So called honour..

[ProfessorPreciseaBug]

Can we please all complain to the BeeB about the phrase honour killing. It is not. It is premeditated domestic murder.

I suspect the simple act of changing the reference in news stories would help change attitudes.

Thank you for this thread, which encapsulates a lot of the ideas I've been trying to reconcile.

I wouldn't wish to normalise the concept of murder for this reason (any reason, actually, but we're talking about this one).

But as little said, this is a particular type of murder which often involves a group acting together, including women. It's important to acknowledge the motivation, the better to combat cause. "Premeditated domestic murder" doesn't capture this.

I also take LRD's point, that it's not great to be feeding a quaint "othering" of gendered violence, which helps us pretend gendered violence only belongs to certain cultures.

For the time being, I think I'd go with KickAssAngel at 04:27:02 - headline as a murder; explain as a "so-called-'honour' murder".

Watching this discussion with interest.

Left off the list the point well-articulated by several PP, about the issue of using a word that usually has a positive meaning, even in inverted commas, to describe something so fundamentally opposite to that meaning.

Hmm. Sorry, I'm not being very helpful.

It is an interesting thread and I've just thought of something else.

Sometimes the best turn of phrase to get us angry about a situation is one that deliberately is a bit wrong or contentious.

So when you hear 'black lives matter', a part of your brain goes 'of course they do, all lives matter'. Then this makes you look at the issue more deeply and realise that a proportion of people are treated like they don't count as real people because they are black. The phrase deliberately causes outrage, it jars on purpose to engage your brain.

Same with 'honour killings '. Reasonable people hear the phrase and go 'there is nothing honourable about mobbing a woman and murdering her.' It gets us talking and challenging the culture around it. For the vast majority of the population this is obvious but maybe there is a brother or an aunt or there who has never heard this concept be challenged. Its people on the fringe of the culture who need to hear our contempt and outrage over honour killings because they are in the strongest position to help rescue the next victim.

Hmm maybe so-called honour murder would work better.
As well as disliking "honour" I also think killing gives the tone of an execution and again, the impression the woman somehow bought being murdered on herself somehow.
I really dislike the whole thing as a concept and I feel we've picked up that cultures explanation in our description of the murders. It's a difficult one.

I've also noticed that when there are terrorist act, the word kill is used rather than murder.

So - after Nice, there were headlines about no. of people killed, when really murdered would have been more accurate.

Yes, interesting. I wonder why that is? Maybe because of the political angle or because of the number of victims?

I'm not sure - maybe we're just more used to hearing killed, but surely if a person is deliberately ending another person's life, that is murder? Kill is a more general verb which also include accidental death of execution. Murder is very definitely the intention to kill someone unlawfully.

Or are we just used to the idea of murder as a one-to-one event, and can't process the idea of 23 people murdered?

Still, definitely the media don't use murder all the time when it most definitely was.

Sometimes the best turn of phrase to get us angry about a situation is one that deliberately is a bit wrong or contentious

That was the point I was making. It is attention grabbing and it ought to be.

I'm stunned LRD can twist what I said to come up with "that unless you are someone who regularly considers carrying out and/or sanctioning honour killings," which is one of the nastiest comments I have ever read on here.