
This post is a slightly edited version of an op-ed that originally appeared in Chatelaine magazine.
December 6, 1989, is seared into the memories of millions of Canadians. It’s the day that a gunman shot and killed 14 women, wounding another 14 people, at a Montreal university. At that time, I was a 35-year-old mother and law student. Along with many women at my university, I had been part of a No Means No campaign to raise awareness about sexual assault that fall. It raised the ire of some students, mostly men, who posted signs in residence windows. “No means do it harder,” “No means more beer,” and “No means tie her down” are just a few examples of the misogynist and violent responses to our efforts.
Thirty-five years later, I am a 70-year-old mother, grandmother and lawyer, still working to end violence against women and, this year on December 6th, I find myself wondering why we have accomplished so little since the events at Ecole Polytechnique.
A friend once said to me of her own experiences working with survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV):
“When I started this work, I was sure that once people knew about it, it would end.”
It seems not.
Serious and entrenched
Violence against women, including IPV, not only remains with us but is more serious and more deeply entrenched than it was in 1989. The pandemic opened the curtain on this global epidemic, which increased public awareness, thanks in large measure to media coverage. But the stay-at-home orders and reduced capacity at women’s shelters that made more women vulnerable to abuse by their partner are long behind us, and the violence continues.
It’s not as though we don’t know what to do. Inquests like the CKW Inquest in Ontario’s rural Renfrew County, that examined the murders of three women killed by a man who had had or who sought to have an intimate relationship with each of them, the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission, which shone a light on the connections between intimate partner violence and mass casualty events, and annual reports from domestic violence death review committees across the country have produced thousands of recommendations for system change.
However, there is no legal requirement that anyone implement those recommendations, despite the wisdom they contain and the fact that many of them are repeated time and time again, so often they sit on shelves – or their electronic equivalent – leaving those who developed them wondering why we bothered.
I’d started to think that perhaps IPV is too deeply entrenched, too close to the bone — just too big — for people to feel there is any way for them to make a difference.
Maybe I’ve been wrong.
One of the themes of my book, And Sometimes They Kill You: Confronting the Epidemic of Intimate Partner Violence, is that we can’t continue putting band-aids on this epidemic.
Responding to an all-of-society problem like the war on women – and make no mistake, that’s what we’re talking about – requires an all-of-society approach. That often feels overwhelming to people like me, who spend our lives working to end IPV; no wonder others may feel there’s no point in doing anything at all.
Is change coming?
But, I sense a sea change. I’m partway through four weeks of travels across Ontario promoting my book and speaking with folks in cities large and small as well as in rural communities, and what I am hearing makes me hopeful.
Admittedly, those who come to my book launches are prone to be concerned about IPV. Nonetheless, a lot of people want to be part of the solution. I’ve been asked to provide training on how to be an effective advocate, how to engage with the media, how to work with local politicians, how to work collaboratively at the community level.
It seems as though perhaps we’ve all had enough of women and children being killed, of women staying in relationships where they are being abused because there is nowhere safe for them to go, of women not being believed when they talk about the violence to which they are subjected, of survivors being silenced by publication bans and non-disclosure agreements; just plain enough.
It also seems that people are tired of waiting for someone else – the government – to do the right thing and are ready to do it themselves, in their communities, neighbourhoods, workplaces, schools and religious institutions.
Because ending violence against women requires an all-of-society approach, there seems to be no better way than this to move the work along. It’s from the ground up that we will be able to build the revolutionary response we need to end violence against women, which is – undeniably – an epidemic.
Thank you Pam for all your work. Thank you for your advocacy. We can all only continue to bring awareness and pray that men will join this fight.