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.
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