Femicide

"Kill Feminist Bitches" - Graffito, University of Western Ontario, after Marc Lepine's murder of 14 women in Montreal, 1989.

Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood once asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women. He replied: "They are afraid women will laugh at them." She then asked a group of women why they felt threatened by men. They answered: "We're afraid of being killed."

When I was a kid I hated Vancouver. I remember a feeling of heaviness and dread whenever my family would travel from a small island off the west coast to the big city. It wasn't because it was a big city, I liked cities way more than small towns, in general. Still do. But back then as a kid, I hated Vancouver because the overwhelming feeling of shithole scared me to death. There are a few shitholes in Canada. You've got Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, Barrie Ontario, Davis Inlet, Rose Valley Saskachewan and Quenell B.C. to start. But back then I gave Vancouver the prize.

Nowadays I love Vancouver. In some ways Vancouver benefitted from hosting the Expo 86 franchise. Areas that were dead zones got residences. But Vancouver also lost some of it's frontier charm too. Hope for jobs due tothe festival drew people looking for work where there wasn't any. What made elderly Canadians call Vancouver "seedy" (isn't that a funny archaic term?) was the hookers, drug addicts and all the trade and vibe that goes with a major port town. The hippies, drug cartels, gangs and the strippers didn't help either.

Today Vancouver has become one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I would live there. My sister does. You can find yourself in a rainforest in half an hour. Great restaurants, seafood, the most beautiful peelers, (ask Bon Jovi) hiking, snowboarding. And lots of dead women.

Three years ago, I made the mistake of turning down a corner near Koreatown and finding myself on Wastings. I avoid Wastings as much as possible on my visits. It's like walking in a Romero film and you fear being scratched. One word. Hepititis. The street is actually called Hastings...Hastings and Main. but most of us call it Pain and Wastings. Or "Low Track". You lose weight on the Jenny Crack Diet. You lose weight from Chrystal Meth and from living outdoors or in abandoned, but beautiful, real estate. The old fashioned term seedy just doesn't cut it here. Neither does ghetto, skid row, the weeds, red light. This is hell.

Vancouver suburbs changed laws (like Mel Lastman did in Toronto) and the burbs were able to kick out single apartment dwellers, and prostitites. Federal cutbacks pushed patients out of mental hospitals, dreams of work drew desperate people to Vancouver and needle exchange programs reached emergency levels by the mid-90's.

During these drastic economic changes between Expo and the federal cutbacks dozens of women went missing. By the time the official search for missing women began in the late 90's...forced by an Aboriginal group demanding an investigation... over 40 women were missing. When the murderer was caught over 50 women were missing. He killed, and fed them to his pigs on his farm, and buried some body parts, of 48 women. He had 15 years where authorities simply didn't give a damn. He found most of his victims at Pain and Wastings.

Vancouver is not a unique case of an area that tolerates violence to women.

The Green River killer a couple hours away from Vancouver pleaded guilty to 48 murders, but bragged about commiting 90.

A border city in Mexico began losing women. Most of these women worked for corporate international factories. These murders have been called a metaphor for Mexico and according to amnesty international 350 women have been murdered in ten years. Ten years. Officials in Mexico have resisted taking the crimes seriously and official investigations came only by pressure from grass roots womens groups, poets, and eventually Amnesty International. 300 hundred factories attract desperate workers to the area and yet these corporate globally owned companies combined with corrupt law enforcemnt have done very little to improve the security of the area. Mothers, grandmothers and neighbours have created their own searches for bodies of missing women in "the serial killers playground". I've been to some pretty sketchy areas of Mexico, but this story defies imagination. Ten years, hundreds of dead women.

Long before any official investigation in the disappearance of these dozens of women, in 1995 Tori Amos wrote the song Juarez. Thank god for poets who still respect women and coin a phrase "a metaphor for Mexico". Every shithole needs a metaphor...and that one sure beats "seedy".

Juarez

dropped off the edge again down in jaurez
"don't even bat an eye
if the eagle cries" the rasta man says,
just cause the desert likes young girls flesh and
no angel came

i don't think you even know
what you think you just said
so go on spill your seed
shake your gun to the rasta man's head
and the desert- she must be blessed and
no angel came

there's a time to keep it up
a time to keep it in
the indian is told
the cowboy is his friend
you know that i can breathe
even when i cheat
should. should've been over for me
no angel came