White Ribbons: Turning Tragedy into Understanding
As parents navigating the complex world of raising teenagers, we often find ourselves searching for ways to guide our children and increasingly, to counter the harmful messages they hear on social media. Without doubt, they need our help to examine and question the confusing and anger-fueled messages they hear from social media influencers. Figures like Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes share hate-filled and misogynistic taunts that flood students’ social media feeds and are increasingly parroted back in locker rooms, classrooms and school hallways. Posts with phrases like “your body, my choice,” or “get back to the kitchen” have been viewed and shared millions of times and continue to spread like wildfire through friend groups, and in so doing insinuating their way into the everyday speech of our boys.
On December 6th, many UTS students and staff will join Canadians across the country in donning white ribbons in remembrance of the 14 young women murdered at L’École Polytechnique in 1989. The story of this tragedy, referred to as the Montreal Massacre, offers a profound opportunity for reflection and compassionate conversation about respect for women, gender equality and human dignity. For our students, the tragedy is part of the history books, happening long before they were even born. But at a time when public rhetoric and banter increasingly sexualizes and diminishes the value of young women, I hope this chapter in Canada’s history can serve as an important lesson about the damage hate and discrimination can cause.
The story of L’École Polytechnique is a difficult one to hear. On a snowy, winter night in Montreal, a gunman entered an engineering classroom filled with students. He separated the male students from the female students and ordered all the male students out of the room. The gunman then opened fire on the young women, murdering 14. These were bright, ambitious women with dreams and hopes. They were daughters, sisters and friends whose lives were shortened simply because they aspired to be engineers. Their deaths were not accidental but the result of a deeply rooted anger that manifested itself in the belief that women were taking opportunities away from men.
Since that devastating day, our conversations about equality have slowly but meaningfully transformed. We teach our children to see that every person, regardless of gender, carries inherent worth. We help them challenge stereotypes by gently but firmly showing how limitations in our thinking are often just unexamined assumptions.
Such conversations are especially important, particularly now when social media and public rhetoric are reviving sexist tropes that were long ago deemed too offensive to say, even in jest. For all our children, it’s about holding up role models who show that strength isn't about domination, but about compassion and support.
I hope that tomorrow, when we think about the legacy of those 14 women, we use their story to move us from tragedy to purpose. As we remember the beautiful lives cut short, I hope we commit to educating and engaging our young people in conversation and connection. Each conversation we have, each moment we help them choose respect over hate, each time we challenge harmful language or behavior, we create healing and hope.
