Italy’s parliament on Tuesday approved a law that introduces femicide into the country’s criminal law and punishes it with life in prison.
The vote coincided with the international day for the elimination of violence against women, a day designated by the U.N. General Assembly.
The law won bipartisan support from the center-right majority and the center-left opposition in the final vote in the Lower Chamber, passing with 237 votes in favor.
The law, backed by the conservative government of Premier Giorgia Meloni, comes in response to a series of killings and other violence targeting women in Italy. It includes stronger measures against gender-based crimes including stalking and revenge porn.
There needs to be more accountability for law enforcement for this too have any real effect. Studies show up to 40% of law enforcement self identify as domestic abusers. So why would they investigate themselves?
That is a wild statistic! Is that study just in Italy or?
That is a wild statistic!
It’s a demonstrably inaccurate number. The study was vague enough that yelling at a partner was included, and much more damning they included the officer even if they were the victim in the situation. It literally paints the victims as domestic abusers!
“40% of law enforcement self identify as domestic abusers” is demonstrably false and is not something that should be repeated.
The comment was UP TO 40%. Various studies range from 2 to 40%. But since they are SELF REPORTING, the number is likely higher.
Look through the various studies, but all still show higher rates than the general public. And if law enforcement are the domestic abusers, how can they be tasked with investigating themselves?
as far as I know that stat is for the united States, but pigs are pigs
Law enforcement in the USA is specific. It’s not the same in every country. Can’t speak for Italy though.
I don’t see how the femicide part makes any sense or difference. There were already the exact same punishments for killing of anyone, so isn’t this essentially copy pasting existing laws but with a specific group highlight? If that’s the case, it will do absolutely nothing.
The second part is fine, though I hope it’s meant for everyone and not just women. I don’t know about Italy specifically, but in many European countries if you fall victim to these crimes as a man, you’ll likely receive no help.
Would be great to see some more protections for everyone, as well as more serious punishments for violations against anyone. Making anything like this gender-specific will just fuel already problematic anti-other-gender sentiment.
inequity is real.
If each and every person should matter then It should be ok to recognize each and every person for what they are being targetted for. And I see this law as doing just that. It’s recognizing that a person may not be targetted for being an individual but a part of a group. And that is important. So That is taking their individualness into importance by recognizing the group they are being targetted by.
This should be allowed if you’re being legitimately concerned for EVERYONE’S safety here.
people who may be at their job as a sex worker. Or if they are simply female and that in itself could be weaponized against them.
They will face a violent discrimination just as another person fitting into a different group might. And it’s important to recognize that, make that a law, and keep them safe too. So if “Being targetted for”is a law , recognizing group profile is part of that.
If each and every person should matter then It should be ok to recognize each and every person for what they are being targetted for. And I see this law as doing just that.
Please note that, by all accounts I’ve seen, Italy’s femicide law does not cover any similar offense against men. It’s an elevated offense to try and reduce the disproportionate number of Italian women who are killed by intimate partners.
If you aim for equality, making separate laws for separate genders is not the solution. This is anything but equality. Especially when there are already laws protecting the groups in question, as part of the entire nation. The problem here is completely different and requires different solutions.
To note: I’m not who you responded to.
making separate laws for separate genders is not the solution
Absolutely it is. If there is a measurable inequality towards a minority, you should enshrine the protection of that minority into law - which is one reasons why many countries specify anti-discrimination laws. This law regards the same.
The problem here is completely different
Which you have failed to specify. So… the problem is what, exactly? I don’t see one.
and requires different solutions.
Which you also failed to provide.
I’m getting a strong “but won’t anyone think of the men!” vibe from you.
I think a better law would be more generic in defining what defined group targeting.
Why only protect one group? How many other divisions will there be?
How balkanized will you make the law when ypu apply it to people?
Will more wealth entitle you to more protections?
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Yea… I’m with the incels that don’t really understand the point. If murder was already a crime that would be punished by life in prison, narrowing the specificity of who was murdered doesn’t change much of anything.
“Cool, if it makes you happy I guess 👍”
It includes stronger measures against gender-based crimes including stalking and revenge porn
Read?
My comment is very clearly specifically in reference to the term “femicide” and the official recognition of it within Italian law. It’s murder. If a woman kills another woman, it is not a femicide, that’s just a murder… the penalty is the same in the end… right??? Overall, it seems a relatively unnecessary level of specificity.
“Femicide” so… murder? Yeah, hasnt “life” been the typical punishment for murder? (Life is usually 25years) .
Did they not already recognize murder of women should be treated like murder?
Victims of relationships violence (myself), stalking and harassment (myself), should have justice. Unfortunately, I dont hear much about the men who suffer from this type of violence.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’m interpreting this being in the vein of a crime being murder, but potentially also a hate crime. The motivation of a crime is part of its definition and affects sentencing especially in tertiary cases eg attempted murder, manslaughter etc.
It’s not just about murder. It’s about how men are the primary perpetrators of violence against women. As a woman, If I go out anywhere my #1 fear is a man. We are taught to never go outside alone at night, even in our own neighborhoods. We are taught not to trust strange men. We have to protect our drinks if we go out to socialize. Every position we find ourselves in we have to consider whether its safe or not. We can’t walk across a parking lot to our cars without worrying if a man will do something. Hell, we even have to consider if smiling at a man or not will trigger him. It sounds crazy and over the top but it’s the reality of being a woman. Constant awareness of everything and everyone around us. On average the weakest man is stronger than the average woman. It’s very easy to overpower us so we must be vigilant to never get into that position in the first place. It’s fucking exhausting having to think these things about every man we meet.
I’m sorry about what has happened to you, it’s wrong and you deserve justice. You shouldn’t be ignored just because you’re a man and it is perceived that you can’t be a victim in these cases. I don’t agree with that at all and I really feel for you. But you need to understand the things that happen to women every minute and that’s the point of what Italy is doing.
Did you even read the header? It was more than just murder.
It includes stronger measures against gender-based crimes including stalking and revenge porn
Ok so it looks like incels CAN’T read. Just as much as they can’t pick a username.
Its best if everyone knows that they’re dealing with a special guy. Its an advantage im not trying to hide.
There is a massive imbalance in violent crimes, in that nearly half of all women murdered are murdered by a spouse, partner or boyfriend or other kind of male acquaintance.
This doesn’t skew the other direction, so that’s why women victims are getting special consideration and why there are special laws being made to make it easier to prosecute this kind of crime in a different or more efficient way. (Like we have “hate crime” laws that allow for special forms of prosecution.) This isn’t supposed to solve all the problems, but it may help by making the consequences of a man killing his wife or girlfriend far less likely to be reduced by pleas of temporary insanity or the like or be dropped by the court for minor reasons.
It take a certain type of flaw in logic to assume that because a group is “getting” something, it means another group is losing something.
What if one group is getting something unproportionally more than the other.
That creates inequality, essentially meaning that the disadvantaged group is losing something. I.e. they get less that the other group.
So yeah, if you give one group much more than the other, they are losing something.
Recognizing group harassment is also benefitting individualism by recognizing that… inequity is real.
op has a strange and bot-like post history
These comments seem to be full of the same people who misunderstand that the word “racism” describes a massive cultural and societal issue that affects people in large, hidden ways throughout their life, rather than using bad words.
If they had a problem in Italy of men being murdered for not being obedient, it might be worth considering broadening the scope of this classification.
This does not even target the perpetrators as a class (even though we can probably guess a general demographic), just classifies the crime according to what has happened to the victim, and why. This is the same for all hate crimes that are prevalent enough to warrant it. Imo it is the culture and society that makes it a hate crime, not just the intent.
I find it amazing that half the threads on this post I can’t open because they’re being piled on by people I’ve already blocked on lemmy. 🙄
Men with sexual insecurity is a driving force of contention and violent politics in this entire world. If you read that special protections are being made for a class of people who are suffering dis-fucking-proportionally and you say “What about meeeeee?” to it, you need to get your shit together. You’re not healthy.
But the end result, the punishment… nothing is changing here. Is the general belief that labeling, and “bringing awareness” is going to stop anything? Is this similar to how labeling racism as racism in the USA has completely wiped out racism?
No
Ok… so… 🤷♂️
I hesitated whether to engage because your use of the word “completely” labels you a troll. You also put “bringing awareness” in quotes instead of using the word visibility, presumably to belittle the concept.
Visibility helps collect and track data, drive policy, reveal patterns, support victims and survivors, improve early intervention and prevention, and, hopefully, eventually, shift cultural attitudes.
But you could get that from Google if you gaf.
I didn’t go to google to read the article, it was on Lemmy… thus, I asked Lemmy. You could probably infer that if you gaf but it seems your aim is to be combative. The word “completely” threw you off? It wasn’t the sarcasm implying that “racism is cured now because of awarenes?” Best of luck…
Not at all, if your weren’t trolling, I hope your found those points helpful in describing the benefits of visibility.
One of the things I missed out was government accountability, where police departments have historically labelled these as isolated incidents, because the big picture is pretty sickening.
The law, backed by the fascist government of Premier Giorgia Meloni
Ftfy. Broken clock, twice a day…
She was democratically elected. Not charged or convicted of any crimes. No pedophilia. She implemented a new tax on banks and insurance worth 11 billion euro.
Aside from fucking Elon Musk, she’s been pretty effective.
Do you have brain damage? She’s still a fascist.
People here seem weirdly confused about the term “feminicide”: it means homicide motivated by misogyny. It’s a subset of hate crimes.
They exist in all western societies I’m aware of, if you’re confused it’s probably only because you’re unused to thinking of women as a protected class and hate for women as aggravating circumstances, the way hate for any race of religion is in most legal systems.
Yes they’re 50% of the population, but also yes they’re disproportionately the targets of violence because misogyny exists. Yet they are rarely treated as such in many legal systems.
I see no reason to make a special specific word as every category needs this…
They should just add modifiers to the category: Assault for instance can get aggravated and hate crime as adjuvants. Murder has manslaughter and degrees and could have hate crime modifiers.
This is a more fair and clear generalized solution of core concepts than entirely new specific categories.
The word just existed since 1652
So not very long at all /s, not that it shouldn’t be a word, but rather, why complicate the legal system needlessly when such systems rely on relativity, clarity, and consistency. Outside of that context we can have 10000 words for it.
Shouldn’t it be gynocide? Since it’s clearly pulling from Latin. Activists should be forced to work with linguists for their words, or face the penalty of be hit with a 2x4.
gyne is Greek, femina is Latin.
Goddamn I wish the biggest contention about this story was the etymology.
Just let latin die already.
I think that penalty is a hate crime. But you’re correct.
The “confusion” seems intentional…or rather a symptom of the very problem the new class is attempting to address.
Many people seem to believe that a femicide charge is automatically a more serious charge than murder. It isn’t.
Many people believe that the law explicitly targets men. It doesn’t (No more than a “standard murder charge or an assault charge “target” men, they just commit murder and assault more often).
Many people believe that the very existence of a femicide charge diminishes the importance of a murder charge. It doesn’t, they carry the same sentence.
If homicide and femicide carry the same sentence, what is the point of all this?
The point is culpability. It’s the same reason there’s separate charges for infanticide, assistance a suicide, manslaughter, etc. It a class of charges so culpability, and therefore justice, can be more accurately meted.
Your note about disproportionate targets is misleading and inaccurate. Femicide is specifically about murders as far as I know. In the vast majority of countries, men are victims of murder more often than women (in Italy, men are victims about twice as often). They have higher rates of being assaulted/maimed at pretty much every age category in most western countries.
What you’re likely trying to gloss, is the oft repeated “victim of domestic violence” stats, which is a niche area of violence that gets used by feminist movements to ignore the arguably greater violence that men face on the regular. This sub-division is even more biased, given that men generally don’t report spousal abuse / are less likely to get injured to the point that they get hospitalized by it. Even after the victims of ‘violence’ includes pretty well all categories, in many western countries the ‘results’ are roughly even between genders – Canada for example is at about 48% of all violent offences being committed against men, and 52% against women. But again, not all those crimes are really equal – men are over represented in fatal / serious violent assaults causing injury far more often than women. They both experience violence at the same ‘general’ frequency, but men are more likely to be left maimed/dead.
Murder’s murder, in the eyes of many. It’s strange to provide additional protections for just one demographic, especially when that demographic is far less frequently the victim of murder.
Ah, but how often are they victims of murder because of their gender? Femicide isn’t just murdering a woman, the motivation counts.
Dedicating time and effort to focus on a special category of murder and implementing harsher punishments for perpetrators based on the demographic membership of the victim, feels counter to the equitable application of justice for a country at large.
Intentionally murdering a woman because she’s a woman, is in my view little different from murdering a person for any of the other reasons that get lumped together under things like ‘first degree’ and ‘second degree’ murders. This legislation change isn’t about making murder illegal – it’s always been illegal. It’s about making the punishment more significant if the victim is a woman and the prosecution can prove the murderer had any anti-woman comments/viewpoints.
There are examples of women killing men because they’re men – there are a few famous, and more less-famous, cases where escorts, for example, kill their johns because they’re easy targets. There are examples of minority groups killing majority groups because of clearly racist/hateful motives, that get excused because of the demographics of the perp and the victim. The legislation change noted, basically says killing people is bad, but killing women is somehow worse – ie. that the genders aren’t equally treated, and women are worth more / require more protection. To apply harsher punishments unevenly based on demographics is not what I’d consider a fair and impartial system – it’s one that’s been engineered to preference the protected group’s interests over the interests of the broader whole.
Besides, men get killed 2-5x more frequently than women in many western countries – why are we trying to protect the gender that has far better overall results? This is sorta a gender equivalent to giving tax breaks to the rich – they already have it better than others, why give them even more privilege? Add more supports to the demographic that has terrible stats in this area.
I agree with you, I just think that it’s valid to increase the penalty for hate crimes over regular crimes. Of course this would apply to murdering a man because of his gender too.
The vast majority of the time Men are killed by other men. If there was an epidemic of women calling for violence, hatred and subjugation of men supported by podcasts and propaganda and it was resulting in a large increase in murder then we’d need to address that problem too.
Murder’s murder, in the eyes of many
You’re right! That’s why we should prosecute all traffic deaths as first degree murder. Someone drunkenly stumbles into the road, into your path, causing you to run them over and kill them? Mandatory minimum life sentence for you. After all, death is death, killing is killing. We don’t give a shit about people’s motives.
I doubt they are saying to discard all motives; specifically they said “murder is murder” so using cases that aren’t intentional (ie manslaughter, not murder) undermines your point. It’s more that there’s an upper limit or certain criteria where we stop caring what the person’s motives are, so where do we draw that line? I don’t pretend to know the answer, but it’s a question worth exploring even if you think you know the answer already.
There’s never been an upper limit on criteria in the eyes of the law, what an odd thing to say.
All adding a charge for femicide does is refine their legal system to they have another charging mechanism that might more appropriate assess culpability. They don’t actually have to use the charge, and the addition of the charge doesn’t diminish charges for other types of murder in any way.
ie there’s no outcry when somebody is charged with infanticide or assisting in a suicide, etc…because motivation matters when you’re charging a crime so the system can appropriate mete justice…femicide is no different. The fact that there’s an “outcry” is a symptom of the problem it’s trying to address.
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A lot of people in here seem upset for some reason.
And your mild comment is a magnet for downvotes… Which is really highlighting your point.
Pretty sure threads like this are why there aren’t more women on Lemmy…
It’s actually pretty sad. Kinda scary to.
Fucking hell some of these comments read as redpill bullshit.
Lemmy is generally better than reddit on most issues, except on anything to do with women - when it is somehow spectacularly worse.
No they don’t.
Lemmy loves to assume criticism against stuff like this (and often out of misunderstanding as I read here), automatically means you hate women.
Just because you criticize something doesn’t mean you’re against it.
♡ step in the right direction ♡
“Let’s slap a bandaid instead of fixing the underlying societal problems causing this and score some popularity points” - every politician ever.
Edit: okay maybe there are a few smart politicians, but they’re not scoring the popularity points with this:
“Italy is one of only seven countries in Europe where sex and relationship education is not yet compulsory in schools, and we are calling for it to be compulsory in all school cycles,” said the head of Italy’s Democratic Party, Elly Schlein. “Repression is not enough without prevention, which can only start in schools.”
Is your position that, in Italy, politicians are only using this added charge - and not attempting to address the problem in other ways?
That’s exactly what I read in the article. Here’s a snippet:
The debate over introducing sexual and emotional education in schools as a way to prevent gender-based violence has become heated in Italy. A law proposed by the government would ban sexual and emotional education for elementary students and require explicit parental consent for any lessons in high school.
The ruling coalition has defended the measure as a way to protect children from ideological activism, while opposition parties and activists have described the bill as “medieval.”
They are actively working against educating children about genders and sex.
I don’t disagree with what you wrote in bold.
But we both know that femicide isn’t the only mechanism they’re using to combat the issue.
I don’t. I just know that someone is trying and losing.
…which is atrocious, and we should celebrate the various pillars erected to deal with issues, rather than tear them down (not that that’s what I’m saying you’re doing).
This is confusing. So killing a woman is now criminally worse than killing a man? That seems absurd.
At no point didn’t anyone ever say that it was “criminally worse” it has the same sentence…it’s just a different charging mechanism like infanticide.
What’s absurd (but not surprising) is this notion that adding a class somehow diminished the existing classes.
At no point didn’t anyone ever say that it was “criminally worse” it has the same sentence
The article very explicitly says exactly that. Murdering someone due to their sex is very explicitly treated differently now, depending on the sex of the victim.
If someone murdered a male due to their sex, would you treat that any differently than someone murdering a female due to their sex?
Yes.
Prosecution is a very different thing than punishment. This is a change to how some crimes are prosecuted in response to a very disproportionate rate of violence.
“Hate crime” exists in the US with pretty much the same logic.
The law… comes in response to a series of killings and other violence targeting women in Italy.
“Targeting” being the keyword here
How does one determine if the killer killed the woman because he hated her and not just for fun?
I’d guess most murders happen because somebody really hated that person. So that’s kinda stupid. But maybe I’m missing something.
Also, I’d think most murders are targeted, otherwise it’s just manslaughter, no?
Italian here: the crime arises when the homicide is committed because the woman refused to start or pursue a relationship with the perpetrator.
Just a poorly written article, omitting many key points about this and it’s causing confusion for those that haven’t been following this saga, which I guess is most non-Italians
Totally agree, not very clear
There’s a lot of distinction around intent in US law: premeditated, 1st degree, manslaughter (as you brought up) v homicide.
And laws are often written in blood: if something is happening enough people want to curtail it, make more law/punishment. So this just recognizes that femicide has been a particular problem.
Is a woman losing her life worse than a man? Not inherently. Does Italy need a more severe deterrent for targeting women lethally than other cases? Sounds like.
I’m familiar with mitigating and aggravating circumstances.
Is that what this is? The article is not very clear on this and it sounds like regardless of the circumstances, any murder of a woman will be treated as a femicide.
Edit: okay I found another article that does mention aggravating circumstances, like stalking and sexual violence. Which makes a lot more sense.
How does one determine if the killer killed the woman because he hated her and not just for fun?
What have you read on the legal basis of hate crime laws? What have you done yourself in order to answer your own questions?
You do realize that people have conversations on here, right? If everyone just went to google – why have lemmy?
Usually because of statements made by the perpetrator, either before or after the attack, that show they targeted this person for that reason.
No. You are just susceptible to right wing issue framing.
Does this imply that previously killing women wasn’t criminal in Italy?
I presume that femicide is a subset of “homicide”, but I can’t tell if it means “any killing of a woman”, “any killing of a woman by a man”, “any killing of a woman because she’s a woman”, or “any killing of a woman by a man because she’s a woman”.
And I shudder to imagine how trans-women and trans-men fit into this weirdly sexist label.
(In America we have nice gender-neutral crimes, with enhancers if it was done out of prejudicial hate.)
No, it does not imply that other murder is less serious. The notion that you seem to believe it does is evidence of the problem that it’s trying to address. It take a certain type of flaw in logic to assume that because a group is “getting” something, it means another group is losing something. The legal system isn’t zero sum.
There’s no outcry when somebody is charged with infanticide, and there should (logically) be no outcry here.
Yo would be able to tell what the charge means if you read the law, instead of trying to guess. Nowhere in the law does it say “by a man”,for example. You’re projecting injustice where there is none.
Oh, you’ve read the law in question. Great! I can’t read Italian, and the linked article didnt have a statement of what the law actually said.
Does the law specify “woman” as a protected class or “gender”?
With the enactment of this law, is a man who murders a woman for the covered motivation treated differently than a woman who murders a man with the equivalent malice? What’s the actual difference?
You could also read the law if you used the internet, instead of writing a half-cocked message to me. I know you have it.
The difference is culpability. We don’t treat the murder of an infant, assisting a suicide, or indirect killing the same way as a “standard” murder charge…and femicide is no different. It’s just another tool in the toolbox so justice can be more accurately delivered.
So, what’s the link to this english-language translation of the law in question?
Here’s an unattributed quote presumably from such from a BBC article:
The Italian law will apply to murders which are “an act of hatred, discrimination, domination, control, or subjugation of a woman as a woman”, or that occur when she breaks off a relationship or to “limit her individual freedoms.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dzp050yn2o
As described in the above quote, it seems exactly as sexist as I presumed – special protection in the law for cis women, which categorically excludes cis men, trans men, and trans women from its protection.
Do you have a contradictory summary or, ideally, a link to the actual text and a professional translation?
You didn’t understand the link you posted to me correctly and I’d expect you’d misunderstand anything I pasted to you as well.
Nowhere in that quote does it mention the gender or orientation of the perpetrator. You seem to fundamentally project your own biases.
We don’t define in law the assisted suicide of a white cis man as categorically less severe than the assisted suicide of a black genderqueer female.
Are you familiar with the US Supreme Court case Moritz v. Commissioner (which my wife brought to my attention after she saw the movie.)?
An important advance in feminist law was literally about a man who wanted a tax deduction but was denied because the deduction was meant for women.
At no point does this law say femicide is more or less important than other murder.
It means the murder of a woman motivated by misogyny. It is a subset of homicide and also a subset of hate crimes. It can be thought of as recognizing misogyny as a motive of hate and thus an aggravating circumstance to a homicide, and women as a protected class. Killing a trans woman or a trans man could very well get a “transphobia” label for a double hate crime, depending on the motives that get established. This is not as complicated as you seem to believe.
It’s not complicated, it’s just sexist and not explained in the linked article.
If a man kills a woman out of hatred for women that’s a terrible crime and should be severely punished. But if a woman kills a man out of hatred for men, that is exactly as horrific a crime and should be punished no less severely.
Sexism in law benefits nobody.
Nowhere in the law does it say “by a man”.
It’s only “sexist” insofar as it’s “sexist” that men are by far the most likely gender who commit murder.
Do you believe charging a person for the crime they commit is wrong, somehow? Like in the case of infanticide. Should that motivation be ignored and the person charged with homicide?
The legal system has always added classes of murder to address real life issues, not issues imagined in a thought experiment for the purposes of perpetuating the very problem the laws try to address.
Like in the case of infanticide. Should that motivation be ignored and the person charged with homicide?
You’re missing my point. If you kill someone out of hatred for babies, teenagers, the elderly, or whatever agist “generation” they’re a member of you should be charged with the exact same crime.
(Also,.FWIW, the term in American english and American law is generally “murder”. “Homicide” is just an unnatural death which may or may not be criminal.)
Oh, I definitely get your point. You believe, when assessing culpability, the system should be “one size fits all”. You’re arguing that the added classes of infanticide, assisting a suicide, etc shouldn’t exist. I disagree…and so does every legal system. Trials are always about culpability, and defining crimes help the system accurately assess culpability.
There are already (generally) no special classifications for the killing of teenagers or the elderly.
You’re incorrect: murder is homicide with culpability. Homicide is the killing of one person by another (“homi” is right there in the word). Homicide is the appropriate term for this conversation, because we’re discussing culpability when people kill other people - although both are appropriate because we’re not making a distinction between pre and post trial. “Any unnatural death” is a category so broad it doesn’t carry a definition, or rather…your phrase best defines your concept.
You’re probably wrong about the topic at hand.
https://newyork.public.law/laws/n.y._penal_law_section_485.05
Killing of an infant, teenager, or elderly* person in NYS due to their age is the exact same violation of the NYS hate crime law.
There is a separate enhancer for assault of an elderly person, which is less about motivation of the offender and more a statement of presumed infirmity. Similarly, there are offenses like “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” which enshrine certain special protections for persons under a certain age irrespective of the mental state of the offender.
Sentence-enhancers concerning the categorical malice of the offender, though, don’t (and shouldnt) distinguish between states in that category. Because to do so would be to enshrine discrimination into law.
What legal system are you referring to?
that was a lot of words to write when you just misunderstood what I wrote.
A definition of “homicide” as “killing by a person” is nonsensical – “regicide” or “infanticide” or “femicide” are not killings BY kings or babies or women.
Any unnatural death is a homicide with either definition though, because “unnatural” means “some human did it”, and the effect is the same – a formal investigation is undertaken by professionals to determine the most likely actual cause and possibly begin a criminal prosecution.
All those cop shows are about “homicide detectives” because each story is about some character who died of other-than-natural-causes.
You can just look these words up instead of making unforced errors.
The whole point is centered around how sexism runs deep in society. Specifically men dominating the world and placing women below them.
the way you object to this sounds like someone on Reddit talking about men’s rights. To me.
The whole point is centered around how sexism runs deep in society. Specifically men dominating the world and placing women below them.
Then invest in education. That’s the only effective way to handle these kinds of societal problems. Attack the root cause: ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills.
Adding some years to a sentence that should already have been deterrent enough won’t make it any more of a deterrent.
This does absolutely nothing to solve the problem and might actually increase it, all so some politicians can score some brownie points.
(Of course, though, increasing education and critical thinking and reducing ignorance A), costs money, and B) is anathema to populist politicians who need an ignorant unthinking population to have any voters, so they’ll just change the name of an already existing crime, further increase division, give themselves a medal for a job well done, and call it a day.)
Every time we draw a line and say “women need special protection”, we are implicitly saying “men don’t matter.”
The very simple fix for this is to keep laws gender-neutral, and let the disparity between prosecutions for hateful murders of women vs hateful murders of men be reflective of the actual disparities in the two sexist hatreds.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where a fact like “41% of American women report experiencing domestic partner violence” will be read as an excuse to ignore that 21% of men report the same thing.
https://www.cdc.gov/intimate-partner-violence/about/index.html
I’ve encountered women arguing that all domestic violence and rape is from men, which would require one-in-five men to have had a homosexual relationship and all such to have been violent.
Yes, men tend to be physically stronger than women and thus male-on-female IPV is often more harmful, but we already have laws that distinguish based on level of harm. And, yes, too many counties are sexist hell-holes that make American red-states look like feminist utopias.
But I don’t think we as a species can sexism our way out of sexism.
I just don’t see this as sexism. But I’m not against you sharing your opinion. I’m not trying to argue.
I’m really curious how you don’t see “we make crimes against one sex worse than crimes against the other” as sexism.
Do you mean it in a “racism is discrimination + oppression” kind of way, where no discrimination against men can be “sexism” due to the patriarchy? Or maybe you think this is more like “free tampon dispenses in the women’s restroom” and the disparity is simply right and proper due to differences between the sexes?
I personally react to this the same way I react to definitions of rape that go something like “the insertion of a penis into another human without their consent”, which excludes cis women rapists from even being charged as such. Or rules allowing “maternity leave” for new mothers (beyond mere recuperation from childbirth) but denying “paternity leave” for new fathers (who may be doing all of the parenting depending on the state of their [possibly deceased] partner.)
These laws already are gender neutral, just like all anti discrimination laws.
If they were gender neutral, it wouldn’t be accurate to describe them as “banning femicide.”
Maybe you’re right, and the reporting is the sexist part and not the law. I can’t read Italian and am unfamiliar with the intricacies of their legal system, so I’d be delighted to be proven wrong.
But saying “oh no, it cant be that bad” is exactly how we got woman-killing abortion bans in parts of my country.
I’ll come burn a cross on your lawn and then insist I can’t be charged with anything other than violating local fire ordinances…
If you come and burn a cross on my white church-going family’s lawn you should be charged with same list of assault, trespass, and arson charges as if you did so on my jewish, black, or pagan friends’ lawns.
A group of black men who banded together and murdered a white boy for dating one of their daughters should be charged with the same anti-lynching statutes enacted to stop the KKK.
The white christian guy who bombs a federal building because the government doesn’t do what he wants should be charged under the same terrorism statute as a brown muslim guy who bombs a federal building because the government doesn’t do what he wants.
It sounds like it’s killing someone specifically because they are a woman and not for another reason. So, intent is what they’re trying to target here.
Does this imply that previously killing women wasn’t criminal in Italy?
Are you being dense on purpose or what?
In America we have nice gender-neutral crimes
Wow, so progressive
