IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v13y2023i11p229-d1267937.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Legitimating Misogyny and Femicide: Legal Himpathy and (State) Violence against Women in Iran

Author

Listed:
  • Ladan Rahbari

    (Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, 1018WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Abstract

On the fifth of February 2022, a man gruesomely murdered his seventeen-year-old wife, Mona Heydari, in a city in a southern province of Iran. The man then shocked bystanders by strolling in public spaces while carrying his wife’s severed head. This paper focuses on the case of Mona’s killing and investigates the state, media, and online user-created reactions to the incident. The paper aims to (i) offer an in-depth exploration of himpathy with the perpetrator and (ii) investigate the role of the law and the state in the normalization and perpetuation of violence committed by men against women in the name of ‘honor.’ This paper extends the usage of the concept of himpathy (by Manne, 2017) as a cluster of biases that direct sympathy towards men who commit violence against women to the institutional and legal realms. It also draws on the traditional notion of gheirat, referring to protecting one’s ‘honor,’ and explores its role in Iranian law to show that the Iranian legal system hinges upon it, therefore legitimating misogyny and femicide.

Suggested Citation

  • Ladan Rahbari, 2023. "Legitimating Misogyny and Femicide: Legal Himpathy and (State) Violence against Women in Iran," Societies, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-14, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:13:y:2023:i:11:p:229-:d:1267937
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/11/229/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/13/11/229/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:13:y:2023:i:11:p:229-:d:1267937. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.