Letter to the editor - Columnist stretched too far in making point

However, appealing to the memory of the Montreal Massacre (1989) and Marc Lepine was entirely irrelevant. What Marc Lepine did was not a stereotypical act of sexism. He killed several engineering students and others in the building, and yes, they were women.

But there is a world of difference between someone who is struggling to survive against hostile forces and someone in a position of power behaving 'badly.'

Marc Lepine's situation should not be equated with that of the privileged male students, at Western or elsewhere.

Furthermore, the 'violent' act mentioned
by Owsianik (apparently in the form of a joke in the Gazette) was rape. Yet she refers to "stereotypes about feminism and violence against women," bringing in the name of Marc Lepine for emphasis, as though what he did had something to do with sexual hostility or male/female interpersonal relations.

One can't know for sure the intentions of the individuals who wrote the offending articles in the Gazette, but conflict, power, and sexuality come together in situations such as the one described, and probably always will.