We explain what a feminicide or femicide is, its causes and relationship with machismo. Also, the situation of femicides in Mexico.
What is feminicide?
When we talk about feminicide or femicide, we are referring to the murder of a woman for the simple fact of being a woman. It is a hate crime, which occurs within the framework of gender violence, that is, subjection to humiliating, cruel or painful treatment towards an individual motivated by their gender or sexual orientation.
In fact, feminicide is usually accompanied by hostile attitudes, beatings, torture, rape and other criminal behavior against women and girls. Usually It is considered part of the group of hate crimes motivated by gender violencelegislated according to the same legal order as the murders of homosexuals or transgender people.
On the other hand, it is part of a social and political reading that highlights the patriarchal order of societies, which subjects women to a secondary place compared to men. The different schools of feminism, in this sense, play an important role in making visible the cultural context that allows, encourages and tolerates femicide.
Femicide is the most extreme expression of machismo or the call rape culture. In the specific case of femicide, the tolerance of violence against women is evident, which also includes rape, discrimination and physical gender violence, especially if they occur within the framework of an emotional relationship.
Femicide or femicide?
Yes ok both formulas are commonly acceptableand both are registered in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the RAE, preference is usually given to the first term, since the second reveals its origin as anglicism (loaning from English femicide).
However, there are those who attribute to the first term a more general meaning, linked to the term genocideand coming to mean a significant number of femicides produced in the same country without the State taking action on the matter or even making the crime committed visible.
Origin of the term feminicide
The term feminicide was coined by South African feminist activist and writer Diana Russellwho has dedicated her life to making visible and combating gender inequalities. This term was defined as “the murder of women by men motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure or a sense of possession towards women.”
Russell herself explains that “it represents the extreme of a continuum of anti-female terror that includes a variety of verbal and physical abuse, such as rape, torture, sexual slavery (particularly prostitution), incestuous or extrafamilial child sexual abuse, physical and emotional beatings.
The term has antecedents in the English language since the beginning of the 19th century, but It began to be used popularly since 1976 when Russell used it before the International Tribunal for Crimes against Women.
Since then it was used abundantly in the 1990s and was also introduced into Spanish, following the visibility of the massive murders of women in Ciudad Juárez, on the border between Mexico and the United States.
Types of feminicide
Usually a distinction is made between two forms of femicide:
- intimate femicide. That which occurs within the framework of a relationship, current or past: women murdered by their husbands, boyfriends, ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends. This is also the case if the crime is committed by parents, uncles, brothers or other types of relatives.
- Non-intimate femicide. That which occurs without a sentimental relationship of any kind between the victim and the murderer, nor is there a kinship link between them.
However, it is also possible to talk about other categories such as lesbicidewhen it comes to crimes against homosexual women, committed as punishment for their sexual choice; or also of transfemicidewhen it comes to the murder of a woman trans (or transsexual) for the simple reason of being so.
Causes of feminicide
It is not simple to give the causes of the existence of feminicide in today's society. Broadly speaking, the most logical explanation points to a patriarchal culture that has dominated most human societies since ancient times, and according to which it was usual to consider women as second-class citizens, spoils of war and part of men's heritage.
In Athenian democracy, for example, neither women nor slaves could participate in public decisions. In modern Western democracy, women's suffrage did not occur until the end of the 19th century, and thanks to the struggle of the suffragettes.
In some Eastern societies, women must hide from public view using veils or special costumes. Furthermore, in some cases she is subject to the final will of her father, and then to that of her husband.
The critical current of feminism has alerted and combated sexist culture for more than a century, achieving important advances in the legal recognition of women, but still being very far from a panorama of equality.
In that sense, femicides are part of the attempts of patriarchal culture to regain its dominanceThat is, they are criminal attempts to subject women to a situation of obedience, submission or defenselessness against men.
There are also those who accuse the abundance of testosterone in men as co-responsible for their violent attitudes, especially in those lacking a formal education that counterbalances their impulses. There is still a lot of debate about it.
Femicide in Mexico
Mexico has been a sadly famous case in terms of feminicide since In 1993, the mass murders of women in Ciudad Juárez became public..
In 2009, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights sanctioned the Mexican State, holding it responsible for not having taken any type of action to provide justice to the victims and their families, especially those of Claudia Ivette González, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal and Laura Berenice Ramos. .
Perhaps as a consequence of this, in 2012 Mexico incorporated the crime of feminicide into the penal codebeing the first country to propose the classification of the crime.
It is the most active country in the fight against this crime. However, in 2016, 1,678 missing young people were quantified, 150 of them minors, which led to declaring a state of alert in the states of Guerrero, Michoacán, Chihuahua, Jalisco and Oaxaca.
Continue with: Gender violence
References
- “Femicide” in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Femicide” on Wikipedia.
- “Gender-based homicide” on Wikipedia.
- “Femicide” in the United Nations Gender Equality Observatory.
- “What is feminicide and how to identify it?” in National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women (Mexico).
