"You're women, you're going to be engineers. You're all a bunch of feminists..."

Twenty years is a long time. Twenty years is a moment.

Tonight is not the twentieth time I've gone to a December 6th vigil, but I've gone to more than I've missed.

Dec 6, 1989, is the day I REALLY became a feminist. I'd been one before, in a take-it-for-granted sort of way, but that was the day I really figured out what we were up against, and what we had to do.

Tonight is not the first time I've seen "but what about the men/you feminists all hate men" comments, either. But this comment on the cbc website:

How much longer until the feminists get here and criticize the CBC for daring to mention that some of these women had men they loved and who loved them?

is the first time I've really felt moved to reply.

Yes, it's the twentieth anniversary of the Montreal massacre, and I'm going to talk about the men. Not because I feel like I have to. Just because I want to.

Not the men like the one who left that comment, because it's obvious that he's met maybe three feminists in his life, and he's sure as Hell never been to a Dec. 6 vigil.

Because if he had been, he'd never have made that comment.

As I looked around tonight at the vigil, I saw that, as is quite usual, about a third of the faces I was seeing were male faces.

Some of the police officers who volunteer their time every year so the event can happen are men. Many of them are or have been on the Domestic Crimes unit, or Hate Crimes, or Sexual Assault, or Homicide. They get it.

Some of the paramedics and hospital workers and ministers and social workers who come every year are men. They've patched us up after domestic assaults and sexual assaults and sometimes they've stood and watched us die of them. They get it.

Some of the men who came are - or were - brothers, or fathers, or sons, or classmates, or colleagues, or friends. There was a woman they liked, or loved, once, and now she's a different, more damaged person - or she is gone. They get it.

Some of the men who came spent some part of their childhoods in a women's shelter, while their mothers got their lives together after domestic assaults. Some of them saw their mothers beaten. Some of them were beaten themselves, for trying to intervene. They get it.

Some of the men who came have, or have had, partners who are living with the aftermath of domestic abuse, or sexual assault, or both. They've sat up at three am and seen and heard the pain. They get it.

And some of these men - just get it. They are fundraisers and activists and social workers and emergency workers and politicians and students and husbands and brothers and fathers and sons and friends and colleagues and Just Plain Guys, and they came on their own to the understanding that they had to oppose male violence against women because opposing our rape and murder and beating and silencing and terrorizing and disappearing is the only decent thing to do, and the only terms under which they want this package called 'manhood' that they've been handed.

And they don't set up straw feminists and then tear them down. They don't show up in coversations and announce that they've never raped anybody and they're a nice guy now where's their blowjob cookie. They don't insist that if we ask them to support women's rights or the enthusiastic cooperation standard of consent or to go out of their way a bit to try to find qualified women applicants or we question whether or not it's appropriate for them to call themselves feminists or we ask them to hang back at the Take Back The Night march or refrain from speaking at the Dec 6 vigil or to wear a white ribbon or to speak up against rape and for rape victims even when it will only get them laughed at, for no reward except the reward of being able to look themselves in the face the next morning, that we're "sexist against men".

And they understand that the reason that we don't praise them lavishly and endlessly for doing these simple, basic things, is because we have high expectations for them, and every faith in their ability to fulfil them, and to excessively praise a man for simple, basic, decent human behaviour towards women is to suggest that that man is either dumb as a rock or possessed of the moral sense of a mollusk.

They just roll up their sleeves and get in there and HELP.

(If, on the other hand, you're, for example, Henry Morgentaler, you can have a cookie. Hell, you can have the whole BOX of cookies Order of Canada. But that's the standard, my friends.)

The other two-thirds of the crowd ... were mostly, not all, familiar faces. Some of them are women I see once a year. Some of them are women I see every week. Some of them have lost friends or family to violence against women. Some of them have lost great bleeding chunks of their own lives to it. Some of them are twice my age. Some of them were not born twenty years ago. Some of them I like, or love. Some of them I don't like very much, and they don't really like me.

But once a year we stand together in the snow, with flowers and candles, and remember why we do what we do, and our differences aren't really all that important. And tonight, I love them all.

We're women. We're all a bunch of feminists.

The YWCA has a December 6 Fund:

We offer non-interest-bearing loans to women leaving violent homes.
The Fund supports women in the GTA and the Region of Peel. The YWCA December 6 Fund strives to remove some of the financial barriers that prevent women from leaving their abusers. Women use the loans to establish themselves and their children in greater safety. The purpose of the Fund is to help women make the transition from abusive situations to safety and self-reliance and to raise awareness about violence against women."

Talking of men who get it, have some Stephen Fearing:

As men begin to understand what women say
They see history reaching out to smother all of us
So ring the bells of morning for sorrow and for shame
And let the deep well inside each of us swell with outrage
For those of us who know what went before can come again
Must ring the bells, we must ring the bells of morning.