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 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.
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.