Peddling the Margins of Gender-Based Violence: Canadian Media Coverage of Honour Killings
Jennifer Kilty, ed, Within the Confines: Women and the Law in Canada (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press Inc, 2014)
Posted: 7 Oct 2014 Last revised: 30 Dec 2014
Date Written: 2012
Abstract
In this chapter, the authors argue that the mainstream Canadian media’s portrayal of honour killing draws upon racist and colonial imagery to demonize South Asian and/or Muslim cultures and masculinities. The construction of honour killing as endemic to certain cultures draws on a familiar binary of the uncivilized East/civilized West. The current obsession with honour killing displayed by media, government and the general population also deliberately obfuscates the grim reality of gender-based violence perpetrated across all sections of Canadian society. Violence against women is, thus, constructed as a problem found only in racialized communities rather than one that is also located in white Canadian culture.
Keywords: honour killings, honor killings, media, Canada, victims, racialized communities
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