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I’m seeing some questionable takes about how #December6 is performative and that saying the names of the #MontrealMassacre victims doesn’t really accomplish anything, so let me add my two cents to explain why I disagree.
For many of us, reciting their names every year feels like a duty. It’s solidarity, it’s raising awareness, it’s an outstretched hand to current survivors of violence. A year doesn’t go by when I don’t write about #VAW. It’s impossible not to, because it’s always there.
Some of these stories haunt you. Weeks & months go by after you’ve written them & you still think of a 4-year-old girl who died because her father wanted to punish her mom. Or of a sex worker who died because the parole board thought her murderer’s sex needs were more important.
You think of a young woman who was viciously stabbed 20 times because she wanted to leave an abusive relationship. You think of al this violence described in the media as “family drama” or “crimes of the heart” or “non-consenting sex.”
You question whether you’ve written enough about these stories, shed enough light, gotten enough people to care. People come to you with stories you can’t even cover because you neither have the time nor the resources. You wonder what becomes of them.
It’s a burden that follows you, whether you invite it to come along or not. You look at the stats, at the new stories of domestic violence & misogyny popping up daily and sometimes it feels hopeless. You wake up on Dec 6 & you think of these lives (and all their potential) lost.
You share their names like a duty, like collective therapy, like a wish for a better, safer world for a new generation of women. Performative means disingenuous; it means that doing this specific something accomplishes nothing. Remembering them isn’t nothing.
End of rant.
End of rant.
