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.
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.