Opinion: Battling the Demon of Femicide

We all too often forget and cannot neglect life’s demons. They cannot be eradicated without seriously believing that they are real.

Femicide is such a demon. The term “femicide” is rarely used in official U.S. statistics, as murders of women are normally categorized as homicides.

According to a U.N. study, femicide is defined as an intentional killing with a gender-related motive. This differs from homicide, where the motive may not be gender-related. A 2024 U.N. report says that, globally, a partner or family member kills a woman intentionally every 10 minutes, 50,000 yearly. Gender-related killings are the most brutal and extreme violence manifestations carried out against women and girls.

For some reason, society doesn’t see this as a problem, but these fatalities affect us all. Femicide deaths in California are increasing at an alarming rate — 124 California homicides in 2024 were listed as femicide by the California Department of Public Health. Overall, 2024 saw a decline in homicides with an increase in femicides.

This is a very frightening trend. Over 50% of California women report experiencing intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Roughly 46% of intimate partner femicide victims are killed while in the process of separation from their partner.

Some U.S. examples from just this year, according to Census.gov:

• Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer Bowen of Coral Springs, Florida, was killed by her husband.

• The following week, North Carolina Pastor Tammy McCollum was killed by her husband.

• Also in April, nurse Victoria Alexander was killed by her estranged husband in a murder-suicide in New Jersey, reported the New York Post.

• Dr. Cerina Fairfax was killed by her husband, the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, in a murder-suicide while their two children were in the house.

• Yesenia Lopez of San Mateo County was murdered by her former partner, who violated a restraining order.

• A Shreveport, Louisiana, man killed two women and eight children, seven his own kids.

The Violence Policy Center, a respected national nonprofit founded in 1988 to investigate violence in Americans’ lives, said that 98% of murdered women are victims of someone who previously subjected them to some form of spousal or sexual abuse.

The question that arises is what we do to confront this issue and obtain the proper remedy. Society can no longer look away with blind or jaundiced eyes. When we see something, we must do something — please at least make a call to the proper authorities.

This demon of our own making must be tamed and eliminated.

Al Mayes is a pastor in the Renaissance Incarceration Ministry in Eureka.

Email: al.mayes@ymail.com.