I have an important announcement to make I am undergoing a sex change operation. I have changed my name to Johanna Erica Neufeld. I’m done. Please call me that the next time you bump into me. I renounce my gender.

Today I went to the Steinbach version of a day to commemorate the death of 14 young women in the Montreal Massacre of December 6, 1989. The killer, Marc Lepine, was a young man, who was in despair over the fact that women had the nerve to apply for positions as Engineering students at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique. These women, he believed, had ruined his life.  They got the positions he deserved because he was a man. So he went to the class with a rifle, divided the class into 2, women on one side, men on the other. Men were told to leave and then he shot the 9 women, killing 6. Then he went on a rampage through the school killing 8 more women and injuring 10 more along with 4 men, but women were clearly the target. He could not bear giving up his privilege which he had enjoyed for most of his life, though it did not do much for him. On that day, his resentment spilled over into blind irrational rage and he went on a rampage. It was the largest mass murder in Canadian history, I have been told.

I was disappointed at how many men attended this event in Steinbach. I think I counted 5 of us.  We got to see a great film too–Polytechnique. I admit there have been many commemorations of this grisly event in our town over the years, and until today never attended. I guess I did not think it was important. I was profoundly ignorant in other words.  Male dominance over women is a sick and pitiful enterprise that has not died. 11 women in Manitoba have died as a result of violence against them by men in the year since December 6, 2018.

Many men are wieners who can’t stand the thought of women being equal to them. They are like the whites in the US who could not stand the thought of seeing a black family in the White House.

As comedian Jim Jefferies says, “We can do better.” I don’t apologize for my introductory comment. After all this is not a joking matter. I wanted to draw in as many people as possible. More than 5 men need to think about this.

I am a feminist; and that’s no joke.