Femicide
“The total figure of women who die unnecessarily-felled not by disease or accident, but by men’s purposeful policy-cannot be estimated. If this figure referred to a religious, ethnic, or racial group, we would be using the term “genocide.” What can we call this?” (French 118)
Femicide is the killing of females by males because they are female (Russell 3). Femicides are the most extreme form of misogynist violence against women. (7). There is a popular conception that woman killing is a private or pathological matter. “When men murder women or girls, the power dynamics of misogyny and/or sexism are almost always involved (3). “Femicide is on the extreme end of a continuum of the sexist terrorization of women and girls. Rape, torture, mutilation, sexual slavery, incestuous and extrafamilial child sexual abuse, physical and emotional battery, and serious cases of sexual harassment are also on this continuum. Whenever these forms of sexist terrorism result in death, they become femicides” (4).
20 states in the U.S. have passed legislation that criminalizes hate crimes based on gender and/or sexual orientation, but misogynist murder of women haven’t been prosecuted as a hate crime (4).
There are countless examples of femicide. The women of Juarez are one. Most of the entries in this blog are aspects of violence and misogyny that could end in femicide. This word and subject needs to be in the consciousness feminists and popular discourse.
For more on femicide, pick up Femicide in Global Perspective edited by Diana Russell and Roberta Harmes, available at the UNT library