Femicide : the politics of woman killing, by Jill Radford, Diana E. H. Russell.
NEW YORK: TWAYNE PPUBLISHERS, 1992. First Edition. Hardcover; First Printing. B&W Photographs; Small 4to ; 379 pages.
"'There's
no place like home.' This familiar phrase invokes the image of an
ideal: home as safe haven and shelter from the world. For women who have
been victims of femicide - misogynist killing by men - these simple
words take on a disturbing new meaning. There is indeed no place like
home for a woman who has died at the hands of a man, because it is there
that she was least safe from harm. The threat of violent death for a
woman is in fact greatest in her own home. And her killer is likely no
stranger, no masked psychopath, but someone who knew her intimately, a
companion or former companion, a husband or lover. In Femicide: The
Politics of Woman Killing editors Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell
have compiled more than 40 articles and essays that document and
describe such terrible truths about the phenomenon of femicide. The
hearings for Clarence Thomas's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court and
the trials of William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson put the issues of
sexual harassment and date rape on the mainstream map. But femicide, the
most violent form of sexist behavior, has yet to be widely acknowledged
and recognized as a brutal expression of hatred for women. A woman
killed in her home by her former husband, a woman killed by a serial
murderer such as Great Britain's Yorkshire Ripper or Los Angeles'
Hillside Strangler, a woman killed by a mass murderer such as Marc
Lépine, who in 1989 shot to death 14 female students at the University
of Montreal, are all to some degree victims of misogyny and a
destructive desire for power, argue Radford and Russell. But these
motivations for such violence are rarely acknowledged. The murderer's
behavior is usually viewed as aberrant and unexplainable; he is a
'beast' or an 'animal,' not a man who has committed an act of sexual
violence. If lynching has become synonymous with racism, pogrom
synonymous with anti-Semitism, why has it been so difficult to establish
the connection between femicide and sexism?The connection is made
repeatedly in Femicide. Contributors address the deaths of the thousands
of women in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England burned as
witches; female infanticide and suttee, or death by fire, in India; and
the slaying of Asian-American, African-American, and American-Indian
women in the United States. No respecter of race, ethnicity, or social
class, femicide occurs across countries, continents, and cultures. The
killing of minority women is examined by several writers, who attribute
their deaths to the compound effects of racist and sexist violence.
Femicide also assesses the culpability of the media and the judicial
system in putting the character of the victim, rather than the act of
the murderer, on trial. Both the courts and the press, Radford and
Russell say, help perpetuate the notion that the female victim is
responsible for the crime committed against her. Mass market films and
pornography are likewise held accountable for their role in the selling
and glamorizing of sexual violence. A testimony to the existence of
femicide, this volume is as much an act of resistance. Numerous
contributors chronicle the efforts of women working singly and in unison
to reveal the pervasiveness of this ultimate form of sexual violence,
to reach out to the friends and families of its victims, and to fight
back against it"--Unedited summary from book jacket