Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing

by Jill Radford (Editor), Diana E.H. Russell (Editor)

Book by Radford, Jill, Russell, Diana E. H.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Politics

379 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1992

Reviews

[Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This creative collection defines for the first time where the sexist face of genocide meets the genocidal face of sexism. Femicide is a milestone in comprehending a social world that wants - even loves - women dead." Catharine MacKinnon

An act of resistance in itself, this is the book i turned to after Montreal.

[Luise · Rating 5 out of 5]

probably one of the hardest books I've ever read. incredibly insightful and an absolute must in order to dive deeper into the topic of patriarchal violence and structural misogyny but also impossible to recover from.

[quixiion · Rating 4 out of 5]

incredible, fundamental read

[Reyhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are already familiar with feminist discussions, this book is very good to go into more detail and learn more about it within a historical perspective. If you are not, you can get familiar with many of such discussions as well as themes, topics and discourses and have a better picture of misogynistic practices. For the people in the second category, it might not always be too easy to read as some parts (such as some of the research data) are quite old. But even in this case, the highlighted issues are still basically the same, the history is indispensible part of what we are having today and the book is worth reading.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an incredible anthology, but it was also incredibly painful to read. The worst was definitely the fifth section, which filled me with such rage that I felt almost nauseated, and it was almost unbearable to continue reading, but I managed to persevere anyway. (By worst, what I mean is that it was the most difficult to read.) It had a wealth of valuable information, and I'm glad I read it, but I'm going to have to take some time to recover from the emotional damage inflicted. The only problem that I have noted is that this anthology is out of date by now, in terms of the statistics, and I'm curious how things have changed, although in certain respects things have gotten worse, notably on the pornography front, and femicide internationally. (I think.)

Oh, one thing I do wish, although I understand why it wasn't included, is that there had been more articles on the witch burnings, because I'm pretty uninformed about the topic, but I've also heard people, well, men, defending themselves on the topic (as if they were the ones out there burning the witches at the stake) by saying that a large portion of the witches were male, which I know is not true (some were, but the overwhelming majority were women), and that the numbers are inflated and actually much smaller than feminists make them out to be (I've heard that it's the opposite, and the amount of women killed was probably much larger than we imagine). I'm not defending their reactionary stances but more information on the topic would be useful. I know there are books that focus specifically on the witch burnings as a whole and only on the witch burnings instead of femicide in general, but I'm not sure whether there are any good books written in the second wave by radical feminists on the topic. There might be more recent books on the topic written, but they probably lack the political perspective and insight I'm looking for. Andrea dworkin did cover the topic in one of her books, I recall, but I don't quite remember which one - it was either Intercourse or Woman Hating, probably the latter. In any case, she didn't focus exclusively on the topic.

I'm losing my train of thought. Well, my basic impression from this book is very positive, and it's an excellent collection of articles. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in the topic. It was seriously depressing though, for all it had a section on women fighting back. I also hadn't realized how much more vulnerable women were to being killed in the home versus outside the home, and how the myth of the safe home is perpetuated for women. I would recommend that readers read this in segments, instead of reading most of it in one go, as I did, because it is exhausting. Particularly, as I said, that section, the fifth section, on the way the law treats femicide, especially in comparison with women who kill men, who are treated much worse by the law, particularly when they are killing their abusers or killing in self-defense.

[Ivani Yuhendra]

Saya nemu buku ini setelah ga sengaja lihat istilah femicide atau femisida. Dalam benak saya : apa itu femisida? Kok rasanya ga booming? Bedanya sama misoginis apa ya?
Ternyata, makna femisida justru lebih dalam daripada misoginis. Dan, kasus-kasusnya banyaaaaak banget di Indonesia tapi istilah ini jarang banget kayaknya kedengeran di Indonesia, atau saya doang yang ga pernah denger?
Buku ini sangat amat feminis. Isinya antologi feminis yang dijelaskan dengan menggebu-gebu. Buku ini frontal, tanpa basa-basi, bahkan beberapa kasus kekerasan diceritakan dengan detail. Ya, kalau ga kuat membayangkan hal-hal semacam pembunuhan, pornografi, fetis, mungkin akan terganggu dengan keseluruhan isi buku.
Dan, yang selain isinya feminis sekali, beberapa chapter diisi sama istilah hukum yang susah sekali saya mengerti. Mungkin aja bagi orang-orang yang background-nya hukum atau menyukai dunia hukum, buku ini amat sangat membantu untuk memahami kasus-kasus terkait femisida.
Kalau isi bukunya sudah terkait kekerasan pada wanita, hal yang pasti gabisa dipisahin itu laki-laki. Dan, di sini laki-laki ya bisa dianggap sebagai biangnya masalah. Jadi, kalau penganut 'ga semua laki-laki kek gitu kok' mungkin ga akan sepenuhnya setuju dengan isi buku.
Saya juga berpikir ga semua laki-laki men-downgrade wanita, terkadang wanita justru menyerang wanita yang lain. Saya sih ga tutup mata. Memang ada beberapa lelaki ga baik, tapi ada juga wanita yang ga baik.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was published 30 years ago, a bit scary how it's still relevant today and how they mentioned things that we discuss today as if they were new concepts. It's a shame that this book is not more popular, at least in feminist circles.

As expected reading this made me very angry, I sometimes think that society is lucky that what all feminists want is equality and not revenge. From the beginning of time (pretty much), women have been killed for no other reason than them being a woman. This book was published right after the Polytechnique massacre (published in 1992) and it's infuriating to see how it was talked about back then. Very few people saw it for what it was : a crime against women, they were more focused on his poor mental health and trying to blame his mother (it's always a woman's fault isn't it?).

I appreciated the section on culture and media, we do live in a culture where women are routinely killed or tortured on screen for entertainment, to think that this is a neutral thing would be pretty stupid. Things that are popular in porn very quickly become things that men will ask women to do, spoiler alert, most popular things have something to do with roughing up women. Not here to condemn all porn obviously, but we should be critical of the culture we live in and we should strive for better entertainment

[Sophie Gevers · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read. Especially if you need to constantly debate the bear vs. man in the woods debate with stupid men.

[Mayryott · Rating 5 out of 5]

8.5