Jealousy

[thir]

We may have a definition problem between English and American usage.

I read (and answered the original question) with the assumption that "hate crime" is a crime commited specifically against someone because of their religion or ethnicity. Yes, because one group "hates" another, but I'd say that was based strictly on being taught ones prejudice and nothing to do with any real emotional basis of the type that occurs with jealousy or a crime of passion.

I am not sure where the problem lies, exactly? I too see hate crimes as traditionally the ones where groups hate other groups for whatever reason. But other crimes can be committed because of hate of a more 'personal' nature, if such an expression may be used. I do not think it is really the right one, but cannot think of any other.

To me, the expression 'a crime of passion' is simply used to gloss over murders out if jealousy or obsessive feelings of ownership. To me, the socalled 'passion' is an enraged feeling that someone is getting away from them. It cannot be grief, I do not think you kill out of grief, and it certainly cannot be out of love. The use of that word, love, is, again to me, a gross abuse of what that word means. Putting in connectin with taking someone's life is - gross..

If you love someone, again according to my world view of course, you want them happy. You do not want them dead.

Semantics. I'm not happy with my definition using hate as part of the explanation.

I see. Howver, to me the unhappiness comes with using 'love' as an excuse for murder.

[thir]

I saw an article with this theme which I found interesting:

What is it about jealousy that historically and even nowadays so many find is an acceptable excuse for murder?

'Crime of passion' is no defence

Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 19 January 2003 02.22 GMT


TheFreeDictionary
"crime of passion n. a defendant's excuse for committing a crime due to sudden anger or heartbreak, in order to eliminate the element of "premeditation." This usually arises in murder or attempted murder cases, when a spouse or sweetheart finds his/her "beloved" having sexual intercourse with another and shoots or stabs one or both of the coupled pair. To make this claim the defendant must have acted immediately upon the rise of passion, without the time for contemplation or allowing for "a cooling of the blood." It is sometimes called the "Law of Texas" since juries in that state are supposedly lenient to cuckolded lovers who wreak their own vengeance. The benefit of eliminating premeditation is to lessen the provable homicide to manslaughter with no death penalty and limited prison terms. An emotionally charged jury may even acquit the impassioned defendant. (See: murder, manslaughter)"




'Crime of passion' is no defence"

Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 19 January 2003 02.22 GMT
Article history

"Husbands who claim their partner's nagging or infidelity drove them to kill will face much tougher sentences under a government shake-up of so-called 'crimes of passion'.

Ministers are secretly reviewing the defence of provocation, which has its origins in the bygone tradition of men fighting duels, under which a defendant can evade a murder charge by arguing that their victim did or said something that made them lose control.

Ministers argue that it reflects a medieval view of marriage, in which a man whose honour is insulted by a domineering or unfaithful wife is entitled to fatal revenge rather than a divorce. It also encourages defendants to blacken the victim's name in court, painting her as a bad wife.

The review will prompt impassioned debate over modern relationships, with critics likely to argue that men instinctively respond differently than women to infidelity and that 'feminising' the law is unfair.

'This defence institutionalises the blaming of the victim - "I killed her, but it was all her fault" - and we say we are going to put the victim at the heart of the crim inal justice system,' said a Whitehall source."

read more:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...nsandprobation

[leo9]

To me, the expression 'a crime of passion' is simply used to gloss over murders out if jealousy or obsessive feelings of ownership. To me, the socalled 'passion' is an enraged feeling that someone is getting away from them. It cannot be grief, I do not think you kill out of grief, and it certainly cannot be out of love. The use of that word, love, is, again to me, a gross abuse of what that word means. Putting in connectin with taking someone's life is - gross..

One of the reasons modern lawmakers are unhappy with the concept is that, historically, it has almost exclusively been a man's defence. I don't have statistics for this, but I do have folklore! In the best known ballad of a woman's "crime of passion," Frankie and Johnny, every version that describes Frankie's eventual fate agrees that she is executed - even though, as the version I learnt in school says, the Judge and jury all accept that "He was her man, but he done her wrong."

Those who still defend the legal concept are reduced to arguing that men are inherently less stable than women and liable to temporary insanity in such situations - a claim which the same people would furiously reject if it were advanced by some female-supremacist. (I have a half-written novel, set in a matriarchial world, where the excuse for oppressing men is that their instinctive urge to violence makes them unfit for responsible positions in a civilised society. But I wasn't intending that seriously.)

Historically, the justification for this has been more to do with inheritance than jealousy. The expression "cuckold" for a man whose wife is unfaithful is derived from "cuckoo" because, originally, what was supposed to be enraging him was the possibility of another's eggs in his nest. (Yes, Denuseri, very sociobiological, though it was the inheritance of property and rank rather than of genes that concerned the people who coined the term.) But since the gender bias remains (for every "Fatal Attraction" female jealousy-killer, there are a jailfull of men whose last words to their ex were "If I can't have you, no-one can,") even though most people outside the 1% have little property to leave and little concern who gets it, I suspect that inheritance was always an excuse for urges that ran much older and deeper.

It's possessiveness, not the practical consequences of loss, that makes you destroy something rather than let someone else have it. If someone burns down a house rather than let it be repossessed, the law does not consider the fact that they felt desperately possessive to be a mitigating factor. So perhaps the root of modern changes in the law's attitude is that we no longer feel it reasonable to be insanely possessive about a person.

[thir]

It's possessiveness, not the practical consequences of loss, that makes you destroy something rather than let someone else have it. If someone burns down a house rather than let it be repossessed, the law does not consider the fact that they felt desperately possessive to be a mitigating factor. So perhaps the root of modern changes in the law's attitude is that we no longer feel it reasonable to be insanely possessive about a person.

I do not know about reasonable - feelings have precious little to do with reason! I think the point here is that though you might feel possesssive about someone, you are not entitled to kill them.

Having said that, I wold like to speak of a situation of my own many years ago. My then husband found another woman, did not tell me about it, lied for two years, took her into our home for Godssake, in our own bed..It was never a home to me after that.

I had all the emotions people have in these situations - I could not take it in, had no idea, could not - would never ever in a million years have thought that he would lie to me, felt invaded, confused - the pain was killing me. I also felt angry. In fact, a white hot rage. I had fantasies - many fantasies - about getting a gun and shooting him right between the eyes..I had it many times, and it helped me.

It is hard to get a gun in Denmark, but I might have if I tried real hard. That would have made it premeditated. What would have happened if I had actually done it?

Let's see, I would have killed a man I actually still loved. I would have caused his parents and 4 sisters unspeakable pain, people who were completely innocent. I would have caused my own family pain. I would have spent the next 4-16 years in jail. I would not later have met my two other husbands, who I love more than anything in the world, and would not loose for worlds. And I would not have had my stepson.

I guess thats my point. You have a right to the feelings - to any feelings. But not the right to kill.