Commentary

Violence Against Women is Endemic to the Capitalist System

Fifteen years ago on December 6, 1989, 14 young women engineering students in a classroom at l’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal were shot and killed by Marc Lepine, who then turned his gun on himself. Since that date, December 6 has been marked in Canada as a day to bring attention to the issue of violence against women. While it is appropriate to highlight this problem, the way in which this tragic event is used does more to mystify and cover up the source of violence against women in Canadian society than it does to clarify the issue.

The murder of these 14 young women was a horrific crime committed by a mentally ill man. In his twisted logic, Lepine saw women as the source of all of his own failures in life. If there is a lesson to be learned from this tragedy it is that there are consequences to the way in which the mentally ill are treated in our society. During the 1980s, dozens of institutions for the mentally ill were closed and patients were literally put out on the streets with little or no assistance or follow-up. As a result, thousands of people live and die in the most wretched conditions, discarded by society. Whether or not the tragedy in Montreal could have been averted if better care and assistance were provided to the mentally ill cannot be said, just as it cannot be established that tighter gun controls or more police could have prevented it. This is the nature of random, isolated events.

Marc Lepine’s crime has become a symbol for everything from gun control to the problems of domestic violence. However, to use this tragedy in this way actually mystifies the causes of violence against women. Perhaps this is why the entire Canadian establishment embraces the December 6 memorials and uses them to bemoan violence against women as a terrible thing about which something really should be done, while their system perpetuates violence against women on a daily basis.

However, the issue of violence against women cannot be reduced to the murder of women by a mentally ill man. Nor can it be reduced to a matter of domestic violence, the “male psyche” or politically incorrect language. These are symptoms of the problems and to treat the symptoms as the disease is superficial and belittling. In order to get to the root of the problem of why there is violence against women one must look at who benefits from this violence and how they benefit.

There is no real mystery here. Everywhere we turn we find a culture which denigrates and degrades women. There are the multi-billion dollar pornography and prostitution industries which commodify women and dehumanize relationships between people. Alongside of this there is the religious right with its antiquated notion of women as inferior beings whose place is in the home, to serve and obey their husbands. The religious right, both the fundamentalists and the Catholic Church, talk endlessly about the sacredness of marriage and the sacredness of life, but they are the worst abusers of women and molesters of children. They are also the loudest in calling for violence against those who oppose capitalism and colonial oppression, against the mentally ill and the poor and against those who commit crimes. They are the greatest defenders of the capitalist system which profits from the dehumanization and degradation of women. They are the greatest proponents of sending young men and women off to wage wars of aggression against the men, women and children of other countries so that the profits of the multinational corporations are maximized. Then there are the capitalists in general who exploit and oppress women to exert downward pressure on the wages of the entire working class, thereby increasing their profits. The purveyors of pornography, the religious right and the capitalists all contribute to the creation of a culture in which women are commodified, dehumanized and degraded, and violence against them is legitimized.

In a society where violence and degradation of women is so profitable, how is it possible for the culture not to reflect this? How is it possible to prevent such anti-woman ideas from permeating the entire society, from top to bottom, including the minds of unstable individuals like Marc Lepine?

This dehumanization and commodification of women is the real source of violence against women. Furthermore, it does not victimize only women, but men as well. In dehumanizing women and commodifying human relationships, men, too, are being dehumanized and degraded, reduced to the level of consumers and voyeurs. Only the destruction of this unhealthy culture and the capitalist system that gives rise to it can restore dignity to women and men and put an end to violence against women.

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