Hello? I forgot my mantra.

Wrong she is also a lesbian she’s alison bechdel

Today marks the 26th anniversary of the École Polytechnique massacre, in Montreal, Canada. A cowardly, misogynic act which left 14 promising women dead, simply because they were women:

Twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a Mini-14 rifle and a hunting knife, shot 28 people, killing 14 women, before committing suicide. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was “fighting feminism” and calling the women “a bunch of feminists,” he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. Overall, he killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under 20 minutes before turning the gun on himself.[1][2] His suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life. The note included a list of 19 Quebec women whom Lépine considered to be feminists and apparently wished to kill.[3]

After this despicable act, Canada adopted gun control measures. Since gun control measures were adopted there has not been another mass shooting killing more than 10 people in Canada. Since École Polytechnique there has only been 9 massacres in Canada; 9 in 26 years.

Please remember these women.

Our photographer: Can you smile for the camera, Gillian?

GA: I don’t smile. 

Our photographer: Can you look impish? 

GA: I can do impish. 

CW: You do impish but you don’t smile? 

GA: [Laughing] Yes. Do you know what’s funny? Sometimes I’ll see photographs of myself in the early days of The X-Files, and I think that my attitude towards the whole thing was very similar to Kristen Stewart’s. There’s a very similar look in my eye: slightly defiant, slightly bored. All I ever got was: “Smile! Smile!” when I didn’t want to smile. And I really wish that somebody at that time had told me: “You know that it’s OK to be who you really are.” 

Girls like Ellen Page in a suit

Emily Letts, a patient advocate at Cherry Hill Women’s Center, is the winner of the Abortion Stigma Busting Video contest! Emily let us into the operating room during her first-trimester abortion and told us what it was like before and after making her decision.

Sponsored by the Abortion Care Network and the 1 in 3 Campaign, the contest was launched to push back against the shame and silence that keeps patients from getting the care and support they need.

While I was pregnant with both of my children, I can’t even guess as to how many birthing videos I watched on youtube, and I can’t even begin to calculate just how big on an impact it was for my births to have been able to watch other woman do what I was getting ready to do. 

I remember being comforted that birth wasn’t all screaming and horror like it is on TV. I remember watching women giving birth as gracefully as making love and wanting that sort of experience now that I knew I could have that sort of experience; that I didn’t have to be scared.