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.
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.