From Misogyny to Murder : Everyday Sexism and Femicide in Cross-Cultural Context
This paper argues that a pervasive culture of misogyny in everyday power relations contributes to both the disregard and minimization of large-scale crimes against women and a public unwillingness to recognize them as misogynistic violence. I will examine two case studies: that of the 500+ femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico since 1993, as well as the recent murder of three women in a Pittsburgh by George Sodini, which is but the most recent in a string of similar incidents. Though taking place in vastly different cultural contexts, these two case studies illustrate the ways in which quotidian sexist practices lay the conditions for this sort of violence and for the political discourse that surrounds it