Robyn Bourgeois, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation where she examined white masculinity and the normalization of male violence in the wake of the recent murder rampage in Nova Scotia.

Bourgeois writes:

“While the mainstream media has been quick to situate the deadly recent events that unfolded in Nova Scotia within the context of Canadian mass murders, no one seems to be drawing attention to the most prominent link connecting Canadian mass killings: all of the accused perpetrators have been men, and most of them have been white.

White men were responsible for or currently face charges for the mass murders at the École Polytechnique in 1989, Mayerthorpein 2005, Moncton in 2014, Calgary in 2014, Québec City in 2017, Toronto in 2018 (a van attack) and Fredericton in 2019. Those in Vernon, B.C., in 1996, Edmonton in 2014, and Toronto in 2018 (the shooting in the city’s Greektown neighbourhood) were perpetrated by racialized men.

 Given this explicitly gendered pattern of perpetration, why don’t we talk about these mass murders as male terrorism?”

 Continue reading the full article here.