Italy now recognizes the crime of femicide and punishes it with life in prison
(apnews.com)
from MicroWave@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 25 Nov 19:23
https://lemmy.world/post/39300636
from MicroWave@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 25 Nov 19:23
https://lemmy.world/post/39300636
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.
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Does this imply that previously killing women wasn’t criminal in Italy?
I presume that femicide is a subset of “homicide”, but I can’t tell if it means “any killing of a woman”, “any killing of a woman by a man”, “any killing of a woman because she’s a woman”, or “any killing of a woman by a man because she’s a woman”.
And I shudder to imagine how trans-women and trans-men fit into this weirdly sexist label.
(In America we have nice gender-neutral crimes, with enhancers if it was done out of prejudicial hate.)
It sounds like it’s killing someone specifically because they are a woman and not for another reason. So, intent is what they’re trying to target here.
Yet we don’t find the same applies to men
It does. Laws like this are always written gender neutral. Same thing with laws banning discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. It’s just as illegal to fire someone for being straight as it is to fire them for being gay.
These laws are always written to protect everyone. But conservatives such as yourself will read a headline and then whine about minority groups receiving “special treatment.”
Got a source that’s the case here? This is special laws for “antisemitism” all over again
This is false as far as I can tell; the change is to the Italian Penal Code, specifically Article 577. I can’t find a primary source for the text of the change, but all secondary sources (example) I’ve read say that the life sentence applies “when the act is committed as an act of hatred or discrimination or prevarication or as an act of control or possession or domination as a woman, or in relation to the woman’s refusal to establish or maintain an emotional relationship or as an act of limitation of her individual freedom” (translated to English). It appears like this could be a (near-?)direct quote of the legal language used in the change to the penal code. Do you have a source that contradicts this?
It means the murder of a woman motivated by misogyny. It is a subset of homicide and also a subset of hate crimes. It can be thought of as recognizing misogyny as a motive of hate and thus an aggravating circumstance to a homicide, and women as a protected class.
Killing a trans woman or a trans man could very well get a “transphobia” label for a double hate crime, depending on the motives that get established. This is not as complicated as you seem to believe.
It’s not complicated, it’s just sexist and not explained in the linked article.
If a man kills a woman out of hatred for women that’s a terrible crime and should be severely punished. But if a woman kills a man out of hatred for men, that is exactly as horrific a crime and should be punished no less severely.
Sexism in law benefits nobody.
The whole point is centered around how sexism runs deep in society. Specifically men dominating the world and placing women below them.
the way you object to this sounds like someone on Reddit talking about men’s rights. To me.
Every time we draw a line and say “women need special protection”, we are implicitly saying “men don’t matter.”
The very simple fix for this is to keep laws gender-neutral, and let the disparity between prosecutions for hateful murders of women vs hateful murders of men be reflective of the actual disparities in the two sexist hatreds.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where a fact like “41% of American women report experiencing domestic partner violence” will be read as an excuse to ignore that 21% of men report the same thing.
www.cdc.gov/…/index.html
I’ve encountered women arguing that all domestic violence and rape is from men, which would require one-in-five men to have had a homosexual relationship and all such to have been violent.
Yes, men tend to be physically stronger than women and thus male-on-female IPV is often more harmful, but we already have laws that distinguish based on level of harm. And, yes, too many counties are sexist hell-holes that make American red-states look like feminist utopias.
But I don’t think we as a species can sexism our way out of sexism.
I just don’t see this as sexism. But I’m not against you sharing your opinion. I’m not trying to argue.
I’m really curious how you don’t see “we make crimes against one sex worse than crimes against the other” as sexism.
Do you mean it in a “racism is discrimination + oppression” kind of way, where no discrimination against men can be “sexism” due to the patriarchy? Or maybe you think this is more like “free tampon dispenses in the women’s restroom” and the disparity is simply right and proper due to differences between the sexes?
I personally react to this the same way I react to definitions of rape that go something like “the insertion of a penis into another human without their consent”, which excludes cis women rapists from even being charged as such. Or rules allowing “maternity leave” for new mothers (beyond mere recuperation from childbirth) but denying “paternity leave” for new fathers (who may be doing all of the parenting depending on the state of their [possibly deceased] partner.)
These laws already are gender neutral, just like all anti discrimination laws.
If they were gender neutral, it wouldn’t be accurate to describe them as “banning femicide.”
Maybe you’re right, and the reporting is the sexist part and not the law. I can’t read Italian and am unfamiliar with the intricacies of their legal system, so I’d be delighted to be proven wrong.
But saying “oh no, it cant be that bad” is exactly how we got woman-killing abortion bans in parts of my country.
Then invest in education. That’s the only effective way to handle these kinds of societal problems. Attack the root cause: ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills.
Adding some years to a sentence that should already have been deterrent enough won’t make it any more of a deterrent.
This does absolutely nothing to solve the problem and might actually increase it, all so some politicians can score some brownie points.
(Of course, though, increasing education and critical thinking and reducing ignorance A), costs money, and B) is anathema to populist politicians who need an ignorant unthinking population to have any voters, so they’ll just change the name of an already existing crime, further increase division, give themselves a medal for a job well done, and call it a day.)
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.
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.
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.
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
The law might not be equal, but it’s equitable. Women need specific protections that statistically, men don’t need. And thank you for engaging as well.
As would a more general law.
We don’t need another with a general, nondiscriminatory law.
It would have cost nothing to word it without pinning down the victim’s gender. It likely would have been easier to pass, too. This is a deliberately discriminatory law. Discrimination is unjust.
Why does it need to be discriminatory, though?
A law that doesn’t pin down the gender of the victim would cover all cases free. Did you know there are other genders than male & female?
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.
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.)
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.
You’re probably wrong about the topic at hand.
…public.law/…/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?
that was a lot of words to write when you just misunderstood what I wrote.
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.
You can just look these words up instead of making unforced errors.
Are you being dense on purpose or what?
Wow, so progressive
I’ll come burn a cross on your lawn and then insist I can’t be charged with anything other than violating local fire ordinances…
If you come and burn a cross on my white church-going family’s lawn you should be charged with same list of assault, trespass, and arson charges as if you did so on my jewish, black, or pagan friends’ lawns.
A group of black men who banded together and murdered a white boy for dating one of their daughters should be charged with the same anti-lynching statutes enacted to stop the KKK.
The white christian guy who bombs a federal building because the government doesn’t do what he wants should be charged under the same terrorism statute as a brown muslim guy who bombs a federal building because the government doesn’t do what he wants.
No, it does not imply that other murder is less serious. The notion that you seem to believe it does is evidence of the problem that it’s trying to address. It take a certain type of flaw in logic to assume that because a group is “getting” something, it means another group is losing something. The legal system isn’t zero sum.
There’s no outcry when somebody is charged with infanticide, and there should (logically) be no outcry here.
Yo would be able to tell what the charge means if you read the law, instead of trying to guess. Nowhere in the law does it say “by a man”,for example. You’re projecting injustice where there is none.
Oh, you’ve read the law in question. Great! I can’t read Italian, and the linked article didnt have a statement of what the law actually said.
Does the law specify “woman” as a protected class or “gender”?
With the enactment of this law, is a man who murders a woman for the covered motivation treated differently than a woman who murders a man with the equivalent malice? What’s the actual difference?
You could also read the law if you used the internet, instead of writing a half-cocked message to me. I know you have it.
The difference is culpability. We don’t treat the murder of an infant, assisting a suicide, or indirect killing the same way as a “standard” murder charge…and femicide is no different. It’s just another tool in the toolbox so justice can be more accurately delivered.
So, what’s the link to this english-language translation of the law in question?
Here’s an unattributed quote presumably from such from a BBC article:
www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dzp050yn2o
As described in the above quote, it seems exactly as sexist as I presumed – special protection in the law for cis women, which categorically excludes cis men, trans men, and trans women from its protection.
Do you have a contradictory summary or, ideally, a link to the actual text and a professional translation?
You didn’t understand the link you posted to me correctly and I’d expect you’d misunderstand anything I pasted to you as well.
Nowhere in that quote does it mention the gender or orientation of the perpetrator. You seem to fundamentally project your own biases.
We don’t define in law the assisted suicide of a white cis man as categorically less severe than the assisted suicide of a black genderqueer female.
Are you familiar with the US Supreme Court case Moritz v. Commissioner (which my wife brought to my attention after she saw the movie.)?
An important advance in feminist law was literally about a man who wanted a tax deduction but was denied because the deduction was meant for women.
At no point does this law say femicide is more or less important than other murder.
That’s not at all what their saying or implying. Presupposing someone else’s flaw in logic because you cannot fathom better is a flaw in logic.
They’re partly asking “is this law discriminatory?” & I’m wondering the same. A law can increase penalties for femicide by not specifying the gender of the victim: that would be nondiscriminatory.
Are you the layer for this commenter? “I know you are but what am I” doesn’t interest me, as a rhetorical tactic. Speak for yourself.
Yes, the law is discriminatory. Men and women are different, and we should discriminate between them in terms of culpability for murder - when appropriate. In this instance it’s appropriate because there’s an outsized number of women being targeted for their gender.
No, removing gender from a law designed to address a gender issue would discriminate against the gender it’s trying to protect. I’m guessing you were trying to say does it discriminate against men: no, it doesn’t.
I don’t know what you’re trying to say here, but it seems you’re doubling down on inserting ideas that weren’t implied: strawman fallacy.
Then it’s unjust.
It may come as a shock to you there are other genders in the world.
Never appropriate: generalization achieves the same.
Not in the slightest: “higher penalties for murdering someone because of their gender” increases the penalties for femicide. What is your valid objection against that?
Nope: your mindreading fails again. The text we write states what we mean. Try working on your reading comprehension & not jumping to conclusions.
There’s nothing interesting to me in this comment. You seem more concerned with semantics and self-assurance than engaging with the issue.
I said what I mean and I have nothing more to add.
That’s a you problem. The fact is you have no valid argument. Thanks for accepting defeat.
So murdering a woman is now instantly life in prison or life in prison wasn’t on the punishment list for this before?
EDIT: I’m asking questions because I don’t understand something, not because I’m against it. Relax fascists.
Feminicide means murder motivated by hate for women, also known as misogyny. If you kill your gran to get the inheritance and don’t have a family chat calling her a dumb broad that doesn’t deserve to be richer than the males of your line you’re only liable for regular murder
And regular murder isn’t life in prison?
This is about how crimes are prosecuted, since there is a disproportionate level of violence against a class of people, they are adjusting the law to make it easier to process and prosecute those crimes and ensure they see court. This isn’t about making the punishment worse. If you read the article you will learn something.
If you have a better idea from a legal standpoint how to address a disproportionate crime statistic against a specific group of people, I’m sure the world would love to hear it.
Not sure why people assume I’m against it for asking questions. I’m just curious. People are too aggressive.
So this is an attempt to make murder against women easier to prosecute? Meaning that murderers of women had not been getting life before?
Scroll through comments. There are a lot of people in here “just asking questions” but are really participating in bad-faith because they feel the law should be “symmetrical” or that this is some kind of logic puzzle. The article does outline the story and explains it, but again, this is just a response to a disproportionate level of a specific kind of crime. It’s not about the punishment per-say, it’s about how it’s handled by the legal system.
It doesn’t actually matter. This isn’t about how much “time” people are getting in prison, this is about defining a type of crime so that it can be prosecuted differently. Read up about why hate crimes exist or really any kind of law targeting a specific crime in specific circumstances. Prosecution and actual punishment are wildly different things. The law responds to what people are doing, it’s all it can do.
Well, I’m not those people.
The article does little to explain the law and its motivation.
Hate crime charges are completely different because they enhance existing charges. Would this then eliminate the degrees of murder? If murder of a woman then instantly life vs murdering somebody else and then deciding if first, second, etc.? I supposed you’d have to prove it’s femicide just like a hate crime?
I support this, I’m just curious. Thanks for the discussion.
The law isn’t symmetrical. Everything we do in every facet of society is responsive and proportional.
When there is an asymmetrical problem, we divert resources to addressing that problem in some attempt at making things more equal. It’s just that simple. I haven’t seen anyone offer a better solution or a reason for this attempt to make some small level of proportional response being a problem. Hate crime laws vary from region to region and by specific circumstances. Some parts of those laws address how crimes can be prosecuted, some how those crimes can be charged or punished. It’s besides the point. The point is, it’s laws addressing an imbalance.
No.
No. The law has nothing to do with skipping trials or mandatory minimums.
It’s just a new way to charge somebody, and the sentence is the same as murder.
I appreciate you making the effort here to try to speak reason to a lot of really, really triggered men. It’s kind of absurd how even on what you would think is a largely progressive/leftist site like Lemmy, the moment a story about disproportionate issues between genders comes up, suddenly every other guy sprouts the biggest, bushiest beard from their necks and starts talking about why there aren’t enough state-mandated programs to help short, angry men get girlfriends or whatever.
“Triggered” is really good way to categorize these responses.
The topic makes them project concepts onto it, like the perpetrators must be male - which is basically telling on themselves.
I am seeing an absolute ocean of butthurt men in this post, and not a single alternative, solution or idea for making a more just and fair world in the face of an imbalanced problem. Everyone treats this like some kind of logic puzzle. “Well we don’t do X when Y is a problem, why should we we treat THIS any different?” as if the world is based on some kind of symmetrical, blind logic system and all things are equal.
I used to moderate a large gender-related subreddit, it was a nightmare. If you ever want to lose all faith in humanity, have a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the really bad shit that gets removed right away.
I absolutely agree. In my mind this is an example where people could be “yes-and”ing the law: Yes, female victims absolutely need more nuanced protection, and male sexual assault victims need more nuanced protection (for example).
The reason you don’t see a lot of these folks arguing for a men’s equivalent…is they know that it’s functionally not a problem…which also undercuts their own argument.
I can imagine…I work in poverty outreach and with at risk youth…I hear some grotesque things from across the spectrum.
I’m a full Reddit refugee…a few months ago I got a 3 day auto ban for directly quoting Worf from Star Trek. Not going back, this time…the time I was away from it made me realize what an enshitified mess it has become.
Ah I see. So somebody would be convicted of femicide instead of murder. What’s the intended affect of that?
Appropriate culpability and awareness. The law is designed to both serve as a mechanism for appropriate justice, as well as a way to highlight and ongoing problem in Italian culture.
Got it. It’s more than just murder. There should be a word for rape by men as well.
It’s not “more than murder”, no. It’s a type of murder.
No there shouldn’t, the vast majority of cases of rapes are committed by men. If you were being logically consistent, you’d advocate for a different word/charge for cases of rape against men - because that’s one of the largest category of unreported sexual crime.
I’ve spent a few minutes on google during my lunch break. Turns out, it’s as sexist as it sounds actually. Femicide is a crime that uniquely qualifies the victim as a woman, and the perpetrator as a man. In Italy, that specific crime now has a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison if convicted. Prior to today, I assumed that life in prison was the minimum sentence for any murder in Italy, but that was an improper assumption. The mandatory minimum is 21 years for murder in Italy. Femicide now has a higher mandatory minimum.
Par for the course of conservative governments.
Thanks!
This is confusing. So killing a woman is now criminally worse than killing a man? That seems absurd.
“Hate crime” exists in the US with pretty much the same logic.
“Targeting” being the keyword here
How does one determine if the killer killed the woman because he hated her and not just for fun?
I’d guess most murders happen because somebody really hated that person. So that’s kinda stupid. But maybe I’m missing something.
Also, I’d think most murders are targeted, otherwise it’s just manslaughter, no?
There’s a lot of distinction around intent in US law: premeditated, 1st degree, manslaughter (as you brought up) v homicide.
And laws are often written in blood: if something is happening enough people want to curtail it, make more law/punishment. So this just recognizes that femicide has been a particular problem.
Is a woman losing her life worse than a man? Not inherently. Does Italy need a more severe deterrent for targeting women lethally than other cases? Sounds like.
I’m familiar with mitigating and aggravating circumstances.
Is that what this is? The article is not very clear on this and it sounds like regardless of the circumstances, any murder of a woman will be treated as a femicide.
Edit: okay I found another article that does mention aggravating circumstances, like stalking and sexual violence. Which makes a lot more sense.
Italian here: the crime arises when the homicide is committed because the woman refused to start or pursue a relationship with the perpetrator.
Just a poorly written article, omitting many key points about this and it’s causing confusion for those that haven’t been following this saga, which I guess is most non-Italians
Totally agree, not very clear
Usually because of statements made by the perpetrator, either before or after the attack, that show they targeted this person for that reason.
What have you read on the legal basis of hate crime laws? What have you done yourself in order to answer your own questions?
You do realize that people have conversations on here, right? If everyone just went to google – why have lemmy?
Yeah, this seems very odd…
Found the Republican.
Get your transphobic shit off of lemmy.
No. You are just susceptible to right wing issue framing.
At no point didn’t anyone ever say that it was “criminally worse” it has the same sentence…it’s just a different charging mechanism like infanticide.
What’s absurd (but not surprising) is this notion that adding a class somehow diminished the existing classes.
The article very explicitly says exactly that. Murdering someone due to their sex is very explicitly treated differently now, depending on the sex of the victim.
If someone murdered a male due to their sex, would you treat that any differently than someone murdering a female due to their sex?
Yes.
Prosecution is a very different thing than punishment. This is a change to how some crimes are prosecuted in response to a very disproportionate rate of violence.
People here seem weirdly confused about the term “feminicide": it means homicide motivated by misogyny. It’s a subset of hate crimes.
They exist in all western societies I’m aware of, if you’re confused it’s probably only because you’re unused to thinking of women as a protected class and hate for women as aggravating circumstances, the way hate for any race of religion is in most legal systems.
Yes they’re 50% of the population, but also yes they’re disproportionately the targets of violence because misogyny exists. Yet they are rarely treated as such in many legal systems.
It seems weird to consider half the people as “protected class”. But only one gender. Dunno why they didn’t just make hate crime the charge and make misogyny fall under that
I would assume the thinking is centered around wanting to draw specific attention to the issue. And to more clearly cite it as a unique thing for awareness purposes.
This. The goal is to send a message. Over half the women killed were murdered by intimate partners. Such a crime would already be punished by life imprisonment for Aggravated Homicide.
However femicide also includes refusal for emotional relationship, or resistance to limiting her freedom as motivators, as admissible motives for femicide.
eige.europa.eu/…/20211564_mh0421097enn_pdf_0.pdf
So, essentially its targeted towards violent incels among other specifics now.
Awesome.
So the data I linked alleges that ~43% of female homicides in Italy are committed by a current or former spouse. While a global estimate says that 29% of all female homicides are committed by current/former spouse or a family member.
So while I think this thread brings the incels out of the wood works… it’s not really targeting incels.
Exactly. This should have been something that applies to all: ‘murdering someone due to their sex is now a hate crime’.
Having the law give more consideration to one sex over another, particularly with something like murder, is quite sexist.
This would be true if there were commensurate rates of murder where the motivation is misandry. Otherwise you just like the veneer of equality to cover up the rot underneath.
If perpetrators happen to be of one sex more often, then it means the rates of being charged with the relevant crime will be higher for that sex.
A crime must be treated equally, regardless of sex. The law treating one differently based on their sex is itself sexist. As I stated before, this should have been something that applies to all: ‘murdering someone due to their sex is now a hate crime’.
How is it sexist? Both men and women are equally culpable for their actions under this law. It just takes into account intent which is difficult to prove in most cases. Nothing about the law takes the sex of the perpetrator into account.
Murdering someone due to their sex is not illegal under this law, if the victim is a male. Murdering a male due to their sex should be no less illegal.
Then we wrap back around to the start. That would only be true if there were a commensurate killings based on misandry. You keep jumping back and forth between perpetrators and victims. The lawmakers saw an issue and created a law to target that issue. If you have evidence that they’re ignoring them feel free to show it, but nothing about this law is sexist on the face of it.
Correct. Murdering a male should be just as illegal as murdering a female.
It’s like you can’t read past my first sentence. Nothing you’ve said has shown any light on how this is a sexist law. We’re both clear in the fact that you don’t like it, but that isn’t the barrier in front of you.
It’s because nothing else you’re saying is worth responding to.
The rates of which gender is killed more should have no bearing on whether killing the less targeted gender, just because of their gender, is a hate crime.
A hate crime is committed when someone targets a person because they belong to a specific group.
But I bet you also think it’s impossible to be racist against white people.
I would have to disagree. The quantity is irrelevant, the existence of the hate crime is all that really matters.
I can understand what they are doing here (bringing attention to the rampant mysogony), but I do think that could have been done better by having it be a hate crime law with a definition on sex/gender as the motivation, but call it out or name it to address the rampant mysogony.
But a hate crime is a hate crime, and should be treated as a hate crime regardless.
Edit: Just to say, I don’t get the impression that what I suggested is the case here, but maybe I’m misinterpreting things. Feel free to point out if it addresses hate crimes based on identity more generally, I’d be happy to hear it. Doesnt seem to be the case from the article though.
To take the example to its most extreme, you believe that a law that focuses on something that does happen regularly (in my country it’s the leading cause of murder in women) should be expanded to something that happens rarely. And the reason is optics? Am I misinterpreting your point?
Yes.
Frequency isnt relevant.
No…. And I don’t understand how youre arriving at that in any way, shape, or form.
It would seem you are completely, and I have no idea where you are misinterpreting things so wildly to suggest the reason is optics for me to even begin to clarify.
The reason I landed on optics is because no one has laid out an argument for any other reason. If you have one I’d love to see it. Simply asserting that frequency is irrelevant doesn’t prove it.
I made another comment to explain in a different way.
Let’s try it this way.
Hate crimes based on sexual orientation occur many times more often than those based on gender expression.
By your logic, we don’t need hate crimes based on gender expression.
Hate crimes based on sexual identity are drastically higher for black people than Hispanic or white people.
By your logic we would only need to have hate crime legislation for sexual orientation of black people.
Does that make more sense to you as to why I say a hate crime is a hate crime?
You are saying that only the more frequent crimes require legislation.
I am saying the particulars (sexual identity, gender, race) aren’t as relevant as the fact that its a hate-based crime. How often it happens doesnt matter. The fact that its based on hate is what matters.
You’re unduly expanding the scope of the argument. I’m just arguing that laws should be based in reality and not based on how it makes people feel about them, and the reality is that the leading cause of murders in women are based on misogyny. The same is not true for men and thus the expansion of hate crimes doesn’t need to be extended to them. I never once suggested only the most prevalent hate crimes should be put forward in exclusion of others. We should start from a standard of not expanding hate crimes unnecessarily and move forward from there.
No, I’m contextualizing.
Frequency, irrelevant.
And in reality, murdering anyone based on who they are born as is an entirely different thing than anything else.
The same WHAT.
You are referring to frequency. Repeatedly. I’m sorry, but either there is a fundamental language barrier at play, or I can only consider you as being incredibly exclusionary.
The gender identity of the person should have zero bearing on this. The fact that its a crime based on hate of someone’s gender identity should.
Thats it. Full stop.
We will simply keep going in circles until you explain why frequency is irrelevant.
See my comment full of examples of why.
If you need further explanation than that, I don’t know what to tell you. I hope one day you expand your view to accept that others can be at risk, and are no less at risk because others like them aren’t killed more often.
Even having to write that sentence seems absolutely insane to me.
Enjoy your day. I’m done.
Thank you for staying the course here, I agree wholeheartedly that the frequency should not affect which hate crimes are illegal.
It’s always illegal to murder someone it just sets the circumstance when a crime can also be considered a hate crime.
Of course murdering someone due to their sex is illegal if the victim is male, it’s murder
Some people argue that intent shouldn’t be considered when sentencing people for their crimes.
I believe intent impacts a perpetrator’s potential rehabilitation (something a lot of countries put very little effort into when keeping people incarcerated) and should therefore affect sentencing.
If that’s how the other commenter feels I’d be happy to have a different conversation, but judging by his replies I don’t know if he’s arguing from there or not
You’re assuming that the perpetrators will be male, the law doesn’t say that. Your argument is that if males are the perpetrators more often…then the law is sexist? By that logic most laws are “biased” against men.
You’re incorrect that the intent or text of the law is to add extra punishment. It’s just it’s a charging mechanism that carries the same sentence. It’s a law dealing with a real world problem and it makes it less likely for perpetrators to escape culpability. Folks act as if the crime of homicide has been somehow diminished, when it hasn’t.
That I don’t understand. How does this help to stop a murderer from escaping culpability? Maybe you mean it’s a question of intent and the recognition of femicide avoids someone pleading a lesser charge due to heightened emotional state, but still I don’t see how that isn’t covered by just recognizing gender based violence/killing as a hate crime.
To me this looks like a pointless law which doesn’t change anything much in a practical sense, to create the appearance of doing something about a problem which really requires a serious social and educational approach. I recognize that femicide is a real and gender specific problem, but the law shouldn’t be, because justice should always be even handed. I believe the reason this law is gender specific is because they are pretending it’s a solution to the problem, which it isn’t.
It’s as impractical as an infanticide law.
Yes, the system also should and is focusing on education.
Infanticide law is generally used to reduce what might otherwise be a murder charge, to make allowance for the mental stress of recent childbirth. It typically carries a lesser sentence. So it has a purpose and an effect.
But that’s not the case with femicide. I’m not convinced that this law has any purpose other than making an empty gesture. Do you think anyone contemplating the killing of a woman is going to think twice because they might be tried for femicide instead of plain old murder? If not, it won’t prevent a single killing.
Femicide also has a “purpose and effect”, because you’re proving a different crime.
I think you have a limited understanding of the law and the world.
Yes, I really don’t understand why killing a woman is not murder, partly because you have failed to make any case for it. It makes sense to frame such murders in the context of a hate crime, to ensure severe sentencing, but saying it’s a different crime from murder, but with the same sentence, makes no sense to me. The proposition that killing a woman is different from murder implies that women are somehow different from human beings, which is the kind of thinking that’s causing femicide to be a significant trend in the first place.
To pick up on something you said eariler:
The Italian government is indeed focusing on education. They are actively working to oppose sexual and emotional education in schools, proposing a law to require explicit parental consent for such education, while banning it altogether in elementary school, thus ensuring it does not reach the children who need it the most. The new crime of “femicide” provides a token gesture which accomplishes nothing, while effective and easily available measures to reduce violence against women are being obstructed.
Femicide is a type of murder. You seem to just be playing word games. Culpability is important for justice. Different types are murder are treated differently…it’s not a complicated concept.
I don’t even know what you’re trying to argue at the end. There are a lot of important “pillars” when you’re dealing with real world issues. You don’t just focus on one/your preferred pillar or attack the other pillars…you work together to build more and buttress what you have.
Femicide is a type of murder. Not a different crime. Just a subset of the many possible motives there could be for murder. Unless there is some substantial difference in establishing guilt or sentencing, inventing a “new crime” of femicide doesn’t change anything. Culpability is an important factor in murder cases, that doesn’t change here. What I’m trying to argue is that this isn’t functional legislation, it’s empty virtue signalling, from a government that is actively reversing social progress and making matters worse for women.
I don’t agree that it doesn’t change anything: it serves two purposes. First, the law has unique statutes when assessing culpability…second it serves as a public awareness tool, a deterrent, when the crimes happen - and all laws are ultimately intended to be deterrents.
You’re just saying “murder is murder is murder”, and that’s simply not how any court functions.
So it’s only a hate crime if it happens to the gender that has a higher rate of being targeted?
Yes
If it happens for exact same reason I don’t see why one would be hate crime and the other not tbh
I bet you also think it’s impossible to be racist against white people.
This is typically how the legal system responds to increases in specific kinds of crimes, they adjust the system to more efficiently prosecute that crime.
If you have a better idea for how to combat disproportionate crime statistics without targeting that specific kind of crime, from a legal standpoint, I’m sure the world would love to hear it.
How does making it a hate crime to kill men because of their gender take away from it being a hate crime to kill women because of their gender?
Do you think killing a white person because of their race shouldn’t be a hate crime?
You’re viewing law and order as symmetrical, it’s not like that. Nothing is like that, broadly as a global civilization we respond to imbalanced factors in order to preserve balance the best we can.
If an neighborhood is using more power than other neighborhoods, the power grid will be adjusted to compensate.
If you drink more juice than milk and you don’t want to run out of juice, you adjust your buying habits to buy more juice.
While some people probably have killed white people for their race, the problem here isn’t symmetrical, more white people have killed people of color for their race in most places than the reverse because of a complex historical context. The law, and all of society broadly, implements laws or other systems to balance imbalances. Hate crimes have been typically perpetuated by one group versus another. Gender-related crimes VASTLY dominate in one direction than the other, and I’m still not hearing a better solution for this fact from the standpoint of law and order.
Does this idea make you feel bad? Seriously, I’m wondering why this is being challenged without an offer of a better idea or solution.
Your offer of a better solution is to charge the act of killing someone because of who they are or what they believe should be a hate crime.
If more men commit hate crimes against women than women committing hate crimes against men, then there will be more men charged with hate crimes than women.
I am not offering anything, I am explaining the reasoning for this law and laws like it, which a lot of people in this post seem to be having a hard time with.
I read this like, five times and and I don’t know what you’re saying.
And? This is indeed how cause and effect work. Unfortunately temporal anomalies haven’t been discovered that can change how things lead to other things.
My point was that anyone who harms someone else based on who they are or what they believe (so long as those beliefs aren’t hurting others) should be charged with a hate crime.
The legal system isn’t a zero sum game. There’s no reason to treat the crimes differently.
Plus, if you want to talk about disparities in the legal system, woman already, on average, get less time than men for the same crimes.
I am sure you don’t even see how unhinged and revealing this line is on a topic like this.
But I hope you figure out why you’re so miserable feeling that laws attempting to help people suffering imbalanced levels of violence make you have to play this game. I highly recommend learning the emotion/rumination cycle and how it impacts your health. You and a lot of lonely guys in this godforsaken post. I feel bad for women and men alike every time I subject myself to a moronic conversation like this.
My days of talking it out with incel-adjacent, self-insecure men who haven’t learned how to stop ruminating are kind of past me. I’ve done my time, I’ve helped my share of young dipshits become men who don’t feel insecure and persecuted knowing there are special considerations being made for anyone who isn’t them. I hope you meet someone and feel better about yourself.
You’re making some wildly baseless assumptions about me, buddy.
I’m not the one saying that men being killed for their gender is a less serious crime than it happening to a woman.
Also, you’re literally advocating for women to be sentenced less harshly for the exact same crime.
There’s certainly a sexist here, but it’s definitely not me. You don’t combat inequality with more inequality.
Are you purposefully taking the exact same stance that maga is taking on DEI?
Better to invent a new word where the word parts don’t explain it and so they have to explain it every fucking time like that girl whose name is only and forever “Megan with two Rs”.
Femicide isn’t a new word.
You, of course, realize that we’re using an existing word in the English language to describe a different existing word in the Italian language?
They’re a protected class because they’re singled out for violence because of their class. And it’s a real world problem not a logic quiz. Misogyny and misandry are not equivalent in reality the way they are in the dictionary.
If someone murdered a male due to their sex, would you treat that any differently than someone murdering a female due to their sex?
Nothing more than sex based whataboutism.
Could you elaborate on why you believe this is not a valid line of questioning?
Check my profile. We’ve been discussing this for hours.
Sentenced to 4 hours of online gender discourse
It’s not whataboutism, it’s the very obvious logical followup question. The mistake you’re making is assuming by default that the question means they hate women or some such nonsense.
Reading other comments they’ve made, that person is definitely not a feminist. But alright I’ll give the painful answer to the whataboutism: yes.
Yes, in a society where misogyny is rampant one should consider misogyny differently than misandry. Same for racism. If you take a less extreme case than murder, a white person using a derogatory term for a black people will get canceled and labeled racist, at worse a black person using a derogatory term for white people will get laughed at, and people will assume any actual racial hate is a response to the systemic racism they’ve experienced. And most likely they’ll be right. Even if logically those are two sides of the same coin, if your coin is unbalanced applying every correction to both sides will never work.
The asymmeyrical social reality informs what people feel about hate, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t inform lawmakers decision in trying to correct this asymmetry.
And what if the moon was made of cottage cheese? When then??? 🤔🤔🤔
Downvote me if you’re a cry baby man :)
Womp womp bad faith argument
You know we can see when you edit messages lmao?
It’s good to be wrong sometimes, if you always avoid the consequences by trying to head off disagreement (downvotes) you are doing yourself and anyone you talk to in the future a disservice. Saving face means losing the truth.
It’s clear you don’t understand my point. I am always willing to argue in good faith if you are willing to understand what I am saying, but since you are not interested in doing that I will not be responding to bad faith arguments.
lol ok
Still no argument
Does that make hate crime murder against men less worth prosecuting as such? Why shouldn’t the legal definition be symmetrical?
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?
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?
Yes, and when somebody murders a woman because they’re a woman, now there’s a charge where the relevant jurors can take into account state of mind etc.
That’s why I used the wording I did. They both potentially carry life sentences. It should go without saying that femicide is a type of murder with a portion of the culpability “baked into it”.
The reason is because the genders aren’t the same. If there was (functionally) anyone being murdered because they were a man, then the law would also cover men. It’s curious you mention “other identity-based hate crime laws”, because Italy happens to not have categories for homosexual people like other jurisdictions might - for example.
Yes, I believe that gender-based crime is a different crime and it should be treated as such. Ideally there would be a category for the infinite potential culpabilities for murder, but that’s not realistic. I think femicide is realistic because the crime is relatively common.
Interesting
I guess I just don’t get the reasoning for not making the law cover all genders. It’s good that we covered one, but why not the rest? Yes, there are infinite motivations for murder, and we can’t cover them all; but that doesn’t mean we should exclude certain motivations when it would make sense to cover them. The impossibility of making a perfect law should not prevent us from makingg obvious improvements.
It’s not an “improvement” to remove language from people at risk, and add language from people functionally not at risk. Then you’d have a case where the law is potentially pointless, since it duplicates an existing law.
In other words: being motivated to murder somebody because they’re a woman is different to being motivated because they’re a man. You can advocate for a law that protects men, if you’re actually interested in parity…but legislatures don’t tend to pass laws to protect something that figuratively doesn’t happen.
It wouldn’t duplicate an existing law, it would provide additional protections to people who are murdered because of their gender. Again, this would not remove a single protection from women. Stop making zero-sum arguments when they don’t apply.
I’m saying it would be better if they did.
I don’t think this discussion is going to be much more useful, I think we’ve said everything we need to at this point.
Sure, advocate for that, then…I don’t see the value in arguing against a law that, at worst, does nothing legally and creates awareness…like this conversation. I’m sure neither of us knew as much about the issue before as we do, now.
True! I’m glad for this thread. (And, to be clear, I’m not arguing against protections for femicide-- just arguing for extending those protections to cover more scenarios). I think my response to you in the other comment chain conveys my feelings well.
As I said somewhere many replies ago…I wouldn’t spend my energy advocating to take care of a problem that figuratively doesn’t exist, but rather for a problem that does. If men are top of your mind, sexual violence against men is underreported and a huge issue…that, ironically/tragically is tied to this issue.
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?
It’s not an insult, it’s an apt analogy. This argument is childish. In an unjust reality, law should strive for equity, not equality. The US is not a model for how hate should be treated.
Ok so you responded to none of my actual points, cool.
Your wheelchair analogy doesn’t even make sense in the context of this discussion. It would be more like if my brother was more prone to being injured, so in the event that one of us does get injured, only he gets the wheelchair. That’s the argument you’re making-- basing the appropriate solution to an individual’s situation on the frequency of how likely that situation is to occur. Which makes no sense.
A law which helps all genders fight hate crime here DOES provide equity because it will help the genders more affected by hate crimes proportionally more than the ones that are less affected!
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?
No it would not be “easier” to pass laws against categories that functionally dot exist, for example.
I said above that, in perfect world, all manners of culpability would be handled differently - but that’s not realistic. What’s realistic is passing a law against something that happens frequently.
You could pass a law simultaneously against all gender-based hate-motivated murder by just specifying any gender in the law. You don’t need to enumerate every category.
Again, making the law non-gender specific would be trying to protect a category that functionally doesn’t exist…and it would remove specific protections for the very people it’s trying to protect. It would actually do what some opponents are incorrectly speculating this law does to existing murder laws.
Are you advocating that we protect men from gender-based physical violence? Is this important to you? Your argument appears to be semantic and performative…rooted in a so-called “men rights” argument. The logical argument wouldn’t be to remove a law that’s needed, but rather add a law that specifically protects men…because women and men aren’t the same and they require unique approaches.
My approach, the humanist approach, would be: yes this is forward movement, and we can look at other categories that are also at risk. For example, if you were concerned about the safety of men you wouldn’t spin your tires on something that figuratively doesn’t happen and advocate for, say, additional laws to protect men from sexual violence (a category that is often ignored and woefully under-reported).
Does it matter whether the protections are specific to that gender? General protections would still apply to women.
My argument is not performative or based in a “men’s rights” movement, but yes, it is somewhat semantic. I think the law would be more “complete” and overall better if it protected all genders, and so that is what I am arguing for. Although codifying punishments for femicide is good, adding protections for all genders doesn’t remove any protections for women, it just extends them to everyone else. Giving someone something doesn’t have to take it away from someone else.
If you are right that men and women require unique approaches to gender-based protection though, then yes that would be a barrier to making the law gender-agnostic. What do you believe would need to apply differently to men vs women?
I think your humanist approach makes sense, but that doesn’t mean that improving the completeness of the laws is not also worth pursuing. I am concerned about the safety of men and do advocate for improved sexual assault laws; but in this case I am also concerned that the law appears incomplete. Maybe that’s why I’ve been arguing in here so much; my view of the problem does not align with how others are approaching it, and that creates a mismatch of assumptions.
Edit: To elaborate on what I mean by “complete”, I think that the law should always provide equality. Equity should be sought through other (primarily social) avenues. The purpose of the law is to be an impartial judge of what is acceptable, not just to solve the current issues in society. Of course those issues have the greatest motivation to create laws to solve, but the ideal (and, unfortunately, unreachable) form of the law solves not only these problems but many others as well. It should be a solid framework upon which we build, not a series of patches to address single issues.
Yes, it matters. Women are different from men as are the motivations to murder each gender…given that men and women don’t always have the same power or role in western society, for example.
I’m just repeating myself at this point: generalizing a law designed to protect women could make it pointless. It’s just word games, and we’re talking about a very serious issue.
I don’t think it’s valid to pretend my arguments are entirely pointless and then dismiss them because it’s a serious issue. Of course it’s a serious issue; that’s why I’m arguing about it. I’m not calling your arguments hysteria or illogical just because they’re motivated by different reasons than mine are. I am perfectly willing to know why you believe generalizing the law would make it less effective; I explicitly asked, even. But if you do not feel that it is worth it to go into detail then I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by continuing this discussion.
Take note that I never called you hysterical…that came from you.
Up until point I don’t really know what you’re arguing, is all. Apparently coverage for a problem that doesn’t exist.
I’ve said it a few times, but at minimum the law highlights an existing legal and social problem. Generalizing the law implies that the problem is equal, and removes language specific to who it’s trying to protect.
I think I just see the purpose of creating laws differently than you do. To me, there is an abstract ideal law that we should aim for. The relative necessity to current society of different potential laws is not something I consider important to what laws shpuld be added; if we are adding the femicide protections, it makes sense to also add them for other genders, even if those protections are not currently needed to the same degree, and the urgency to add them is therefore lower. But it seems like you are viewing the act of adding a law as something meant to address the problems in current society, and that we should focus on the laws that are most immediately helpful now, because that will do the most good, regardless of if those laws could be improved before passing to cover lesser issues like I am pushing for. I think that’s a sensible enough way to operate-- you can’t make the laws perfect before passing them, so doing the most good you can by passing the most important laws first and coming back later to fix lesser issues that may still exist afterwards makes sense-- but since it’s not the perspective I’m coming from, it took me a while to realize how you are thinking about this issue.
(Sorry for wall of text)
Edit:
This is a good example of a disagreement caused by how we view the act of passing laws. To me, modifying a law to cover more scenarios makes it “more correct” and should always be done. But if you believe that more important laws should be passed first rather than revised to be more complete for theoretical future scenarios, me claiming that the law should be extended to all genders is implying that all genders have the same need for the law to be passed, and therefore that the issue is equal across genders, which is clearly incorrect.
Laws have never been passed to address issues that don’t exist, and have always been passed as a deterrent to an existing problem. You can wish it were another way.
I do, it bothers me lol
The obvious irony here is that if society were equal towards genders…we could pass one-size fits-all-laws, because it wouldn’t matter.
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.
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 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.
I appreciate you sticking with your arguments; this is the first one in the whole thread that’s actually made sense to me. I’m not sure if it makes more sense as a goal to equalize the crimes between two groups than to lower the overall crime, but 1. It does still make sense and 2. Making the law symmetrical would draw less attention and probably result in less of a drop in net crime anyways, so… yeah, ok, I get your point now. Thanks.
You have this backwards. The poor pay proportionally more than the rich.
On a different note, I’d argue that the situation in question (murder) IS symmetrical.
yes, yes, I meant income tax specifically, proportionally to the aforementioned income.
Argue all you want though, factual reality is just there if you want to look at statistics, both for perpetrators and victims. If you meant like anyone can kill anyone, then money is also symmetrical in that anyone can get it and spend it in precisely the same way.
In terms of symmetry, I mean that specific to the outcome of murdering an individual. One death = one death. The end result of the act of murder is genderless.
Yes and 1$=1$. If you look at stuff in a vacuum everything is symmetrical, that’s a nothing statement.
Are you daft or just wanting to be combative?
$1 has absolutely nothing to do with the context of this conversation.
One death does. There should not be variations in criminal penalties based on the victim’s gender. It’s textbook sexism.
Fighting sexism with more sexism; par for the course of conservative governments. I just thought people on Lemmy were smarter. I guess not.
Because the real world isn’t symmetrical, there are millions of factors that impact trends, attitudes, cultures and so on. If you don’t respond to issues appropriate to that scaling you will have spikes in problems. This is very basic, this isn’t even sociology, it’s just how everything works. If you don’t enforce building codes in an area where more buildings are being made cheap, that area will have too many buildings that fall over, whereas areas where the building codes are being adhered to don’t need the extra resources diverted to keeping a non-existent problem in check.
If you drink more milk than juice, you should buy more milk.
I am struggling to understand how this is a hard concept to grasp. Do you have an emotional or personal connection to this topic that is making it hard to see practicality in how our entire society is built?
Not really, I just enjoy arguing against things that I don’t think make sense and for things that do.
A user elsewhere in this thread has made me see the point that you’re trying to make. I’m still not sure it makes sense to enshrine these differences in crime frequency towards different groups into law, but I do see the value in trying to tackle the problem from a gendered perspective in terms of trying to change the culture. So I am now split on whether the value of the law being better (symmetrical) outweighs the value of changing the culture by making a law targetted specifically for women.
Yes. Violence from the oppressed is not the same as violence from the opressor. In an unjust reality, law should strive for equity, not equality.
I don’t think my model of morality is compatible with yours.
Seriously.
I am massively disappointed with the number of dumb chuds on this site who are looking at this like a goddamn fucking logic trick and feeling some kind of personal offense to the fact that some men, somewhere, are committing a disproportional level of a specific kind of crime.
Calling it a logic trick is just a cheap way to devalue a valid argument
I haven’t seen a valid argument in this entire post, just a lot of people who think that the law should apply evenly in all situations.
But nothing works that way. Everything we do in all facets of society are responsive and proportional.
I’m not seeing how anyone is being harmed by making it easier to prosecute men who commit violence against women when it’s a massively disproportionate problem. I’m not seeing a better alternative, I’m not seeing anything but a lot of guys in this post who are obviously hurt by this but can’t explain why. Maybe add value to the argument by making an argument and explaining why it bothers you.
Nobody is being harmed. Codifying punishments for femicide into law is a good thing.
Making the law cover all genders covers more situations, so it would be better. You could still advertise it for its primary purpose of helping women to try to change the culture and get many of the same benefits.
It bothers me because I think there is an alternative that makes more sense-- that’s the whole reason I care here. You can assume whatever else you want about me or my feelings towards the matter, but these assumptions haven’t been correct so far, so I doubt they will be accurate in the future either.
It would seem weirder to me to have 100% of people be a protected class
I just assumed it was some smaller more specific groups. But I think it covers most people
Genuinely thought it just meant killing a woman and was confused
It does get misused in that exact way sometimes. I’m from Mexico, these cases have been making big headlines here for a while now, some prosecutors are misclassifying cases as femicide to grab attention to their political careers.
Local one a couple of years ago where a dude ran over a woman. Local prosecutor was pushing for femicide, fortunately it was moved to manslaughter as it should have been from the start. Not everything constitutes a hate crime and cases like that (in my opinion at least) would make the distinction meaningless
Sometimes people run over others intentionally, so drag supports the recognition of vehicular murder, but yes, it’s usually manslaughter. A prior history between victim and accused or history of hateful conduct by the accused should be used as clues that a deeper investigation is required.
Your note about disproportionate targets is misleading and inaccurate. Femicide is specifically about murders as far as I know. In the vast majority of countries, men are victims of murder more often than women (in Italy, men are victims about twice as often). They have higher rates of being assaulted/maimed at pretty much every age category in most western countries.
What you’re likely trying to gloss, is the oft repeated “victim of domestic violence” stats, which is a niche area of violence that gets used by feminist movements to ignore the arguably greater violence that men face on the regular. This sub-division is even more biased, given that men generally don’t report spousal abuse / are less likely to get injured to the point that they get hospitalized by it. Even after the victims of ‘violence’ includes pretty well all categories, in many western countries the ‘results’ are roughly even between genders – Canada for example is at about 48% of all violent offences being committed against men, and 52% against women. But again, not all those crimes are really equal – men are over represented in fatal / serious violent assaults causing injury far more often than women. They both experience violence at the same ‘general’ frequency, but men are more likely to be left maimed/dead.
Murder’s murder, in the eyes of many. It’s strange to provide additional protections for just one demographic, especially when that demographic is far less frequently the victim of murder.
Casually throwing feminism under the bus – a movement that focuses on women’s issues (to the overall societal benefit of everyone) – for focusing on women’s issues?
Huh. Is this socially acceptable now? I thought we were better than this.
Feminism has a place, but it is explicitly about promoting women’s interests – something which if allowed to continue unchecked, leads to significant disadvantages for men. It leads to the sorts of toxic masculinity backlashes that you see in the states, especially because moderates who question women’s privilege in advanced western economies start to support more extreme anti-woman positions, because there’s a perception that left wing feminist leaning ideologies work against their interests. And they’re right.
An egalitarian approach is better, once you’ve gotten to near parity. Most western countries have been at near parity for generations at this point.
I think that’s a dangerous belief. I don’t see the difference between saying that and saying “Equality for black people has a place, but it is explicitly about promoting black interests – something which if left allowed to continue unchecked, leads to significant disadvantages to whites.”
I don’t see anything wrong with that second note, translating the position into one about race instead of gender.
Equity-type programs often get started based off of aggregate differences in statistical data based on demographic slices, with good intentions. But I’ve yet to see any cases where they build in a process for removing equity support programs once a ‘goal’ is reached / more parity is visible in the data.
So as an example from Canada, equity employment programs were introduced in the mid/late 1980s to address the imbalance between men and women in the workforce. You can see how this played out in the public workforce data. In 1990, shortly after the leg came in, it was at about 54% men, 46% women. By 2000, it had flipped in favour of women, at 48% men, 52% women. By 2010, 45% men, 55% women – a greater imbalance than in the 1990s, the imbalance which had triggered supports to get put in place for women. That roughly 10% gap persisted through to 2020 at least. No legislation has been introduced to remove preferential hiring for women in the public sector, no legislation has come in to promote hiring men due to the shift in the gender imbalance.
On a racial basis, the same pattern can be seen in our post secondary education grants, bursaries and scholarships. Funding for these sorts of initiatives in Canada allows for them to screen for specific equity groups – what some term visible minorities. The roots of that being based on reasonable equity goals – ie. there’s a statistical gap in education levels for a minority group, so they allow people to target funding to minority groups. However, while these policies have been enforced, white men have become one of the least educated groups in Canada, with about 24% of white men attaining a degree, compared to 40% of asian guys (with the highest rate of attainment amongst chinese/korean guys, at ~60%). White men are still not considered an equity group, and so cannot have funding specifically targeted to them to try and address this equity issue. And we haven’t ‘removed’ the ‘disadvantaged’ minority groups from receiving systemic advantage, even though they are out performing the supposedly privileged majority group. The system quite literally has race-based controls working against white men, with a justification of correcting an imbalance that not only doesn’t exist in the data, but where the data shows white men as significantly worse off. The system is basically designed to kick them when they’re down.
I can highlight that education item a bit more using a personal example. A coworker of mine has a kid going to BCIT, one of our western province’s “leading” tech-type schools. They’re Canadian citizens, recent immigrants from eastern Europe, not wealthy by any stretch. They tried to get financial assistance for the kid through the school, but the advisor bluntly told him there were no grants/bursaries etc that he could apply for, since the kid was a white guy – all the available funding was targeted to different racial sub groups. He would have more charitable funding options available from the system we’ve setup here, had he been a third generation millionaire visible minority.
Those two statements aren’t equivalent. Feminism is not just about equality (though that’s a huge part of it). If your second statement were something like “elevating black people has a place…”, they’d be equivalent. In that case, yeah, it could hypothetically go beyond equality into something unjust.
You’re right! That’s why we should prosecute all traffic deaths as first degree murder. Someone drunkenly stumbles into the road, into your path, causing you to run them over and kill them? Mandatory minimum life sentence for you. After all, death is death, killing is killing. We don’t give a shit about people’s motives.
I doubt they are saying to discard all motives; specifically they said “murder is murder” so using cases that aren’t intentional (ie manslaughter, not murder) undermines your point. It’s more that there’s an upper limit or certain criteria where we stop caring what the person’s motives are, so where do we draw that line? I don’t pretend to know the answer, but it’s a question worth exploring even if you think you know the answer already.
There’s never been an upper limit on criteria in the eyes of the law, what an odd thing to say.
All adding a charge for femicide does is refine their legal system to they have another charging mechanism that might more appropriate assess culpability. They don’t actually have to use the charge, and the addition of the charge doesn’t diminish charges for other types of murder in any way.
ie there’s no outcry when somebody is charged with infanticide or assisting in a suicide, etc…because motivation matters when you’re charging a crime so the system can appropriate mete justice…femicide is no different. The fact that there’s an “outcry” is a symptom of the problem it’s trying to address.
The vast majority of the time Men are killed by other men. If there was an epidemic of women calling for violence, hatred and subjugation of men supported by podcasts and propaganda and it was resulting in a large increase in murder then we’d need to address that problem too.
Ah, but how often are they victims of murder because of their gender? Femicide isn’t just murdering a woman, the motivation counts.
Dedicating time and effort to focus on a special category of murder and implementing harsher punishments for perpetrators based on the demographic membership of the victim, feels counter to the equitable application of justice for a country at large.
Intentionally murdering a woman because she’s a woman, is in my view little different from murdering a person for any of the other reasons that get lumped together under things like ‘first degree’ and ‘second degree’ murders. This legislation change isn’t about making murder illegal – it’s always been illegal. It’s about making the punishment more significant if the victim is a woman and the prosecution can prove the murderer had any anti-woman comments/viewpoints.
There are examples of women killing men because they’re men – there are a few famous, and more less-famous, cases where escorts, for example, kill their johns because they’re easy targets. There are examples of minority groups killing majority groups because of clearly racist/hateful motives, that get excused because of the demographics of the perp and the victim. The legislation change noted, basically says killing people is bad, but killing women is somehow worse – ie. that the genders aren’t equally treated, and women are worth more / require more protection. To apply harsher punishments unevenly based on demographics is not what I’d consider a fair and impartial system – it’s one that’s been engineered to preference the protected group’s interests over the interests of the broader whole.
Besides, men get killed 2-5x more frequently than women in many western countries – why are we trying to protect the gender that has far better overall results? This is sorta a gender equivalent to giving tax breaks to the rich – they already have it better than others, why give them even more privilege? Add more supports to the demographic that has terrible stats in this area.
I agree with you, I just think that it’s valid to increase the penalty for hate crimes over regular crimes. Of course this would apply to murdering a man because of his gender too.
Women may not not be a mathematical minority, but they absolutely are a cultural/societal minoritiy.
Cultural minorities have nothing to do with the absolute number of members the group has, but how much political and social power and influence the group holds.
That’s why black africans during apartheid Africa would still be considered minorities, even though they made up the mathematical majority of inhabitants.
Shouldn’t it be gynocide? Since it’s clearly pulling from Latin. Activists should be forced to work with linguists for their words, or face the penalty of be hit with a 2x4.
I think that penalty is a hate crime. But you’re correct.
Just let latin die already.
gyne is Greek, femina is Latin.
Goddamn I wish the biggest contention about this story was the etymology.
The “confusion” seems intentional…or rather a symptom of the very problem the new class is attempting to address.
Many people seem to believe that a femicide charge is automatically a more serious charge than murder. It isn’t.
Many people believe that the law explicitly targets men. It doesn’t (No more than a “standard murder charge or an assault charge “target” men, they just commit murder and assault more often).
Many people believe that the very existence of a femicide charge diminishes the importance of a murder charge. It doesn’t, they carry the same sentence.
If homicide and femicide carry the same sentence, what is the point of all this?
The point is culpability. It’s the same reason there’s separate charges for infanticide, assistance a suicide, manslaughter, etc. It a class of charges so culpability, and therefore justice, can be more accurately meted.
I see no reason to make a special specific word as every category needs this…
They should just add modifiers to the category: Assault for instance can get aggravated and hate crime as adjuvants. Murder has manslaughter and degrees and could have hate crime modifiers.
This is a more fair and clear generalized solution of core concepts than entirely new specific categories.
The word just existed since 1652
So not very long at all /s, not that it shouldn’t be a word, but rather, why complicate the legal system needlessly when such systems rely on relativity, clarity, and consistency. Outside of that context we can have 10000 words for it.
“Let’s slap a bandaid instead of fixing the underlying societal problems causing this and score some popularity points” - every politician ever.
Edit: okay maybe there are a few smart politicians, but they’re not scoring the popularity points with this:
Is your position that, in Italy, politicians are only using this added charge - and not attempting to address the problem in other ways?
That’s exactly what I read in the article. Here’s a snippet:
They are actively working against educating children about genders and sex.
I don’t disagree with what you wrote in bold.
But we both know that femicide isn’t the only mechanism they’re using to combat the issue.
I don’t. I just know that someone is trying and losing.
…which is atrocious, and we should celebrate the various pillars erected to deal with issues, rather than tear them down (not that that’s what I’m saying you’re doing).
At this point just make a “hate crime” and misogyny fall under this but NO!
A lot of people in here seem upset for some reason.
It’s actually pretty sad. Kinda scary to.
Pretty sure threads like this are why there aren’t more women on Lemmy..
Fucking hell some of these comments read as redpill bullshit.
Lemmy is generally better than reddit on most issues, except on anything to do with women - when it is somehow spectacularly worse.
No they don’t.
Lemmy loves to assume criticism against stuff like this (and often out of misunderstanding as I read here), automatically means you hate women.
Just because you criticize something doesn’t mean you’re against it.
And your mild comment is a magnet for downvotes… Which is really highlighting your point.
To be precise, in Italy life sentence is 26 years.
Huh, i though femicide mean mass killing of women.
That would be mass femicide.
So, its already illegal, just going to make it more illegal ?
No effort to invesigate and address underlying issies ?
I mean you could read the article and find out
Nope. Just a more a more precise charging class so culpability can be more accurately assessed, like when somebody is charged with infanticide.
This is a legal response to a legal problem. If there are societal causes that can be studied and addressed, it’s not the job of the legal system to undertake that.
But let’s be real here. If it bothers you that women are getting “special treatment” due to a disproportionate level of violence against them, you’re really not going to like the outcome and findings of a “study” to figure out why it’s happening.
♡ step in the right direction ♡
<img alt="11919" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5b8b7eec-a0d9-4d95-a861-45a7fb0f8226.jpeg">
Laws that recognize life of one group of people as more valuable than other are the exact same logic that was used to defend slavery. Murder is murder. Recognizing one groups life as more valuable then others is wrong, no matter how much you want to dress that pig to look progressive.
The article is vague. Where are the laws to protect anyone attacked because of their gender? Is that this law? If so, then great: it’s nondiscriminatory. If not, then it’s discriminatory: discriminatory laws are inherently unjust.
It’s as easy to make a discriminatory law nondiscriminatory by generalizing the language.
These comments seem to be full of the same people who misunderstand that the word “racism” describes a massive cultural and societal issue that affects people in large, hidden ways throughout their life, rather than using bad words.
If they had a problem in Italy of men being murdered for not being obedient, it might be worth considering broadening the scope of this classification.
This does not even target the perpetrators as a class (even though we can probably guess a general demographic), just classifies the crime according to what has happened to the victim, and why. This is the same for all hate crimes that are prevalent enough to warrant it. Imo it is the culture and society that makes it a hate crime, not just the intent.
But the end result, the punishment… nothing is changing here. Is the general belief that labeling, and “bringing awareness” is going to stop anything? Is this similar to how labeling racism as racism in the USA has completely wiped out racism?
No
Ok… so… 🤷♂️
I hesitated whether to engage because your use of the word “completely” labels you a troll. You also put “bringing awareness” in quotes instead of using the word visibility, presumably to belittle the concept.
Visibility helps collect and track data, drive policy, reveal patterns, support victims and survivors, improve early intervention and prevention, and, hopefully, eventually, shift cultural attitudes.
But you could get that from Google if you gaf.
I didn’t go to google to read the article, it was on Lemmy… thus, I asked Lemmy. You could probably infer that if you gaf but it seems your aim is to be combative. The word “completely” threw you off? It wasn’t the sarcasm implying that “racism is cured now because of awarenes?” Best of luck…
Not at all, if your weren’t trolling, I hope your found those points helpful in describing the benefits of visibility.
One of the things I missed out was government accountability, where police departments have historically labelled these as isolated incidents, because the big picture is pretty sickening.
Because murder is usually 21 years, with egregious cases earning life. Femicide gets automatic life
Honestly it’s like whingeing “why do you have to define first and second degree murder hurr its all murderrr”. You’re not clever.
Is murder typically 21 years though in Italy? Yours is the only answer that’s a reasonable answer if you’re actually correct. In reading other comments in this post, I came to the understanding that the penalty for murder in Italy was life in prison already. I’m not versed in the punishments for breaking laws in Italy… I doubt a lot of people on Lemmy are.
Like most countries it varies based on circumstance
But that’s not the point. It’s a specific crime they are targeting here (your first hint is the name!)
I read about it during my lunch break. Turns out, it’s just another sexist law applied by a conservative government.
If that’s your takeaway you need help
If you’re unable to process that the penalty for killing someone should not vary based on their gender, you, and the conservative government of Italy need help.
Please explain the sexism.
In order for a murder to be femicide, it specifically needs to be perpetrated by a man and the victim needs to be a woman. Any other combination =/= femicide. In Italy now, femicide has a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison. Murder has a mandatory minimum sentence of 21 years. A woman is inherantly 100% immune from being charged with Femicide by definition of the word. Thus, kill a man in Italy the mandatory minimum sentence is 21 years. Kill a woman in Italy, the mandatory minimum sentence is 21 years but in some cases the mandatory minimum is life in prison. It’s an unequal application of penalty based on gender… sexism.
inexact and unnecessarily emotive. You’ve hinged your argument on a fallacy. Femicide requires very specific circumstances to be surrounding the crime of murder
Are you planning on killing women for misogynistic reasons? Are you planning on taking domestic abuse to its all too comment conclusion? Are you, in short, planning on committing murderous hate crimes? No? Then this consequence does not apply.
What fallacy? There will never be a male victim of femicide. It’s not possible by the very definition of the word.
Concur. The circumstances require the perpetrator to be male and the victim to be female… along with everything else you mentioned. None the less, because of the first requirement (gender specificity) it is explicitly and intentionally discriminating on the basis of gender; which is textbook sexism.
How.
We are discussing murder victims here. They are not receiving preferential treatment. They are dead.
By the very definition of the word. The victim can only be female. That is an inherent discriminating point.
We’re not talking about the victim; we’re talking about the crime… the act of murder itself. Murder is a broad category and it covers everyone of all genders. Femicide is a specific type of murder that only applies under certain circumstances; but one of those circumstances requires the victim to be female. That is a gender based discriminating factor.
It’s nothing about “preferential treatment;” it’s about having different outcomes because of an intentional and explicit consideration based on gender.
This is a common practise in law. Murder in and of itself does not have a specific single charge in most systems, it’s categorised by intent and circumstance, ranging from manslaughter to crimes against humanity. Femicide is a subset of hate crime that has resulted in death due to misogynistic or sexist opinions, actions against women
A murder charge that factors in the context of the murderer’s opinion of gay men as a factor in the crime is not discriminating against heterosexuals. It’s merely a recognition that certain motivators and context involved in the crime (eg homophobia) have become so significant within society that they warrant their own classification. And as a classified crime, it now has the options for its own sentencing. That is what is occurring here.
I find it amazing that half the threads on this post I can’t open because they’re being piled on by people I’ve already blocked on lemmy. 🙄
Men with sexual insecurity is a driving force of contention and violent politics in this entire world. If you read that special protections are being made for a class of people who are suffering dis-fucking-proportionally and you say “What about meeeeee?” to it, you need to get your shit together. You’re not healthy.
Intent is a relevant consideration for defining special categories of a crime assigned special penalties. However, it’s also important that the law not be discriminatory.
Does this law create a special category only for crimes driven by sexism toward females or any gender? It could be written as easily either way.
A law exclusively treating only sexism toward females as the word femicide suggests is discriminatory. A gender-neutral law that raises penalties for all sexism-driven homicides including femicide is nondiscriminatory. All sexism-driven crime should be punished equally regardless of gender.
What if one group is getting something unproportionally more than the other.
That creates inequality, essentially meaning that the disadvantaged group is losing something. I.e. they get less that the other group.
So yeah, if you give one group much more than the other, they are losing something.
So are you guys getting less stalking, harassmentd, domestic violence and murder by your partner or are you just blowing smoke rings here
We’re no longer discussing stalking or harassment.
We are talking about equality between different groups and what it means.
They’re trying to use “logic” to justify giving one group more than the other.
And I’m using the same “logic” to argue the opposite.
Simple debate, nothing more.
Your “logic” is no such thing. And stop pretending your scenarios exist isolate of context. Damned fool.
You know you won the argument when the other party starts insulting instead of presenting valid arguments.
Keep your options to yourself in serious debates please. It just muddles the truth.
This isn’t giving one group more than the other, it’s not like you can murder men now.
Any criticism of this law should be around the ineffectiveness of harsh punishments as a deterrent, not that it’s sexist
As if you could murder women before?
And that’s not what I’m arguing about.
The other commenter said “giving more to one group doesn’t take away from another” and apparently you have to have flawed logic to think otherwise.
THAT’S what I’m arguing about. In case you didn’t bother reading the comments properly…
Recognizing group harassment is also benefitting individualism by recognizing that… inequity is real.
Ftfy. Broken clock, twice a day…
She was democratically elected. Not charged or convicted of any crimes. No pedophilia. She implemented a new tax on banks and insurance worth 11 billion euro.
Aside from fucking Elon Musk, she’s been pretty effective.
Do you have brain damage? She’s still a fascist.
I’m out of the loop. How is she a fascist?
By being in a fascist party. Try wikipedia or a source of your choice for Fratelli D’Italia (a.k.a. hate filled little shits of Italy)
Setting up for a string of “not real women” court cases? Enshrining that gay and lesbian victims don’t get the same justice het women will?
Can’t wait for crickets when a clearly discriminatory law ends up being a tool for discrimination.
Holy shit I didn’t even think of that. That is totally in character for that fascist piece of shit and her Gestapo government.
“Femicide” so… murder? Yeah, hasnt “life” been the typical punishment for murder? (Life is usually 25years) .
Did they not already recognize murder of women should be treated like murder?
Victims of relationships violence (myself), stalking and harassment (myself), should have justice. Unfortunately, I dont hear much about the men who suffer from this type of violence.
There is a massive imbalance in violent crimes, in that nearly half of all women murdered are murdered by a spouse, partner or boyfriend or other kind of male acquaintance.
This doesn’t skew the other direction, so that’s why women victims are getting special consideration and why there are special laws being made to make it easier to prosecute this kind of crime in a different or more efficient way. (Like we have “hate crime” laws that allow for special forms of prosecution.) This isn’t supposed to solve all the problems, but it may help by making the consequences of a man killing his wife or girlfriend far less likely to be reduced by pleas of temporary insanity or the like or be dropped by the court for minor reasons.
Did you even read the header? It was more than just murder.
It includes stronger measures against gender-based crimes including stalking and revenge porn
But is it discriminatory or is anyone protected regardless of their gender?
It’s not just about murder. It’s about how men are the primary perpetrators of violence against women. As a woman, If I go out anywhere my #1 fear is a man. We are taught to never go outside alone at night, even in our own neighborhoods. We are taught not to trust strange men. We have to protect our drinks if we go out to socialize. Every position we find ourselves in we have to consider whether its safe or not. We can’t walk across a parking lot to our cars without worrying if a man will do something. Hell, we even have to consider if smiling at a man or not will trigger him. It sounds crazy and over the top but it’s the reality of being a woman. Constant awareness of everything and everyone around us. On average the weakest man is stronger than the average woman. It’s very easy to overpower us so we must be vigilant to never get into that position in the first place. It’s fucking exhausting having to think these things about every man we meet.
I’m sorry about what has happened to you, it’s wrong and you deserve justice. You shouldn’t be ignored just because you’re a man and it is perceived that you can’t be a victim in these cases. I don’t agree with that at all and I really feel for you. But you need to understand the things that happen to women every minute and that’s the point of what Italy is doing.
Ok so it looks like incels CAN’T read. Just as much as they can’t pick a username.
Its best if everyone knows that they’re dealing with a special guy. Its an advantage im not trying to hide.
Maybe I’m wrong but I’m interpreting this being in the vein of a crime being murder, but potentially also a hate crime. The motivation of a crime is part of its definition and affects sentencing especially in tertiary cases eg attempted murder, manslaughter etc.
Yea… I’m with the incels that don’t really understand the point. If murder was already a crime that would be punished by life in prison, narrowing the specificity of who was murdered doesn’t change much of anything.
“Cool, if it makes you happy I guess 👍”
It includes stronger measures against gender-based crimes including stalking and revenge porn
Read?
My comment is very clearly specifically in reference to the term “femicide” and the official recognition of it within Italian law. It’s murder. If a woman kills another woman, it is not a femicide, that’s just a murder… the penalty is the same in the end… right??? Overall, it seems a relatively unnecessary level of specificity.
Neither stalking nor revenge porn should count as gender-based violence. It is gender violence if it’s strictly based on because of someone’s gender with no other motivation.
And every asshole upvoting that trap
Spot on! That’s exactly how agreeing with people works!
When I agree with women, I turn into a woman! When I agree with doctors, I become a doctor!
I agree with doctors that vaccines save lives, so I’ll be taking that free medical degree now.
“You don’t agree with me, therefore you must be bad”
If you ever find yourself uttering this sentence you really wanna rethink your stance
The one where I oppose sexist laws? Which stance?
I am with Hitler on treating animals better. So what? If you care where a stance comes from rather than what it stands for, you are an ignoramus.
Hitler didn’t originate animal kindness though
He supported it. And there probably isn’t just one originator for most stances. Multiple people can form the same ideas.
weird hill but ok.
Like, If I support animal rights I’d just say “I support animal rights” I won’t say “I’m with hitler on animal rights”
I am making fun of your hill ;D Seems it is super effective :D
nah, I’m good.
Too bad that this government also slashed the funds for shelters for women and forbade affective education in primary and middle school. Not to mention cops ignoring calls from women who’re being stalked or harassed and not intervening when a man remove his ankle monitor to circumvene a restrictive order.
I don’t see how the femicide part makes any sense or difference. There were already the exact same punishments for killing of anyone, so isn’t this essentially copy pasting existing laws but with a specific group highlight? If that’s the case, it will do absolutely nothing.
The second part is fine, though I hope it’s meant for everyone and not just women. I don’t know about Italy specifically, but in many European countries if you fall victim to these crimes as a man, you’ll likely receive no help.
Would be great to see some more protections for everyone, as well as more serious punishments for violations against anyone. Making anything like this gender-specific will just fuel already problematic anti-other-gender sentiment.
inequity is real.
If each and every person should matter then It should be ok to recognize each and every person for what they are being targetted for. And I see this law as doing just that. It’s recognizing that a person may not be targetted for being an individual but a part of a group. And that is important. So That is taking their individualness into importance by recognizing the group they are being targetted by.
This should be allowed if you’re being legitimately concerned for EVERYONE’S safety here.
people who may be at their job as a sex worker. Or if they are simply female and that in itself could be weaponized against them.
They will face a violent discrimination just as another person fitting into a different group might. And it’s important to recognize that, make that a law, and keep them safe too. So if “Being targetted for”is a law , recognizing group profile is part of that.
I think a better law would be more generic in defining what defined group targeting.
Why only protect one group? How many other divisions will there be?
How balkanized will you make the law when ypu apply it to people?
Will more wealth entitle you to more protections?
It sounds lis you’re asking to have 4 more discussion on top of this one.
No. You missed the appeal to the absurd that was the basis of my reply.
Wonderful that you think human rights to life is absurd and a joke to you. Absolutely wonderful.
Trolls are shit on this sub.
Equal rights are just conceptually beyond comprehension to so so many people.
If you aim for equality, making separate laws for separate genders is not the solution. This is anything but equality. Especially when there are already laws protecting the groups in question, as part of the entire nation. The problem here is completely different and requires different solutions.
To note: I’m not who you responded to.
Absolutely it is. If there is a measurable inequality towards a minority, you should enshrine the protection of that minority into law - which is one reasons why many countries specify anti-discrimination laws. This law regards the same.
Which you have failed to specify. So… the problem is what, exactly? I don’t see one.
Which you also failed to provide.
I’m getting a strong “but won’t anyone think of the men!” vibe from you.
Please note that, by all accounts I’ve seen, Italy’s femicide law does not cover any similar offense against men. It’s an elevated offense to try and reduce the disproportionate number of Italian women who are killed by intimate partners.
It sounds like we are agreeing here.
Right, in discriminatory laws.
Generalizing the law to crimes attacking anyone for their gender would also increase penalties for femicide without legal discrimination. Did you know there are other genders in the world?
Oh geez no not until you just told me in such a good faith way to have a discussion.
Then maybe start acting like it instead of missing the obvious?
op has a strange and bot-like post history
So do half the agitators in this thread
There needs to be more accountability for law enforcement for this too have any real effect. Studies show up to 40% of law enforcement self identify as domestic abusers. So why would they investigate themselves?
That is a wild statistic! Is that study just in Italy or?
as far as I know that stat is for the united States, but pigs are pigs
Law enforcement in the USA is specific. It’s not the same in every country. Can’t speak for Italy though.
It’s a demonstrably inaccurate number. The study was vague enough that yelling at a partner was included, and much more damning they included the officer even if they were the victim in the situation. It literally paints the victims as domestic abusers!
“40% of law enforcement self identify as domestic abusers” is demonstrably false and is not something that should be repeated.
The comment was UP TO 40%. Various studies range from 2 to 40%. But since they are SELF REPORTING, the number is likely higher.
Look through the various studies, but all still show higher rates than the general public. And if law enforcement are the domestic abusers, how can they be tasked with investigating themselves?
scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=…
And that comment is incorrect. Unless we are going with Comcast’s ‘up to 1000mbps’ numbers.
No, they don’t range to 40%, and I detailed why. Don’t repeat 40%, it’s demonstrably false.
Yeah, the real number from that study was ~28% self admitted, which is still extremely bad
Thank you for clarifying, it seemed crazy high. I know the stereotypes but still.
Since when have stronger punishments deterred crimes?
Also isn’t killing a person based on an immutable characteristic (race, sex, etc) already a hate crime? In the US if someone kills a woman or girl primarily because of their sex that is a hate crime on top of being first degree murder (which is a serious enough offense as it is).
That’s a fair question. It’s complicated. Harsher laws don’t always stop crime, but they can send a strong message and hold people accountable. Plus, the real deterrence often comes from how seriously society treats these issues, not just the law itself. It’s messy, but I think it’s part of the solution.
From what I have gathered, when I read through some criminology papers, it’s less about the severity of punishment and more about being caught and prosecuted which is more effective as a deterrence.
The death penalty for example has been proven in numerous studies to be ineffective.
Consequently, increasing the severity of punishments can become useless and possibly more based in a (public) desire for revenge.
We, as a more or less civilised society, should also be mindful about why we prosecute someone and how we want to treat people in the long run. For example, just imprisioning someone for life – apart from being ethically debatable – will not solve problems but only move them somewhere else.
Uhh… what about this mindset - “glad this menace to society isn’t getting released after 5 years”
Cool, now Italy stop recognizing the copout that is allowing the framing of spousal murders as crimes of passion for the purpose of reducing the sentence, its complete bullshit.
Its like giving a drunk driver a curative discharge, its like, umm no, fuck off
I’m reading a lot of responses here that seem to rhyme with the “White lives matter!” responses to the BLM movement.
As was the case then, what seems to be getting missed by those saying this is the context. Italy has a major issue with domestic violence, including spousal murder. From the sound of it, it’s usually women who are the victims. Thus, a new law to target wife abusers specifically.
There may be some merit to debating whether this is an effective move or not, I’m not up on my research there; but let’s not deny that they see a need, and are attempting to address it.
Is making the thing that’s already illegal illegal really addressing the issue? It seems like it’s more like paying lip service to the issue if it isn’t backed with some sort of positive social programs as well.
Oh yeah a sexist law to punish a cultural issue. Surely we can outlaw mentality better than to out-educate. Wasn’t murder already ilegal?
Hi, saying “Italy has a major issue with domestic violence” it’s misleading. Compared to what? To Europe? (we are on the lower end of feminicides, and this law try to target this issue). More in general, Italy it’s a very safe place and homicides are lower than the average of europe.
Feminicides: europeandatajournalism.eu/…/femicide-remains-all-…
General intentional homicide: en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_countries_by_intention…
To further expand: Is it an issue? YES, is it even slightly going towards a resolution with this new law? NOPE. It’s just the next new big title from “Governo Meloni”, a right wing party that is in charge, will get re-elected but is acting like it’s on the opposition.
This is not like the “White lives matter” responses to the BLM movement. If they wanted to increase the “hate crime” or “gender crime” homicides penalties, they could have said something like “to address the feminicides we will be increasing all the hate/gender homicides penalties”. But this government hate gays and trans, just love a christian traditional family and slogans (which none of our representatives was able to mantain btw).
To begin with, instead of “Italy has a major issue with domestic violence”, would it be more fair to say “The Italian government sees domestic violence as a major issue”?
My post was a response to all the “it’s still just murder!” comments; because per your first source, Italian domestic violence does largely target women, and that does need addressed.
But it sounds like your problem with this legislation is that the government is using it to prop themselves up and make themselves look virtuous while they target other disadvantaged populations. Would you mind expanding on that? My knowledge of Italian current events is woefully lacking!
You have selected regicide! If you know the name of the king or queen being murdered, please press 1.
This post has helped me root out all the shitty piece of shit incels to block on Lemmy. Thank you for this.
It’s sad that it’s been so bad there that they needed a law for this. Good on them for passing it. Now they need to do the work on changing the culture of weak men to remove this behavior. Unfortunately, this is also a worldwide issue that needs to be healed.
TL;DR: Italy finally adds a classification to a type of hate crime and defines certain circumstances required in order to help reduce/remove frivolous arguments and appeals from the defense.
AFAIU, it isn’t a blanket law and requires a specific intent to kill a woman based on her sex. It just so happens that it’s more common within relationships than out and not all deaths would fit into the definition.
There are many other hate crimes. This is just defining one of the many that are unfortunately needed, as it is and has been a prevalent issue within their country.