Today marks the 26th anniversary of the École Polytechnique massacre, in Montreal, Canada. A cowardly, misogynic act which left 14 promising women dead, simply because they were women:
Twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a Mini-14 rifle and a hunting knife, shot 28 people, killing 14 women, before committing suicide. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students.
After claiming that he was “fighting feminism” and calling the women “a bunch of feminists,” he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. Overall, he killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under 20 minutes before turning the gun on himself.[1][2]
His suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life. The note included a list of 19 Quebec women whom Lépine considered to be feminists and apparently wished to kill.[3]
Our photographer: Can you smile for the camera, Gillian?
GA: I don’t smile.
Our photographer: Can you look impish?
GA: I can do impish.
CW: You do impish but you don’t smile?
GA: [Laughing] Yes. Do you know what’s funny? Sometimes I’ll see photographs of myself in the early days of The X-Files, and I think that my attitude towards the whole thing was very similar to Kristen Stewart’s. There’s a very similar look in my eye: slightly defiant, slightly bored. All I ever got was: “Smile! Smile!” when I didn’t want to smile. And I really wish that somebody at that time had told me: “You know that it’s OK to be who you really are.”
— Gillian Anderson on Feminism, Being Asked to Smile, & Not Feeling Sorry For Men, TheMarySue.com
A male author can write about unlikable male characters. They’re called anti-heroes and it’s called a novel.
Gillian Flynn on people calling her writing misogynistic in Glamour magazine, the October 2014 issue. The level of sass and taking no shit from both her and Rosamund Pike-who Flynn interviews in this article-is strong and gives me life. (via ianstagram)
"Because it has a nice ring when you laugh at the low life opinions."
Literary enthusiast, feminist, obsessive devourer of pop culture, grad student, musician, wearer of leather jackets, writer, bike rider, and possessor of moderate to severe social anxiety. Depends on the day, really.
