I fraintendimenti del “genere”: Riflessioni sulla legge italiana sul “femminicidio”

Abstract

On October 15th, 2013 the Legislative Decree of August 14th, 2013, n. 93, passed, with amendments, into a Law (n. 119/2013), known in the media and the public opinion as “Law against Feminicide”, although the word feminicide is not to be found either in the title or the text. After a brief premise in which I contextualize the bill under discussion, in the first section I address the question concerning the reasons why it is possible to insert this law within the wider debate on femicide/feminicide. In the second section, I comment the single provisions, the deployed terms and the underlying assumptions of the law. Finally, in the third section, I present my theoretical criticism to the assumptions of the law, moving from the idea that this law reproduces heteronormative assumptions, mainly due to a mistaken definition of “gender”, understood as an equivalent term for “women”.