The law that was adopted today criminalises the following offences across the EU: female genital mutilation, forced marriage, non-consensual sharing of intimate images, cyber stalking, cyber harassment and cyber incitement to hatred or violence.
Committing these crimes will be punishable by prison sentences ranging from at least one to five years. The directive also comes with an extensive list of aggravating circumstances, such as committing the offence against a child, a former or current spouse or partner or a public representative, a journalist or a human rights defender, which carry more severe penalties.
The directive also contains detailed rules on the measures of assistance and protection that member states should provide to victims.
Source: Council adopts first-ever EU law combating violence against women
Predictably Eurocentric, the directive contains no mention of Female Cosmetic Genital Surgery (the effects of which are often indistinguishable from traditional practices of so-called FGM). But interestingly, unlike the clitoris and labia, the female prepuce is not specified as an object of legal protection (a ritual nick to the clitoral hood being by far the most common form of FGM). And of course, no EU laws against the non-consensual, non-therapeutic amputation, harvesting, trafficking, and commodification of *male* genital body parts (presumably these are anything but “abusive and exploitative”). That binary distinction — “angelic” male circumcision versus “demonic” female genital mutilation — is an utterly western conceit. As in other parts of the western world, including Australia, the criminalisation of FGM is overtly sexist, covertly racist. Unlike most of Western Europe, however, Australia does have a precolonial history of (male and female) genital cutting.