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 that make hate crime murder against men less worth prosecuting as such? Why shouldn’t the legal definition be symmetrical?
Because the legal system isn’t symmetrical, that’s not a thing, that’s not how anything outside of fucking physics work. The system responds to what people are doing in the material world. If bank robberies start going up, they are going to adjust the law to make it more efficient to process and punish bank robbers.
You’re avoiding the question. I haven’t seen you give a real reason why it shouldn’t be symmetrical yet. I know that the motivation is greater to prosecute more common crimes, but ideally why would it not be symmetrical?
How about you tell us why the legal system should be symmetrical if the situation isn’t? Why do the rich pay proportionally more tax than the poor? People are trying to make an unjust factual reality more just by acknowledging injustice is why.
What would give you that idea? What is it with folks who think equality is ignoring an actual problem?
If the hate crime part of the law were symmetrical, not only would that still handle the problem of femicide like the current law does, it would also handle hate crimes against other genders. Not making it symmetrical ignores more problems.
The currentl law doesn’t appropriately “handle” the problem of femicide…or else it wouldn’t be an outsized problem.
Symmetry is the problem. The justice system anywhere isn’t “one size fits all” for murder. There are already categories for infanticide, assisted suicide, accidental death, indirect murder, etc. It would be very very nice if there was an appropriate category for the infinite motivations for murder…but that’s not realistic.
Femicide is a problem in Italy so they passed a law. If males being targeted was a problem…they’d pass that law. Making an appropriate category for an existing phenomenon doesn’t mean it “ignores” anything else, as you’re claiming.
Yes, femicide is clearly a larger problem that has greater motivation to address it. But would it not be equally easy, and overall better, to address all categories of gender-motivated murder?
How many hate crime murders of men are there in Italy?
Idk probably less and so the law against hate crimes for men would be used less than the one against them for women. Again, why would you not treat them the same in each individual case? If 80% of thievery was committed against women, would you not also prosecute the 20% committed against men just the same?
Because the situation is not symmetrical. Acknowledging that there is an oppressed side is not the same thing as denying the privileged one. Pretending murder will not be prosecuted in Italy if the victim is male is just you larping and not at all what enshrining feminicide in law means. It’s just aggravating circumstances. Murderers of males will be prosecuted for murder without the aggravating circumstances of misogyny as a motive because it wouldn’t make any sense. And misandry is not the societal problem that misogyny is, so it would be kind of insulting to make them a protected class.
You’re acting like a four year old whose disabled brother got a wheelchair and who wants one of his own, saying “it’s not fair”. It is.
Perhaps I was not clear. I am referring to the prosecution being “the same” in the sense that a gender-based motivation in the murder of a man would qualify it as a hate crime. Of course men can still be prosecuted for murder either way; surely you didn’t think that’s what I was saying?
Not nearly on the same scale, no. But should it not be protected against at all? Femicide is certainly a more pressing matter to enshrine into law, but we might as well make it as comprehensive of a protection as we can/should while we’re doing this. As far as I know, most hate crime laws (at least in the US) actually are symmetrical in this way. If one of the identities being protected is more vulnerable to crime, the hate crime protection will be used to protect them more often. Seems logical to me.
Is there a need for insults here?
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At no point did anyone suggest that they weren’t prosecuting murder against men, nor did they suggest they would do so with less effort. All this law does is allow the courts to take misogyny into account so that motive isn’t ignored or downplayed during the charging proces.
Yes, they prosecute murder for both genders. I’m asking why the hate crime aspect that increases the sentence is not the same.
To be clear, I think the femicide change is a good thing, just unnecessarily restrictive.
It doesn’t necessarily increase or decrease the sentence.
Are you asking why genders are different, and why violence isn’t equal? That’s a very deep topic the law is attempting to partially address.
You are incorrect. The relevant laws can be found in the Italian penal code. Article 575 sets the minimum punishment for homicide at 21 years. Article 577 lists circumstances that would upgrade this sentence to a life sentence, and the suggested change is to add femicide to this list. So yes, it necessarily increases the sentence.
I am not asking why genders are different and violence is not equal (this should be obvious to anyone listening to the women’s rights movement in the last 30 years). My argument has nothing to do with the relative frequency of crimes against different genders. I’m asking why a murder motivated by hate for someone’s gender would not be treated the same in any case, as it is with most identity-based hate crime laws. Do you think that because one identity group has more crime of a certain type done against them, they should be treated differently in each individual case about that crime?