The Gods Must Be Crazy

Passion killings

So there is this thing called Passion Killing in Botswana. It refers to when a person (usually a man) kills his lover in a fit of passion after finding out she was cheating. There has been a rise in passion killings in recent years, maybe because cheating now means putting your partner at risk for HIV, and you have life threatening illness thrown in with all that heartbreak.

The bad thing is that these men usually don’t get the normal sentencing time for killing someone (think 7 months instead of the normal murder sentence which is >10 years). The culture seems to believe that the woman asked for it by being unfaithful (not counting that men are unfaithful with little to no repercussions).

Someone asked me if we have passion killings in America, and I just said, no, we usually just call that murder. It makes me mad that the idea is that somehow these men were clouded by sexual lust and rage, and therefore should not be held as accountable for their own actions. BUT THEY STILL TOOK A HUMAN LIFE. It’s not romantic, it’s just an example of how gender roles are so messed up in this country.