“Gender-related killings (femicide/feminicide) are the most brutal and extreme manifestation of violence against women and girls. Defined as an intentional killing with a gender-related motivation, femicide may be driven by stereotyped gender roles, discrimination towards women and girls, unequal power relations between women and men, or harmful social norms. Despite decades of activism from women’s rights organizations as well as growing awareness and action from Member States, the available evidence shows that progress in stopping such violence has been deeply inadequate.”
Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales were friends out for an evening together in Los Angeles in November 2021 when they were held against their will, drugged, and then “dumped like garbage” outside of two hospitals by three masked men.
When I was in LA in June of 2024, I stopped by the hospital where Hilda was dumped and placed a card and sunflowers for the two young women, a simple sign of respect for the beautiful lives they lived in this world and a gesture of love for them now that their lives transcend the violence they endured.
Dust Devil, a Poem by Mary Sue Barnett
Hilda and Christy,
What does heaven
say about your pain, your cries, your violent end?
A maniacal energy
trapped you
sucked you
into a wild frenzy
of femicidal lust
They stole your consciousness
you could not see
nor walk
they stole
your joy
you could not dance
nor laugh
they stole
you from your
very breathing
so you could never
say tomorrow
Evil seized you
into its grip
the beasts clawing
at your existence
thrusting you into
a desert of
no chance
Love, altogether absent
The femicidal
dust devil
spit you out
onto the pavement
alone in the night
your light diminished
passing away
With the force
of ocean waves
pounding ancient
cliffs and boulders
heaven cries
tears for you
Hilda and Christy
you and your sisters stolen by violent men
open the windows
of paradise to
cry your holy tears
upon your earthen
bodies that once were and upon your soft skin as you remember it
and upon the dust
to calm its frenzy
and upon the desert of violence to love the evil out of existence
You and your sisters in your
bodies of light
sing in unison across the realms through your windows of
joy onto all pavements of terror
in a haunting,
sacred tone
Rise and Heal
Love is Near
Additional Links
Resources:
- Databases of Women and Girls Lost to Femicide
- Black Femicide: A Public Health Crisis
- Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: USA
- The Silent Epidemic of Femicide in the United States
- Global Estimates of Female Intimate Partner/Family-Related Homicides in 2022
- New Report Exposes Surprising Prevalence of Femicide, Child Marriage, and Female Genital Mutilation in the U.S
- In 2022, At Least 4,050 Women Were Victims of Femicide in Latin America and the Caribbean: ECLAC
- Trafficking and Femicide: Ultimate Forms of Violence Against Women
- About Violence Against Trans Women
- Transmisogynoir: Hatred and Violence Towards Trans Women of Color
- Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People
- Femicide in Russia
- Femicide in Latin America
- Juarez: The City Where Women Are Disposable
- Somebody’s Daughter
- Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform
- Vienna Declaration on Femicide
In The News:
- Rice student murdered in dorm remembered as a “leader” by CCBC staff
- Man charged with shooting and killing UW-Whitewater gymnast Kara Welsh
- ‘An unspoken epidemic’: Homicide rate increase for Black women rivals that of Black men
- Arkansas nurse and single mother hopes to address Black women murders through research
- With homicide a leading cause of maternal death, doctors urged to screen pregnant women for domestic violence
- Femicide is a growing issue in the United States
- ‘They are killing us’: Murders of women in Cuba are growing at an alarming rate
- Murdered and Missing in Montana
- A mother’s unconditional fight for justice: Gender violence in Mexico
- As killings of women increase in Scotland, is femicide the real ‘F’ word?
- The Three Places With the Highest Rate of Female Homicides on Earth Are All in Northeast Asia
- Trapped in Darkness: Women in Europe remain defenseless against gender-based violence
