Why isn't rape a hate crime?

If Hate Crime is crime against a person because ofa hatred a particular thing about a person (e.g sex, religion, ethnicity etc) - then rape against women, is rape. It is a crime. Yes. It is terrible Yes. But is only a Hate Crime when the reason for the rape is because victim is a woman.

Aren't 'hate crimes' the aggravated versions of basic offences such as s4 and s5 of the Public Order Act '86 - lower level offences in themselves - dealt with by fines or community sentences ?? The function of the aggravated offence being to ensure that the sentencing exercise starts from a more onerous level not available for the basic ?

Just a thought....

In my view it would be because rape is already a crime and a serious one.

Hate crimes, if I understand it correctly, were defined to criminalised behaviour for which there was no specific category and that are motivated by hate towards groups in general.

What I'd agree with would be general offensive comments and attitudes towards women (or men) to become hate crimes.

I don't think the issue is that rape should be a hate crime but currently isn't categorised that way, per se. I think the issue is that gender should be included within hate crime legislation, which would then enable many rapes to be considered hate crimes against women.

We then wouldn't have to worry about the "what about the menz". And it would redress the baffling inconsistency in the law that gender is a protected characteristic but not included with the rest of the protected characteristics in the hate crime legislation.

It affects boys, girls, men and women, therefore cannot be defined as hating a particular group of people based on a common 'identity' such as sex, race, gender, religion, nationality, ethnicity etc.

And getting beaten up affects boys, girls, men and women. However, we feel it is reasonable to mark out some beating ups as hate crimes and not others. Why should rape be different?

Rape isn't a feminist issue?

Right o

Can you perhaps give us almost if what is? Just so we know what you approve of feminists discussing.

No, I'm not sure they are. You can rob someone out of need and not hatred. Say a person steals a loaf of bread from Tesco because they have no money and kids to feed - that's not hatred, is it? An accountant who defrauds a client to fund a gambling addiction may be motivated far more by personal greed than by dislike of that person, may indeed value the client and fully and foolishly intend to put the money back when the horses come in. There are even, arguably, crimes committed out of love - assisted dying might be one. (Just because it is illegal doesn't always mean it's morally wrong).

You must hate someone to decide to rob them

Not necessarily. you might just want their stuff. It's highly likely that you don't give a shit about them but that's not hatred.

Aren't all crimes based on hatred? You must hate someone to decide to rob them and put them through all the fear and humiliation, and you must hate someone to murder them and end their life.

Is that correct from upthread, that the rape of a transwoman can be a hate crime, but the rape of a woman (as in born female) cannot?

Yes it can, if the rapist acted out of a hatred of black people or christians (assuming the victim fell into those categories)

Imo some rape is most definitely a hate crime. Read the link and what it says about Levi Bell field. Some (most?) men rape women because they hate women and that can be proven by their history, or the way they talk about women to their friends.

I think this is spot on. But crucially, it's some or most, but not all. And defining rape as a hate crime per se would limit the court's capacity to make that distinction, and sentence accordingly. As I say, I definitely think that crimes that are committed based on gender hatred should fall within the hate crime legislation

Is that correct from upthread, that the rape of a transwoman can be a hate crime, but the rape of a woman (as in born female) cannot?

Oh my.

But I don't want to derail. I liked this from the lse article above "By including gender within hate crime legislation, many offences of rape would be understood, not just as acts of sexual abuse, but as acts of prejudice used against women to oppress, subordinate and control them. Such a reorientation of causation could help to diminish the perceived ‘responsibility’ of victims by shifting emphasis onto the offender’s wrongful, immoral and discriminatory conduct. There is the potential, therefore, for hate crime law to directly challenge those ‘rape myths’ that continue to undermine the effectiveness of sexual offences legislation...By focusing on the violent conduct of the offender and his motive – i.e. to penetrate the victim’s vagina, mouth or anus without her consent while demonstrating hostility against her gender – the legal system may well become less interested in the victim’s conduct and the artificial context of the relationship between rapist and victim. An important step would be to divorce sex from rape where possible and with it eradicating the myth that rape is the result of a misguided sexual desire".

They pick up on the difficulties of this approach when it comes to cases where the rape happens in a relationship - does that make a difference in that where there is certainly a desire from the rapist to punish and to hurt, is the desire only to punish and hurt that specific woman, rather than hurt and punish her as an interchangeable represetnative of Uppity Womankind? I'm not sure where I come out on this, I need to reflect a bit more. I can't put my finger on why it feels harder to think about it as a hate crime, but it does?

Is there any mileage in comparison with the growing acknowledgement that rape of women and girls is used as a weapon of war? As it occurred to me as I was thinking through this.

It affects boys, girls, men and women, therefore cannot be defined as hating a particular group of people based on a common 'identity' such as sex, race, gender, religion, nationality, ethnicity etc.
At the moment hate crime is this:

"They say something is a hate incident if the victim or anyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on one of the following things:

disability
race
religion
transgender identity
sexual orientation."

I'm not saying it is not a terrible thing nor a crime. Just not a "hate crime" imo.

rape is not a hate crime, in the sense of it's "hating women".

I don't have much to add - but been thinking about this a lot because it's a really, REALLY interesting question and the more I think about it, the more confused the state of the law seems to be. I suspect the answer is something connected with male sexuality as 'positive' desire and not 'negative' hatred. So that a rape would only be seen as a 'hate' crime if it had been conducted with some explicit and additional 'intent' to demean, rather than the basis of all rape being a view of women that is inherently hateful (because in claiming them sexually, it denies them agency, subjectivity, control, consent).

By 'this' do you mean rape?

plays well, I must have opened this thread earlier then posted later. Whoops.

Point is, this is not a feminist issue.

I'm not an expert in this area of law but surely it's a public policy thing - a way of reflecting in the justice system that discrimination and bigotry are beyond the pale.

I was surprised to see that gender is not on the list of characteristics that are protected by the hate crime legislation. I can't think of a good reason why it shouldn't be there.

My two pennorth is that, while it's important that we send a clear message that rape and sexual assault are vile crime, I'm not sure what would be achieved by necessarily defining all instances as 'hate crime'. The specific subject matter of the law is that an otherwise equivalent crime is punished more harshly if motivated by hate and bigotry. If you say all rapes/sexual assaults are hate crimes you lose that, and the designation as such becomes mere rhetoric.