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.
Being rich is not an unchangeable identity nor a protected class; it is the result of one’s actions, and actions, unlike identity, must be treated differently by the law.
The legal situation should be symmetrical because for any individual victim, the frequency of crime done to various identity groups does not matter.
Related example: Rape is more commonly done to women. But male victims of rape should still be protected against it.
Unrelated hypothetical: Let’s say 80% of thievery was committed against women. Should men not also be protected against this crime just because it happens more often to another group of people?
I suppose you could make the argument that “the situation” is still not symmetrical, because women face more hate in their daily lives. But I fail to see how this should apply to the crime of murder or the punishment for its motivation.
It’s certainly true that femicide is a more important protection, as the majority of gender-motivated murder is committed against women (I have no proof for this, but it seems everyone here agrees on this). But that is not a good argument not to provide other genders with the same protections from hate-motivated murder in the form of longer sentences as well.
I have provided my argument, as asked. So again, I ask: Why in your opinion would it be worse to provide this protection to all genders?
If you look at the rates of social class transitions, you’ll find being rich or poor is not much less of an unchangeable identity than gender… But that’s not the point, you keep saying you don’t get the reasons why this law should be asymmetrical, so I’m trying to explain by analogy. The answer is equality is a bad foundation for lawmaking, equity is a better one.
Your hypotheticals and examples are very bad for someone who says elsewhere that
I’ll answer a better analogy : in a world where 80% of [insert any act of violence] is committed against women, should [insert any act of violence] against men still be prosecuted? Yes. Now, assuming a lawmaker believes that the harshness of punishments deters from crimes*, should that lawmaker make the punishment harsher for [insert any act of violence] committed against women? Also yes, that’s what’s happening here. That’s the definition of an aggravating circumstance such as a motive of hate: a reason for worsening the punishment. It’s still murder, only worse to account for the frequency asymmetry.
*If you don’t assume that, then the reasons for punishing anything more or less are mostly symbolic anyways, so by making an asymmetric law you’re only acknowledging symbolically that there’s an asymmetrical problem, but it’s mostly just posturing.