The White Ribbon: Saying ‘No’ to Gender-based Violence

Written By Aparna C.

With the arrival of November, Remembrance Day is at the forefront of attention. The latter part of the month sees the attention shift to another form of remembrance: the White Ribbon cause. The origins of the White Ribbon campaign lie in a bloodstained past. On December 6, 1989, a shooting massacre occurred at École Polytechnique, a prominent engineering school in Montreal, that specifically targeted women. On that day, fourteen women were killed by a man named Marc Lépine. Lépine’s motive was “an attack on feminism” in which he perceived women to be inferior to men and believed that they didn’t deserve to be in a school that he believed should be a male-dominated polytechnic school. The gender-targeted attack shook the country, raising anger from men who refused to be associated with Lépine’s beliefs. As a result, the White Ribbon campaign was founded in 1991 by a group of pro-feminist males in London, Ontario, to memorialize the École Polytechnique massacre and to draw attention to the issue of gender-based violence.

The White Ribbon campaign symbolizes opposition to violence against women. All are invited to wear the ribbon, though its the most compelling when a man wears the symbol. When doing so, the man proclaims solidarity with women in fighting for the cause of ending gender-based violence. The White Ribbon movement spreads its message through publications, workshops, and projects. A key goal of the campaign is to educate the public on the issues around gender-based violence, so schools and other institutions are ideal partners in raising consciousness.

Campaigns like the White Ribbon help further the idea that violence against women is never acceptable and is damaging on many levels. Striving for the ideal of a peaceful society that de-emphasizes gender as an issue, and rather focuses on the merits of one’s contributions to society, is not without its challenges. Nonetheless, it is a worthy goal in the efforts of achieving an effective co-existence.

---

Works Cited

Pelletier, Francine. "30 years since the Montreal massacre, we still see a deadly hatred of women." The Sunday Edition, 29 Nov. 2019, www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/the-sunday-edition-for-december-1-2019-1.5377096/30-years-since-the-montreal-massacre-we-still-see-a-deadly-hatred-of-women-1.5377220.