[BRIEF NOTE] An Anniversary Note
Dec. 6th, 2005 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldToday is the 16th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, in which 14 women students at the École Polytechnique were systematically killed and 13 other students wounded by a lone gunman. This massacre was a signal event in Canadian gender relations, demonstrating too vividly the ultimate consequences of misogyny and showing the need for a critical examination of gender relations in Canada today.
Peter Schneider's New York Times Magazine article "The New Berlin Wall" describes a comparable event.
Arguments from tradition--religious traditions, cultural traditions more broadly--about proper standards on gender, on sexuality, on interpersonal relations, on exogamy, have a worrying tendency to end badly indeed. It stems from a basic insecurity, from a realization that traditional patterns really are inherently unstable and that--given a choice--people will opt out of them freely. How to deal with this? Unmistakably vivid and direct violence. Structural misogyny in conservative immigrant communities is a difficult one to treat without risking feeding xenophobic trends. Suffice it to say that, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
autopope noted earlier, the legal status of women in the liberal England of the late 19th century was comparable to that of women under the Taliban in 2001, and that if any human-rights movement claims to be anti-racist it can't make patronizing claims that members of the Other must be excepted from the standards we demand of ourselves. It's somewhat like the ritualized killings of gays that are unfortunately so common in the Muslim world, partly influenced by structural homophobia in the colonizing West, mostly influenced by people claiming Islamic legitimacy: It may have deep roots in another culture's traditions, true, but as explanatory as this is it certainly isn't an excuse.
No one deserves to fear death because of their individuality, regardless of their background. Here's hoping that the spirit of the Montreal Massacre will fade out everywhere, quickly not slowly.
Peter Schneider's New York Times Magazine article "The New Berlin Wall" describes a comparable event.
On the night of Feb. 7, 2005, Hatun Surucu, 23, was killed on her way to a bus stop in Berlin-Tempelhof by several shots to the head and upper body, fired at point-blank range. The investigation revealed that months before, she reported one of her brothers to the police for threatening her. Now three of her five brothers are on trial for murder. According to the prosecutor, the oldest of them (25) acquired the weapon, the middle brother (24) lured his sister to the scene of the crime and the youngest (18) shot her. The trial began on Sept. 21. Ayhan Surucu, the youngest brother, had confessed to the murder and claimed that he had done it without any help. According to Seyran Ates, a lawyer of Turkish descent, it is generally the youngest who are chosen by the family council to carry out such murders - or to claim responsibility for them. German juvenile law sets a maximum sentence of 10 years' imprisonment for murder, and the offender has the prospect of being released after serving two-thirds of the sentence.
Hatun Surucu grew up in Berlin as the daughter of Turkish Kurds. When she finished eighth grade, her parents took her out of school. Shortly after that she was taken to Turkey and married to a cousin. Later she separated from her husband and returned to Berlin, pregnant. At age 17 she gave birth to a son, Can. She moved into a women's shelter and completed the work for her middle-school certificate. By 2004 she had finished a vocational-training program to become an electrician. The young mother who had escaped her family's constraints began to enjoy herself. She put on makeup, wore her hair unbound, went dancing and adorned herself with rings, necklaces and bracelets. Then, just days before she was to receive her journeyman's diploma, her life was cut short.
Evidently, in the eyes of her brothers, Hatun Surucu's capital crime was that, living in Germany, she had begun living like a German. In a statement to the Turkish newspaper Zaman, one brother noted that she had stopped wearing her head scarf, that she refused to go back to her family and that she had declared her intent to "seek out her own circle of friends." It's still unclear whether anyone ordered her murdered. Often in such cases it is the father of the family who decides about the punishment. But Seyran Ates has seen in her legal practice cases in which the mother has a leading role: mothers who were forced to marry forcing the same fate on their daughters. Necla Kelek, a Turkish-German author who has interviewed dozens of women on this topic, explained, "The mothers are looking for solidarity by demanding that their daughters submit to the same hardship and suffering." By disobeying them, the daughter calls into question her mother's life - her silent submission to the ritual of forced marriage. Meanwhile, the two elder brothers have papered their cell with pictures of their dead sister.
Arguments from tradition--religious traditions, cultural traditions more broadly--about proper standards on gender, on sexuality, on interpersonal relations, on exogamy, have a worrying tendency to end badly indeed. It stems from a basic insecurity, from a realization that traditional patterns really are inherently unstable and that--given a choice--people will opt out of them freely. How to deal with this? Unmistakably vivid and direct violence. Structural misogyny in conservative immigrant communities is a difficult one to treat without risking feeding xenophobic trends. Suffice it to say that, as
autopope noted earlier, the legal status of women in the liberal England of the late 19th century was comparable to that of women under the Taliban in 2001, and that if any human-rights movement claims to be anti-racist it can't make patronizing claims that members of the Other must be excepted from the standards we demand of ourselves. It's somewhat like the ritualized killings of gays that are unfortunately so common in the Muslim world, partly influenced by structural homophobia in the colonizing West, mostly influenced by people claiming Islamic legitimacy: It may have deep roots in another culture's traditions, true, but as explanatory as this is it certainly isn't an excuse.No one deserves to fear death because of their individuality, regardless of their background. Here's hoping that the spirit of the Montreal Massacre will fade out everywhere, quickly not slowly.
