Men don't kill women due to immorality - here is the reason

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Social media and public discussion trends over the past few years have shown that the murder of women is rarely allowed to stand on its own terms. Every femicide is immediately subjected to a trial in absentia, where the victim must prove she deserved to live. Was she faithful? Was she “respectable”? Did she reject him? Did she drink? Did she post certain photos online? Was she out late? Was she dating multiple men? Even in death, women are forced to account for themselves in ways their killers never are. The question ceases to be why a man killed, and instead becomes what kind of woman was killed.

This instinct is not unique to femicide as it mirrors the language historically used to justify racial violence against Black people. Across centuries, systems of power have survived through narratives that frame the victims of violence as deserving targets. Murder requires justification when society recognises the humanity of the dead. The work of patriarchy and white supremacy has therefore always involved reducing that humanity enough to make brutality appear understandable.

When Black men were lynched by white mobs in the US, accusations often preceded the killings. They were accused of theft, insolence, sexual impropriety, or threatening white womanhood. The accusation itself became enough to legitimise violence. During colonial rule across Africa, white settlers routinely justified the killing of Black men resisting land theft by painting them as savages. Resistance was framed as disorder to justify subjugation. The same logic persists in modern policing. When police kill Black men, public discourse immediately shifts toward finding evidence that the victim was imperfect. Media outlets release mugshots, criminal histories, rumours, or footage designed to imply dangerousness. The point is not always to prove innocence on the part of the killer. It is to produce enough ambiguity to dull public outrage.

This is why discussions about femicide that focus solely on individual psychology often miss the larger point. Men are not killing women because women are immoral. Men are killing women because patriarchal systems teach them that power, ownership, and domination are entitlements. Morality merely becomes the language used to rationalise punishment when those entitlements are challenged. A woman leaving a relationship, rejecting advances, asserting independence, succeeding economically, or exercising sexual autonomy can all be interpreted as threats to male authority. The killing then becomes framed as a reaction rather than an assertion of power.

The recent killing of a Kenyan man in Laikipia by a British teenager exposes similar dynamics around race and power. The details surrounding the case have already generated competing narratives about trespassing and self-defence. Predictably, discussions quickly turned toward the conduct of the dead African man rather than the structures that make such violence possible. Laikipia itself carries the long shadow of colonial land ownership, where vast tracts remain concentrated in the hands of wealthy white settlers generations after independence. Violence within such spaces cannot be understood outside histories of dispossession and racial hierarchy.

Power is central here because both patriarchy and racism rely on the maintenance of hierarchy. Gender and race are mechanisms through which power is organised and enforced. Men who justify femicide are often defending not simply masculinity, but authority itself. White supremacist violence similarly functions to preserve racial dominance and economic control. In both cases, violence emerges when subordinated groups challenge the terms of their subordination.

The obsession with victim morality also reveals society’s discomfort with naming perpetrators honestly. Calling femicide an issue of male power requires confronting patriarchy not as a lived system benefiting ordinary men. Calling racist killings manifestations of white supremacy requires confronting how racial privilege continues to structure ownership, policing, citizenship, and violence. It is therefore easier to individualise incidents, to portray them as isolated tragedies caused by emotional instability or unfortunate circumstances.

The task, then, is to refuse these narratives that seek to individualise systemic violence. It is to insist that no degree of perceived immorality justifies murder, and to recognise that explanations are often attempts at exoneration. It is also important to understand that violence thrives when society spends more time interrogating victims than interrogating systems of domination. 

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