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.

  • ISuperabound@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    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.

    • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Like in the case of infanticide. Should that motivation be ignored and the person charged with homicide?

      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.)

      • ISuperabound@lemmy.world
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        4 hours ago

        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.

        • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          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?

        • DomeGuy@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          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.