Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Galerie L'UQAM of the Universtity of Quebec and around the city of Montreal.

In 2009 the Gallery of the University of Quebec at Montreal asked us to do a poster commemorating the 20th anniversary of the l’École Polytechnique massacre of 1989, where a disgruntled gunman went into an engineering school in Montreal, separated the women from the men, then proceeded to shoot the women engineering students. The massacre was a huge turning point for Canada's gun control laws and it galvanized the Women's Movement, forcing the serious discussion around violence against women in Canada.

We decided to focus on the history of hate speech against women and feminists, from Ancient Greece to Rush Limbaugh. We’re bothered that it has always been OK to make denigrating public statements about women, and shocked by the violence and abuse this language continues to provoke.

"Disturbing the Peace" was made in English and French, and we took our message to the streets of Montreal by plastering hundreds of posters throughout the city. While people were confronted by the onslaught of shocking and irrational hate speech through the ages, we grounded the poster with the very rational words of Bob Herbert of The New York Times:

We could become much more sane, much healthier as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions. - Bob Herbert, The New York Times

© 2009 Guerrilla Girls

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Galerie L'UQAM of the Universtity of Quebec and around the city of Montreal.

In 2009 the Gallery of the University of Quebec at Montreal asked us to do a poster commemorating the 20th anniversary of the l’École Polytechnique massacre of 1989, where a disgruntled gunman went into an engineering school in Montreal, separated the women from the men, then proceeded to shoot the women engineering students. The massacre was a huge turning point for Canada's gun control laws and it galvanized the Women's Movement, forcing the serious discussion around violence against women in Canada.

We decided to focus on the history of hate speech against women and feminists, from Ancient Greece to Rush Limbaugh. We’re bothered that it has always been OK to make denigrating public statements about women, and shocked by the violence and abuse this language continues to provoke.

"Disturbing the Peace" was made in English and French, and we took our message to the streets of Montreal by plastering hundreds of posters throughout the city. While people were confronted by the onslaught of shocking and irrational hate speech through the ages, we grounded the poster with the very rational words of Bob Herbert of The New York Times:

We could become much more sane, much healthier as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions. - Bob Herbert, The New York Times

© 2009 Guerrilla Girls

PROJECT IRELAND

© 2009 Guerrilla Girls

PROJECT IRELAND

© 2009 Guerrilla Girls