The Feminist Social Theory and the Homicide: the challenge of thinking lethal violence against women

The Feminist Social Theory proposes numerous ways of understanding men's violence against women but offers little specific discussions of lethal violence against women. This paper analyzes how some of the main perspectives within the contemporary feminist thinking can be used to explain the killings of women. Some of the most relevant concepts and arguments related to the topic and present in feminist thought are examined and discussed - gender violence, patriarchy, femicide, intimate terrorism - in order to identify and explore both its heuristic possibilities as their analytical limits.