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.
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:
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.
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.
It isn’t sexism in law. Laws are written in blood. If women are frequently being killed because they refused sex or a relationship, then a law should exist as a deterrent. It isn’t just “killing a woman because they hate women,” it’s specifically in cases where women are stalked, harassed, or pursued non-consensually for sex or a relationship. If women were targeting men in the same way, a law should exist in that case as well. That isn’t the case, though. Women are VASTLY disproportionately killed by men for reasons pertaining to sex and relationships compared to the other way around.
Italy sees a problem: women are being frequently killed by intimate partners, stalkers, and harassers specifically because of their gender. They made a law to deter that. If the opposite problem presents itself they should do the same.
Do I interpret your meaning correctly as less “it’s not sexism” and more “laws should reflect the issues of their time”?
What would be sexism in law in your view? Is it even reasonable to talk about “sexism against men” as a concept?
It would be sexist if they made a law that unfairly benefits one gender. This law does not. If women were killing men at nearly as high of a rate, then there should be a law for them as well.
It is not unreasonable to talk about “sexism against men.” It is unreasonable to go “well what about men?” in a circumstance where men are not being negatively affected to the same degree. It’s like going “well, ALL lives matter” in response to BLM. White people aren’t statistically targeted by the US justice system, where black people are. “All lives matter,” or the sentiment behind it, might not be technically incorrect, but it’s distracting from the present and current problem, which is systemic racism in the justice system.
It’s the same thing here. There is societal mistreatment of women and misogyny baked into our social systems and upbringings. Women are killed at a FAR higher rate than men are killed by women, and especially related to intimate partners, harassers, stalkers, etc. There is a significant population of men that see sex as a right and women as a means to an end, and rejection, denial, or unavailability makes them dangerously obsessive and/or violent. Until we spend the time to undo that societal conditioning through effective education, laws like this prevent violent misogynists from hurting more women.
Men commit murder far more than women do, but men kill women for the above reasons at an even higher rate. If women perpetuated this kind of violence at significant rates, then there should be another law for that case. In fact, I don’t think this law goes far enough, and has awkward implications when applied to those that don’t conform to gender norms and/or are transgender, let alone men. I think this law could’ve been written in a gender non-specific manner, which would undeniably be better, but they chose the wording they did as a strong stance against a rash of sexually motivated violence against women right now. Similar to outdated rape laws in some places, we can only hope that more inclusive laws are put into place in the future. A law for the vast majority of victims of a type of crime is better than nothing.
That’s a strong argument about whether this law is justified, not whether or not it’s sexist.
If the standard for sexism is “unfair” treatment instead of “unequal” treatment, then proponents of things like a lower minimum wage for women would argue that their proposed inequality is “fair”.
Thank you for responding all the same, btw
Assuming murdering women was already considered murder, this law will make absolutely nothing to deter that, and might in fact increase violence against women due to the press about it causing an increase in misogyny.
It’s just politicians scoring brownie points by doing absolutely nothing significant.
The way to deter that is education, not adding some symbolic years to a sentence that should already have been deterrent enough.
If the possibility of being sentenced for murder didn’t deter someone, neither will the possibility of being sentenced by femicide, or any other form of aggravated murder.
What will deter them is understanding that murdering someone who isn’t an immediate terminal danger to society as a whole (billionaires and the like) is monstrous and inhumane and shouldn’t ever be done unless it’s the last option in self defence, and that “because they refused to have sex with me” is among the stupidest and most embarrassing justifications for murder they could come up with, but, again, that could only be achieved through education, something Italy doesn’t seem to be doing because, unlike inventing new names for already existing crimes, it actually costs money.
It’s not a redundant law any more than hate crime laws are redundant. You aren’t understanding the premise. It’s not a new crime entirely, it’s like hate crime charges. They can make sentences more severe or reduce the possibility of early release, among other reasons. By the same argument you’re making, hate crime enhancements for violent crime are unnecessary and performative, because those crimes were already illegal.
Hate crime enhancements do work. Why wouldn’t this? In any case, it’s a clear statement being made by society at large that that behavior is unacceptable.
Citation needed.
And just plain old murder isn’t?
You want misogynists (or rather their children; most of the grown ones won’t learn, no matter how many of them you throw in jail) to understand that it’s unacceptable, fucking spend the time and money teaching them it’s unacceptable, and why.
This doesn’t teach anyone anything. It’s just empty political posturing. If it has any perceptible effect on the number of crimes against women (and that’s a very big if) it’ll be to increase them.
I am not suggesting that education shouldn’t happen. It’s the far more effective long term solution, part of addressing the underlying causes of hate-motivated crimes. Hate crime laws do not do nearly enough. However, in the short term, getting those that commit hate (or gender) related crimes off the street for longer is going to save lives, and maybe convince some offenders to change their mind. I think you misunderstood my meaning. Hate crime laws of any kind do not prevent hate crimes.
They do absolutely reduce hate crimes, as those that commit hate crimes are likely to reoffend. The benefits in proactive reduction are hard to prove and collect data on, as are all crime statistics, where there are simply too many variables to account for. However, reoffender rates are easily documented, and a law that takes those likely to reoffend off the street for longer than linked non-hate crimes would is absolutely reducing those types of crimes.
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.
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.
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.
Yet we don’t find the same applies to men
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It does. Laws like this are always written gender neutral. Same thing with laws banning discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. It’s just as illegal to fire someone for being straight as it is to fire them for being gay.
These laws are always written to protect everyone. But conservatives such as yourself will read a headline and then whine about minority groups receiving “special treatment.”
This is false as far as I can tell; the change is to the Italian Penal Code, specifically Article 577. I can’t find a primary source for the text of the change, but all secondary sources (example) I’ve read say that the life sentence applies “when the act is committed as an act of hatred or discrimination or prevarication or as an act of control or possession or domination as a woman, or in relation to the woman’s refusal to establish or maintain an emotional relationship or as an act of limitation of her individual freedom” (translated to English). It appears like this could be a (near-?)direct quote of the legal language used in the change to the penal code. Do you have a source that contradicts this?
Got a source that’s the case here? This is special laws for “antisemitism” all over again
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.
Are you being dense on purpose or what?
Wow, so progressive