Creasy - making police record misogny

What is the point?
Crime is now recorded according to self-identified gender. That needs to be sorted out first.

Yes also this. Useless in a system where male and female no longer exist in any meaningful way. And I wonder what will class as misogyny? JKs letter perhaps?

I think I am for getting rid of hate crime as a category entirely and just working on making sure every person is protected from abuse, discrimination, violence and harassment as a general rule for everyone. Unless there's a point to having hate crime as a specific crime that I'm missing.

I like this proposal - it seems to even up the field a little.

Do you remember the two lesbians attacked on the bus? I wrote a complaint to the BBC because the news article didn’t mention the word ‘woman’ or even ‘lesbian’, it was all framed in GBT terms, yet I suspect that they would have been in far less danger if they had been a pair of burly men.

I don't really understand the point of hate crime laws. Harassment, abuse, violence and discrimination should be illegal against everyone surely. Misogyny or racism or homophobia or disability etc could be the motive for those crimes but not the actual crime itself?

Thanks Where I am looking into this, but I fear if I report him he will say that the reason I've blocked his calls (he's used three phones now) and refused his gifts/gifts to my children/requests to go into his home etc. is because of his sexuality rather than the fact that his behaviour is deeply unsettling and intrusive. He has already said so in a long, threatening message and used the words 'hate crime'.

It's really depressing because I barely know him and the subject of sexuality has never come up (why should it?) so it was a shock when he just threw this out there with various threats. I have a long text message trail, fortunately and Ring doorbell footage, but whatever I say, he has now put this into a message painting me to be some kind of perpetrator and bigot if anybody reads it.

It's really upsetting as this all started when I put a note out to all neighbours offering to help them during Covid.

HandsOffMyRights I'm so sorry you're being harassed. FWIW I don't think making misogyny a hate crime would make any difference to you. There is already law that should protect you from harassment. Whether or not you can enforce the law and get the police to take your case seriously is another matter entirely.
I hope you've managed to get some good advice.

However, as a woman I have no protections against a man (who falls into a protected category) who is harrassing me currently in real life with some extremely creepy behaviour. This is a post for another time and I don't want to out myself, but it's brought this to the fore.

Thanks. I feel so deflated that we don't even merit a classification, that we might be included, if we are lucky. And even then, anybody can be part of our group if they say so.

I don't feel at all comfortable about the way 'hate crime' is going (Harry the Owl's case sums up my thoughts too re free speech) but to be in a position where I feel so helpless, where men are prioritised and women are at the bottom.of the pile, is so demoralising.

What is the point?
Crime is now recorded according to self-identified gender. That needs to be sorted out first.

Bugger!

The hate crime laws put me in mind of the blasphemy laws which were (rightly in my opinion) got rid of in 2008 because, if I remember correctly, it was pointed out that only Christians were protected and people reasonably asked for it to include other religions. So the whole thing was scrapped. Now women are reasonably asking for protection under the hate thing maybe again the whole thing will be scrapped as it almost certainly would mean a lot more work for the police etc...

Just (wishful) thinking out loud.

The hate crime laws put me in mind of the blasphemy laws which were (rightly in my opinion) got rid of in 2008 because, if I remember correctly, it was pointed out that only Christians were protected and people reasonably asked for it to include other religions. So the whole thing was scrapped. Now women are reasonably asking for protection under the hate thing maybe again the whole thing will be scrapped as it almost certainly would mean a lot more work for the police etc...

Just (wishful) thinking out loud.

Stella Creasy is very TWAW so I wonder how that fits with this push for misogyny to be classed as a hate crime. Would the sexual harassment of a TW in a public place come under the misogyny hate crime or transgender hate crime? Or both? Or would it depend?

Genuine question. Just trying to figure out in my head how to make sense of the concept of misogyny when the category of "woman" is open to those who are born male.

Yeah, I'm not really on board with this. As much as it pisses me off that other protected characteristics have hate crime legislation and women don't, I don't really see how it helps deal with the overwhelming scourge of VAWG and the complete failure of police and criminal justice system to believe women and to prosecute perpetrators. When the conviction rate for rape is so pitifully low, how does it help to have an aggravating factor of "hate crime"?

"Hate" is an odd way of framing a lot of these things. I'm not sure how useful it is as a concept in criminal justice terms.

The Creasy amendment would not make misogyny a hate crime, but would oblige forces to record crimes where misogyny was a factor.

That would certainly be interesting. If a man kicks his wife, is that a hate crime motivated by misogyny? Or is it just because he hates his wife, that one individual woman, rather than women in general? What if a man rapes a woman? Is that a crime motivated by hatred of women? (I'd argue that yes, it is.) What about crimes of harassment and stalking? Are they motivated by misogyny? What about when a man murders a woman? Is that a hate crime? Or only if he calls her a "bitch" first? What about so-called "honour" killings?

Frankly, I'd argue that pretty much any crime of violence that men commit against women is motivated by misogyny. I doubt it will be a popular opinion in judicial circles, though. Good luck to Creasy if she can get that one through.

Great minds think alike

Cross post.

I remember we raised these questions when Stella was coming to do a web chat.

It won’t help women, because we’ll still be told that it isn’t a crime, so the police will ignore it. It will, however be a great help to male bodied people who identify as trans, because they can claim that ‘abuse’ for themselves. I’ve already seen the nonsense transmisogyny term being used, so they can claim that you not only committed ’transphobia’ against them, but misogyny too. 🤷‍♀️

I'm really disappointed to see that the campaign for making misogyny a hate crime have replaced the 'a' in woman and man with an x in their tweets.

The founder describes herself as an 'inclusive feminist' in her Twitter bio.

If we cannot name or define the different sex classes, then how can we acknowledge sex based hate crime?

Yes, I can see it going that way. It would be about "gender". So potentially misgendering an MTF trans person on social media would count as "misogyny" as well as "transphobia".

@transdimensional you might think it's a great step, I don't, its yet another slap in the face of women that says....you just aren't worth it. In fact I'll go further it entrenches the fact we are not equal. Hate crime legislation is a mess, we already know that some hate is considered greater than others and this creates a 2nd class of hate...and who will be deciding whether or not it gets recorded...only one of the most structurally misogynistic gang of them all, the police!

But yes, as it stands, having 'misogyny' excluded from the category means women are in a uniquely disadvantaged position.

This. I wonder if there is a case for class action - it seems like direct discrimination under EA. They are deliberately excluding a protected characteristic because there are SO MANY crimes against that protected characteristic and because of it.

The benefit might also be that because misogyny is so rife, doing so might actually result in the idea of 'hate crime non-crimes' being re-thought in it's entirety which I think would be a good thing.

I'm really disappointed to see that the campaign for making misogyny a hate crime have replaced the 'a' in woman and man with an x in their tweets.

ah, I'd missed that. Silly me. So misogyny is wrong, but only when applied to wxmxn?

Much as I loathe misogyny I think this is problematic.

The argument in Harry the Owl's case was that you can't have a non-crime hate crime. I don't see that this is any different. I want to see less misogyny, but I don't want to be part of a society where people are criminalised for wrongspeak.

I'm really disappointed to see that the campaign for making misogyny a hate crime have replaced the 'a' in woman and man with an x in their tweets.

The founder describes herself as an 'inclusive feminist' in her Twitter bio.

If we cannot name or define the different sex classes, then how can we acknowledge sex based hate crime?

If misogyny is to be included as a hate crime (and the dictionary definition of misogyny is 'contempt for, or ingrained prejudice towards women') against women, then how would campaigners square including men in this category?

I've not really been following this campaign, but just wondering if the issue around the campaigners' definition of 'woman' has been discussed previously?