Cultural femicide

Domestic killings deserve as much thought as honour killings.

by Jody Dallaire, Dieppe Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunity between Women and Men

We should spend as much time discussing spousal homicides and murder suicides as we do "honour killings." Maybe then we would get a handle on all this violence against women in New Brunswick.

There have been so many women killed by their partners in the last few years in this province that it is a wonder such news still makes headlines. Femicide is so ordinary — especially those spousal murder-suicides that are only in the news for a couple of days. They stop making headlines because the case is solved.

That's what the killer thought when he planned the death — killing her will solve it. Nothing was solved. We are left with two more people lost to violence against women. And we are left with the certainty that there will be another spousal murder or murder-suicide in a few months, if our record of the last few years is maintained. We should do better.

 

In both cases, victims are usually women who their killer(s) believed did not do what they were told to do, did not follow the assigned code of behaviour.

Ordinary femicides don't feature much in our water-cooler talk, unless the latest one was in our community. At most, we might say "Did you hear? There was another murder."

Shameful "honour killings" of women by families, on the other hand, usually get more conversation time. We see them as exotic. "It's their culture, you know," we'll say around the water cooler or at Tim's. Fact is, femicide seems to be integral to our own culture too.

Not that the victims would notice much difference. More often than not, ordinary domestic murders (usually of women by male partners) are triggered when a woman says she wants to lead her own life. Honour-based killings, on the other hand, are usually punishment for a woman who wants to lead her own life. See the similarity?

One big distinction is that honour-based killings are often done with some approval or knowledge of other family members. Even so, victims are usually women who, according to their killer(s), did not do what they were told to do, did not follow the assigned code of behaviour.

Every day in New Brunswick, a woman leaves a relationship because she feels controlled or fears for her safety. The number is likely an underestimate, since more than a thousand women are sheltered in transition houses every year in the province — probably only a fraction of the women who actually need to seek help.

Every day New Brunswick police get one or two reports of stalking — a high rate of reporting, compared to other provinces. More than three-quarter of people laying those complaints are women, mostly concerned about stalking by a former or current partner. Nor are the complaints insubstantial or unfounded: nation-wide, courts return convictions in the majority of stalking charges.

Recently, the slim volume titled On Stieg Larsson (issued posthumously) grabbed public attention because one of the bestselling author's essays, originally published about a decade ago, asks how honour killings differ from crimes of passion. Larsson noted that the murder of a Swedish woman never gets discussed by the media or academics "from a Swedish cultural-anthropological or broader cultural perspective. Such argumentation is reserved exclusively for immigrants, Kurds or Muslims…

"The systematic violence directed at women — for systematic violence is exactly what it is, and what it would be called if it affected to a similar extent trade unionists, or Jews, or the disabled — is never regarded as a 'cultural problem' in Sweden," he wrote. "Indeed, one could ask if it is regarded as a problem at all, apart from in a strictly legal context."

Here in Canada, we put too much emphasis on the distinction between the ordinary killing of women and honour-based killings. We dwell too much on the fact that honour killings are often done with some approval or knowledge of other family members.

Flip that argument over, and it becomes difficult to suggest that the deomestic murders New Brunswickers will hear about in the year ahead are not done without our knowledge or approval, given their regularity and inevitability, and our inaction following the last ones. Where are the inquiries, the domestic death reviews, the actions that would allow us to say we are concerned by the regular killing of women by their partners?

A big first step towards fixing the problem would be to admit that these killings are a part of our culture and that something must be done to halt them.

 

Jody Dallaire is involved in the NB women's movement and is currently elected to Dieppe city council.

eMail: jody.dallaire@rogers.com. 

© Copyright 2012 Jody Dallaire, All rights Reserved. Written For: StraightGoods.ca