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Photo by Alice Chiche/AFP/Getty Images

Third time lucky? Give NCCM full marks for political perseveration, but in its proposal for a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Islamophobia neither the word “action” nor “Islamophobia” can be defended as politically innocent. Before an official “day” sweeps to fruition on a wave of sentiment, we should carefully assess our criteria for what such days signify.

The mosque attack was similar to the 1979 Montreal Massacre of 14 women. Both were the work of a lone gunman, with no known links to any particular ideology or organized group. Both were inspired by the killer’s hatred of an identifiable group. Neither event suggests a pattern (there was no precedent, nor has there been a sequel to the Montreal massacre). Both resulted in the transmogrification of an isolated incident into a symbol of systemic hatred.

In the Montreal massacre’s wake, killer Marc Lépine’s rampage was elevated into the gender equivalent of Kristallnacht. A National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women emerged on a wave of emotion, producing an alarmist narrative in which every woman is a potential victim of ubiquitous male violence, with every man a potential Lépine.

Photo by Julie Oliver/Postmedia

The truth is, Canada is neither misogynistic nor tolerant of violence against women. Intimate partner violence here is rooted in individual experience and psychology, not culture. The White Ribbon campaign raised awareness of male-on-female violence, but ignored male victimhood of partner violence, which is nonetheless statistically significant. Hundreds of women’s shelters dot the Canadian landscape thanks in part to awareness created by White Ribbon, but until recently there wasn’t a single funded men’s shelter anywhere. The national day’s message is that women’s suffering is the state’s concern. Men’s suffering, not. Many Canadian men (and the women in their lives) deeply resent the national day and its inherent gender bias.