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.
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.
Does that make hate crime murder against men less worth prosecuting as such? Why shouldn’t the legal definition be symmetrical?
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.
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.
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!
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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
If someone murdered a male due to their sex, would you treat that any differently than someone murdering a female due to their sex?
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
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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.
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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.
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Nothing more than sex based whataboutism.
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.
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
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.