as a social expectation or it is expected equally of
both men and women. Also, a minority of Western
human rights activists have argued for the formula-
tion of a new human right, namely, “sexual auton-
omy,” to combat practices associated with honor.Radical feminists
Radical feminists, for whom “patriarchy” and
“violence against women” are the main analytical
categories, treat honor killings as a symptom of a
larger regime of patriarchy or male dominance over
women. These killings are not an instance, singular
and unique, of particular cultures, but are on a par
with and similar to other forms of violence inflicted
on women by men, universally and in all cultures.
Coercing minors to marry, domestic abuse, rape,
polygamy, are all acts of male violence against
women and are on a continuum with the crime of
honor. In a sense, they are all crimes of honor. Each
culture has its own peculiar variation of male acts
of violence.
Most of these practices of violence, in the view of
radical feminism, go unremedied. What is required
therefore is a more severe response from the legal
system: acts of violence against women, including
crimes of honor, should all be grouped together and
treated more seriously. Indeed, the sexual dimen-
sion of the crime of honor cries out for special treat-
ment (harsher punishment) not equal treatment
(to other types of homicides) as liberal feminism
contends.
According to radical feminism, passion is the
same as honor. Both honor crimes and crimes
driven by passion are symptoms of a regime of male
dominance. Whether a man is overcome with the
passion of jealousy or the shame of dishonor when
he kills a woman makes no difference. Both types of
killings function to subordinate women to men;
they are the acting out of the societal script of male
dominance.
Some feminist activists in the Islamic world find
this brand of feminism appealing because of its
insistence on the universality of male violence. It
frees them from the sense of shame they might feel
toward their own culture’s practice of honor
killings and its peculiar form of control of women’s
sexuality. Since passion crimes do occur in less sex-
ually repressive cultures in the West, and since
according to radical feminism passion is the same
as honor, then one culture cannot hold itself
morally superior to the other. We are all victims of
male violence.
Radical feminism in general is skeptical of the
liberal categories of consent and choice, especially
when deployed in the arena of sexuality. Freeing226 honor: feminist approaches to
women to have sex with men may only result in
making women available to male violence and con-
trol. Both the idea that male violence is everywhere
and the general skepticism concerning questions of
sexual liberation allow radical feminists to avoid
talking about sex in other cultures.
Some radical feminists influenced by cultural
feminism argue that sexuality in honor cultures
should be transformed to become more feminine:
caring, sensitive, and communicative.
It is worth noting that many activists and schol-
ars on the question of honor tend to mix, in their
analytics and advocacy rhetoric, the two strands of
feminism, liberal and radical. They believe in the
universality of patriarchy and they are advocates of
women’s equality to men. Male violence is every-
where but women must reclaim their autonomy
and agency.Poststructuralist feminism
While poststructuralist feminists agree generally
with the radical feminist idea of male dominance,
they assert that violence against women does not
work in the interests of all men against all women,
but in the interests of some men against those of
many women and men. Moreover, male dominance
as a regime of power is not total because it is shot
through with various forms of resistance every-
where by both men and women. Law works as a set
of background rules, along with social norms, to
influence the particular dynamic of power and
resistance within the system. A la Foucault, post-
structuralist feminism also believes that law plays a
role in “subjection,” that is, participating in the cre-
ation of forms of being a gendered subject.
Poststructuralist feminists note that in the soci-
eties where honor killings take place, women’s vir-
ginity is a highly prized social practice, the loss of
which is penalized in extreme cases through these
killings. At the end of the day, this produces a
hymenized space between men and women, where
the preservation of men’s virginity is no less the
effect of the system than that of women’s. This
regime of virginity by command (for women) and
virginity by default (for men) is no less taxing on
women than it is on men. It coerces both genders
to bargain their way around this particular form
of prohibition to interact sexually. Such forms of
being (virgin/virgin by default) and bargaining (dif-
ferent kinds of sexual deviance designed to preserve
virginity while still having sex) are unique to the
cultures that produce honor killings. According to
this view, the interaction between the legal rules on
honor killings a particular legal regime opts for,
judicial practice of that regime through interpreta-