Femicide? Gynocide? What would you call it?

[redqueen]

There is a serious problem facing women and girls.

We have seen the most obvious manifestation of the reversal of progress in the battle for women's rights: The efforts by republicans to remove our bodily autonomy. This gets lots of media attention, and we all talk about it. It's highly visible.

What seems to be less visible is the epidemic of violence facing women and girls all over the world. Depressingly, violence against women is so common that it is most often not even considered newsworthy. Domestic violence. Bride burnings. Honor killings. Sex-selective abortion. Purposeful post-natal neglect of girls, resulting in death (by starvation, exposure, etc.) Multicidal femicide (serial killers who target women). Out of all these ongoing forms of violence against women, only a few stories seem to merit any media attention.


Fortunately, the UN is bothering to address this global crisis.

Femicide: A Global Problem
http://acuns.org/femicide-a-global-problem/

Dr. Michael Platzer of the Vienna ACUNS Liaison Office opened the discussion, outlining the issue and referring to a movie coming out soon on femicide, called It’s a Girl. The side-event started with a projection of a short clip on femicide, providing an understanding of the phenomenon in India: “I wanted to check the sex of the child, because having another daughter would increase the liability, in that you educate a daughter, you invest money, and then she leaves the house. […] The intention of killing infant girls by gender-related abortion, by infanticide, or by neglect and discrimination leading to death cuts across social and economic boundaries. It occurs in wealthy and poor families, and in many countries. In India gender-related abortion of some 10 million girls over the last two decades has led to an alarming gender gap. On average, only 899 girls are born for every 1,000 boys. It is estimated that 50 million women and girls are missing. The phenomenon is as old as many cultures. It reflects the low esteem, in which many women are held in many societies, where a girl is seen is a burden, a boy is seen as an essentially economic asset.”

Ms. Angela Me (Chief, Statistics and Surveys Section, UNODC) presented data on the killing of women in the context of global homicide, as presented in The Global Study of Homicide (October 2011). Looking at the global data, it appeared that men are most vulnerable. 80% of victims are men and most perpetrators are also men. Particularly in the Americas, but overall as well, and varying across regions, it is mostly men that are killed. Why then discuss femicide? The great majority of women are killed in the domestic context and this is not an issue of a specific country/region. She showed evidence (graphs and statistics) to support this statement. In Europe half of the women killed in 2008-2010 were killed by a family member. For men it is just 15%. There is a clear relation between the killing of women and the killing due to partner and family violence. In North America the percent of family and partner violence-related femicide reaches 70%. Policies on homicide focus on street violence or organized crime, leaving aside domestic violence. For some women the most unsecure place is their own home. What of the governments’ responses? How many people were prosecuted and convicted? At present there is no sufficient data on this. There is a need to invest more on data on crime prevention and criminal justice.

Dr. Anna Alvazzi del Frate (Research Director, Small Arms Survey) mentioned the work they are doing in Geneva on small arms and prevention and reduction of arms violence. They also use homicide as a proxy in their research, such as in The Global Burden of Armed Violence, prepared in support of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development (a diplomatic initiative to which 112 countries have adhered, which aims at a measurable reduction of armed violence by 2015). Some trends in homicide were included in this report, of which a chapter was devoted to femicide. “Femicide” is used to define any killing of a woman. It is different from the definition given in the 1970s, which had a very strong feminist component (killing women because they were women). It is more likely for men to be killed, but some important patterns were found that link long-term violence against women with the killing. Women who live in abusive relationships run a much higher risk to be killed. The presence of a gun in the home is very likely to transform disputes into killings. “Violence against women is the most frequent and less punished crime in the world.” was the first sentence of the documentary show at the beginning and it holds true. One of the consequences is that statistically the killing of a woman may not pop-up as intentional, it is not properly investigated, properly prosecuted, and it may be classified as manslaughter or unintentional homicide, because there is a high level of tolerance of violence against women. And this, of course, has consequences for the researchers as well, since the information is not coming from all possible sources (criminal justice and public health). The research tried to map the prevalence of the female rates of homicide. In practice, the majority of the countries (mostly in Africa and Asia) fall in a grey area. There are 25 countries in the high/very high femicide rates and they are in the Americas. Very frequently national rates do not express the situation in different cities or regions within a country. Therefore femicide, more so than homicide, is an issue that should be looked at more locally. There is a paradox: in some countries, the overall risk to get killed is low, yet domestic violence may be there and, very frequently, the women are killed in conflicts. 60% of homicide is committed with fire arms. Only 30% of women are killed with a fire arm. This is a big problem and it requires thinking and preventive action. In some cases this is the only form of violence that still remains, such as in Europe, a type of violence that is not to be accepted.

...

[Pab Sungenis]

1. "-cide" is from the Latin

so it would properly be femicide.

Let's just call it disgusting and be done with it.

[redqueen]

2. Thanks.

The Nation and The New York Times have both used 'gynocide', thanks for providing a solid reason for the other term.

[Pab Sungenis]

3. Killing of women by any other name

is just as disgusting. Thanks for sharing the article.

[redqueen]

4. Thanks for reading it. nt

[Jim Lane]

6. "Automobile" is similarly mixed.

"True pedants hate it when words are coined that combine a Greek and a Latin root rather than two roots from the same language. According to them, an 'automobile' should either be an 'ipsimobile' (all Latin) or an 'autokineton' (all Greek), and the same goes for other hybrids such as 'homosexual' and 'heterosexual'." (from http://www.drweevil.org/archives/000260.html)

The real definitional problem, though, comes with selective abortion. Most of us believe that a single-cell zygote (the fertilized egg) is not yet a human being and that the woman carrying it may therefore choose to end the pregnancy. That status persists through the early stages of cell division. If an early-stage embryo is not yet entitled to human rights, so that a woman who chooses an abortion is not guilty of murder, can her exercise of that right be deemed immoral if her choice is based on some factor of which we disapprove?

"Femicide" and "gynocide" both imply that a female human is being killed. All the other examples in the OP are clear and, as you say, disgusting. To apply the terms to any abortion-related choice, however, seems to accept (selectively, and for this purpose only) the right-wing view that an embryo is fully human from the moment of conception.

The underlying problem, obviously, is the social structure that pushes people to exercise their rights in this fashion. It's not just a "belief" that female babies are less valuable; in too many countries, they actually are less valuable (in economic terms) because of laws and customs concerning marriage, employment, etc.

[4th law of robotics]

5. I take issue with the notion that violence against women is tolerated more than violence against men

Perhaps in a few isolated cases but not in general.

Men are more likely to die of violence in just about every society at every time in every location on earth and at every age group.

Women may be more likely to be murdered by a family member but that's only because far more men are being murdered by strangers.

There is plenty of evidence that domestic abuse is a gender neutral activity and yet women rarely are jailed for this crime (indeed most police consider that aspect of it a joke).

Murdering a wife = life in jail or the death penalty.
Murdering a husband = pscyh eval.

Boys should never hit girls! When is the reverse ever taught?

There is definitely a gender that is seen as disposable and acceptable to physically harm. Are you sure it's women?