Francis Dupuis-Déri is a professor of political science and researcher at the Institut de recherches et d'études féministes at Université du Québec à Montréal (Institute for Feminist Research and Studies of the University of Quebec in Montreal). His work focuses on democracy and social movements, as well as antifeminist movements. Author of La Crise de la masculinité. Autopsie d'un mythe tenace ("The Crisis of Masculinity: Autopsy of a Tenacious Myth", 2022), he has notably studied the political dimension of the rhetoric of masculinism.

For the first time in France, authorities have charged a man in connection with a planned attack motivated solely by masculinist ideology. How did this form of terrorism emerge in North America?

Masculinist terrorism has been present in the United States and Canada for about 30 years. In December 1989, we experienced an antifeminist attack at Polytechnique Montréal. An armed young man with a semi-automatic rifle killed 14 women there. He stated on the spot that he hated women and left behind a letter, which was a genuine declaration of war against feminists, before killing himself.

This tragedy was a terrible shock for the country. But what also deeply shocked people were the comments heard in the weeks that followed in the media, which tried to explain that the attack was understandable because women and feminists had gained too much ground and men were suffering as a result, as sociologist Mélissa Blais analyzes in L'Attentat antiféministe de Polytechnique ("The Polytechnique anti-feminist attack", 2024).

Other attacks have followed since then. The most infamous are probably the murder of six people in 2014 in Isla Vista, California, which the 22-year-old perpetrator justified by his hatred of women, and the 2018 attack in Toronto, where a young man drove a van into a crowd, killing 10 people. In total, more than 100 victims, according to data collected in 2023 by Annvor Seim Vestrheim at UQAM – mainly women – have been killed by men identifying as an incel, or recognized by the movement as one of their own.

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