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.
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).