Opinion
Femicide in St. Leon-Rot
It is enough! Why we should stop talking about “relationship acts.”
At the Löwenrot-Gymnasium in St. Leon-Rot, an 18-year-old was stabbed to death by a student of the same age
© René Priebe/dpa
An 18-year-old student kills a student of the same age – and the police say it was a relationship crime. Once again. The term trivializes murders that concern us all.
On Thursday an 18-year-old Woman killed by her classmate in the Baden-Württemberg community of St. Leon-Rot. Stabbed. At school. All attempts at resuscitation failed and she died at the scene.
In many articles about the case as well as in the press release from the Heidelberg public prosecutor’s office and the Mannheim police headquarters, you can once again read a term that we should all immediately delete from our vocabulary: relationship act.
Yes, the perpetrator and the victim were in a relationship. But the relationship should not be the focus when assessing such acts. Because the relationship itself is usually not the problem. The problem is the role model that lies behind such actions.
Every day a man tries to take the life of his wife or ex-partner; almost every third day he succeeds. There are not many scientists who research intimate partner violence. But those who have taken up the matter are certain: the problem is patriarchal structures and toxic masculinity that still exist in our society – a woman has not behaved the way the man would have liked and will not therefore killed by him.
There is a word for these types of killings: femicide. The term refers to the fact that the vast majority of these cases would not have happened if the victim had not been female. This is exactly what is obscured – or even trivialized – by the term “relationship act”.
No more trivialization, also conceptually
This type of trivialization can also be observed in the judiciary. Just a small example: In a 2018 ruling by the Federal Court of Justice on a femicide, it says: “The very fact that the separation came from the victim can be judged as a circumstance that speaks against the baseness of the motive.” This means that if the man kills the woman because she left him, this may be a mitigating punishment – the woman is the man’s property.
But it’s not just separations that trigger violence against women. A new partner, a skirt that’s too short, a flirt on the train, the wrong word to the wrong man: all of this can be enough to blow the fuse for some men. It is still unclear what triggered the attack on the 18-year-old student in Baden-Württemberg. The fact is that there was violence months ago, there was a report and the woman had sought help. But in the end no one could help her.
We – the sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, friends and girlfriends – must finally acknowledge the problem, name it, we must not continue to suppress it. We have to intervene when we notice that someone is behaving in a sexist manner. When we notice that a man doesn’t respect a woman because she is a woman. It exists, misogyny. There are the oppressors, there is domestic violence. And there are femicides. So please: Let’s finally stop labeling murders of women as relationship crimes.