated having had the need to write the song at all, but it was something that I had to do. I couldn’t not write it. I remember very little of the event itself, apart from having to keep it together in order to sing.
It infuriates me that anyone should invite a man who thinks he’s a woman to speak at such an event. It would be like asking “grey Owl” or “Iron Eyes Cody” to speak at event commemorating victims of the Residential School system. It is grotesque beyond words. This “invitation” is not a careless act, it is a calculated insult, a cold slap in the face to women everywhere who still struggle against misogynistic violence in all its forms, at all levels of society. To turn this occasion over to any man is bad enough. Men have said too much and listened too little. So here we go again, a man will now speak over the dead, saying how hard he has it, how pretend men like him are so fucking oppressed, speculating on how they are murdered so frequently, though he will have no evidence at all that this is the case (but it MUST be true, because he’s SO MARGINALIZED). So we get a MAN who probably thinks that somebody “misgendering” him is committing “actual violence” speaking at event remembering WOMEN who were MURDERED for daring to become engineers, a profession which their killer felt should be reserved for MEN like HIM. That man had things to say about women. Whether he knows it or not, whether he admits it or not, the man speaking at this event is following in the killer’s footsteps. He isn’t using a gun, but he is nonetheless silencing the women who should be speaking instead. Validating and affirming his FEELINGS is more important than properly honouring the LIVES taken by another man who lashed out at women because of his hurt FEELINGS. Like the trans identified male sports cheats who take places meant for women, this man puts his own needs and “honour” above the needs and respect due to women. He is desperate to turn the candles of mourning and remembrance into his own personal spotlight. It’s sickening. If he had any feelings at all, beyond his own narcissism, he would have declined.
As for whoever invited him, what the FUCK were they thinking? Did they ask any women? Did all of the women leave the province? Were they all otherwise unavailable? Better a longer moment of silence than to hand over a stage or podium to someone who is going to vitiate the point of the entire ceremony. Whoever gave this man the place to speak at this event should be removed from whatever position gave them the power to offer that place, so they never get a chance to do it again.
I’ll bet that there will be those who will complain that feminists and their allies protesting this decision are needlessly politicizing the event. Well they can wake the fuck up. The Montreal Massacre was a POLITICAL act, a TERRORIST act. Commemorating it is ALWAYS going to be political because it is always going to be moment that points out and highlights the imbalance of power between women and men, and the ongoing threat of male violence against women. Turning this event into (yet another) “trans day of remembrance” is to deliberately depoliticize it, and to turn it into something else, something trendy, trivial and petty. This is changing the subject. It is (yet another) an attempt to interrupt, hijack, erase an examination of power and politics under patriarchy.
Nominate the above for guest post of the year!
@7 agree! @6 thank you, that was a powerful statement and I’m grateful to you for sharing it with us.
On a more petty note…have you seen this guy? Last pic on this page.
https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/survivors-unite-take-back-the-night-march-in-pei-promotes-consent-gender-diversity-100638370/
Disgusting. The killer EXPLICITLY separated the women from the men, and then murdered the women.