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.
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).