Friday, June 24, 2011

femicide


feminicidio, rather than femicidio

As a feminist activist in Colombia explained it to me, in Colombia femicidio is understood to mean just the homicide of a woman, whereas feminicidio is when she is killed for being a woman. But in English many people seem to use femicide to mean the latter, though I translated many of the essays in the powerful book Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas, which does use the cognate of the way it seems to be more commonly said in Spanish.

1 comment:

Sara Koopman said...

correction! the two terms are also different in English, though often misused.

As Rebecca Caissie puts it:

"Feminicide differs from femicide one subtle yet important way.[3] Many people are unaware of the difference between femicide and Feminicide, often mistakenly using the terms interchangeably. To define Feminicide we have to define femicide first. Femicide is the killing of women by men, because they are women. The word builds on the word genocide, which denotes the killing of a certain group of people due to their genetic affiliation. Often if not always this is a form of terrorism used to suppress the group in question. The goal is the extermination and destruction of the particular group, so as to dominate through oppression. Feminicide adds this important component, making Feminicide a political term which addresses the impunity, silence and judicial system created by the government to the male component of killing women as described in femicide allowing and even encouraging femicide to continue without any repercussions.[4]"

from:
http://atlismta.org/online-journals/human-security/understanding-feminicide-guatemala/