To think that violence against women is a hate crime?

[Wandawomble]

AIBU - it’s not a hate crime
YAIBU - it is a hate crime

I think so many of us are upset by the constant news of women being assaulted, raped and murdered - and the horrific statistics about the majority of young women in the UK having been sexually harassed. (Guardian link below)

I am a BAME woman and I experience misogyny in the same way that I experience racism, if anything the misogyny is worse. I do not feel safe walking home late, I have had multiple attacks on my physical body by men because of my sex and multiple attacks of my body because I am brown.
It is no different except with being a diminutive female - I have been more easily overpowered and the sexual assaults have been much much worse. So how is this not a hate crime?

I was pulled into a strangers car on the way to school once and assaulted because of my female body. Can you imagine how I feel about my daughter walking to school? I do not understand how any person can not see this as hate towards women. It is certainly not love.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/10/almost-all-young-women-in-the-uk-have-been-sexually-harassed-survey-finds

WHO says 1 in 3 women globally experience domestic violence. www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women

I think the whole concept of hate crime is pretty wonky tbh

Any act committed against women in a public place, e.g. indecent exposure, harassment, sexual assault. Even just catcalling. All systematically create an atmosphere of fear. And they can escalate into serious offences like rape and murder, .e.g poor Libby Squire. I.e. it's terrorism. The ideology is misogyny/patriarchy.

@Chanjer

I think the whole concept of hate crime is pretty wonky tbh

Huh?

@Janeteapot Yes, I can see your point.

I dont think all crimes against women are hate crimes. I think there needs to be a distinction between going out and assaulting a woman because she's a woman, and potentially assaulting a woman who the perpetrator is having for want of a better word having a blazing row which is aggressive in nature where the person assaulted is a woman. Also crimes like rape that can only be done to women legally in the UK essentially mean that by the first definition all rapes are hate crimes and look how badly a lot of them are prosecuted

All crimes are hate crimes and should be punished as such.

Why aren't criminals being punished accordingly? Is this a political thing?

People need to realize that, for example, not all attacks against a racial minority is a hate crime. Prosecutors look at whether the attack was motivated by hate for that racial minority (or all minorities) and it is added as an aggravating factor to the crime, thereby potentially increasing the sentence if convicted.

The same should be done for violent crimes against women. Prosecutors should be allowed to explore the possibility that the crime was motivated by hate of women, thereby potentially adding it as a aggravating factor at sentencing. Right now, this "hate" aspect is allowed to be added for crimes against certain individuals with protected characteristics, but being a woman is not one of these characteristics.

A mother presumably reared them, so I don't understand how so many can be so violent. I've been the victim of criminal behaviour from men several times. I think that boys are reared differently to girls. They also have different hormones, different levels of strength and height. A power thing too maybe? Boys are not being reared to be nice.

I'm not sure it's just 'rearing' that's to blame, either. Parents can only do so much in isolation. I've taken huge care to instil respect in my 7-YO boy. He knows that the day he turns 8, he's then going swimming with dad because he has to use the male changing rooms (over my dead body will he do this alone) as this is the rules, and women need and deserve their own space.

He came home from school in a terrible strop just yesterday. First it was STUPID International Women's Day, then it was STUPID Mother's Day - all these days for WOMEN! My jaw clanged. Needless to say I quickly set him straight, saying that there is a need for women to be celebrated because they've simply never had the same opportunities to succeed as men, and they rightly deserve to have that acknowledged.

His response? 'YOU HATE BOYS!'

My DH says he's 7, and doesn't know what he's saying. But this sort of shit has to come from somewhere. It's not coming from his home: DH simply does not disparage me or undermine me as a female - or indeed, say this sort of thing about women in general. We both have an equal input into childcare. A misogynist, he isn't.

Quite frankly this bothers me a great deal, and I'd love to know where he's picking up these attitudes from. I'll be keeping a very careful eye on what he's watching and will be nixing anything I see as a problem. Otherwise, I'm currently at a loss to know how to deal with it.

@newstart1337

All crimes are hate crimes and should be punished as such.

Why aren't criminals being punished accordingly? Is this a political thing?

No, not all crimes are hate crimes.

All crimes aren't hate crimes, though, newstart. Hate crimes are perpetrated against individuals because they belong to a particular group - a particular race, sex, religion or gender (and I'm more than happy to include gender in here because I recognise this is a real problem). If you're mugged in the street that's a crime. If you're mugged in the street because you're black, gay, trans, or female, that is a hate crime.

And so yes, violence against women because they are women is a hate crime. But because it is so prevalent, and such a high percentage of women who are attacked are attacked because they are women, it's not counted as a hate crime because it would overwhelm the justice system. It's politically expedient not to treat it as such but as a result it minimises it in terms of how we think about it and respond to it. It's everywhere, all the time, so how can we deal with it effectively? Easier not to, right?

I don't know why criminals aren't punished accordingly. But I suspect the hand of generations of entrenched misogyny. See all the "he was such a nice man" type news reports when men kill women. Why don't we just accept that nice men don't kill women and cut out all that shit. Similarly the "oh, but it would ruin his life" type responses to sentencing for violent crimes against women. Too bad, mate. You made a choice.

I'm so fucking angry today.

It’s not treated as a hate crime, or legislated for - but it should be. Misogyny should be a hate crime.

"He came home from school in a terrible strop just yesterday. First it was STUPID International Women's Day, then it was STUPID Mother's Day - all these days for WOMEN! My jaw clanged. Needless to say I quickly set him straight, saying that there is a need for women to be celebrated because they've simply never had the same opportunities to succeed as men, and they rightly deserve to have that acknowledged."

My son had an attitude like that when he was the same age. He also started bullying his sister and other girls around the same time. Part of it was immaturity, part of it was the sheer sense of entitlement that boys are indoctrinated with as soon as they are born, from my mother bleating about him being the special son to the school saying boys will be boys.

Needless to say I took him in hand like you are doing and very honestly showed him a lot of information about how women have been treated historically. I was truthful and didn't water it down. He has a good relationship with girls now and calls out misogyny when he sees it.

Recently his mates have been sharing images of pornified girls. The groom each other in the hatred of women. How can boys ever see women as equals if they are getting saturated with images of women as holes?

Oh yes... but liberal women think it's harmless and pile on women who have been harmed by it. The way women are treated in modern porn is hateful. The way boys are trained to see women (by their friends quite often) is with hatred.

We choose to ignore it as a society and then we wonder why women are being raped and murdered constantly.

YADNBU. It dismays me.

I have read three comments already that have laid the responsibility for male on female violence at the door of other women. Someone said its because mothers are rearing boys to dislike women ffs. Responsibility on women. Someone else said something along the lines of 'BAME/Older women need all women to group together' and went on about faux feminism, and whilst I agree that it is a problem, it is not a group of women's responsibility to stop male on female violence. And don't even get me started on the NAMALT, ALL violence matters shit.

It is not women's fault that men hate us. It is their fault. It is their responsibility to sort this out. There are plenty of women already trying. The (mostly female) ISVA's, IDVA's, domestic abuse workers, nurses, social workers, family workers, SARC workers, refuge workers, female family members literally mopping up the blood and tears and traumatized children of women who experience male violence against them. We are already doing the donkey work of outrage, asking for it to stop and taking responsibility to speak out when it happens. It is not fair.

Men (and specifically those men up top, in power) need to start ostracizing, shaming and socially excluding men who rape, murder, commit DV, cat call, laugh at women and make women feel uncomfortable and unsafe. Women aren't getting anywhere with it are they?

@LaceyBetty

Those saying all crimes are hate crimes need to education themselves. A "hate crime" is a specific crime in law and one definitions from CPS is:

The term 'hate crime' can be used to describe a range of criminal behaviour where the perpetrator is motivated by hostility or demonstrates hostility towards the victim's disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity.

It is the original hate crime, and yet not covered by law. Its so deeply inbedded and ingrained into society and individuals that it goes almost unnoticed. Yes, men hate us. It can't be explained just in terms of social conditioning, but also in terms of how we raise boys in relation to their psychology. The problem starts in infancy, and boys learn to be men by distancing themselves from their mother and by learning to hold women and all that is feminine in contempt. Women too often do the same. In order to escape our subordinate position we abandon the feminine and take up a position of acting upon the world as though we were men, thus further entrenching the idea that being nurturing, caring, supportive, kind and selfless is somehow weak.

Since the liberal enlightenment women have been hoodwinked into believing that we could gain equality through incremental changes in law. As though changing laws would somehow tackle the original deeply psychological and socially ingrained attitudes of men. Its not enough. The whole steaming pile of shit is not likely to change under capitalism with its liberal law making. When all value is measured in economic terms.....value is only value in circulation, when our own value is tied to a system of exploitation so that any pursuit which is seen as being feminine has no value, then any calls to men "to be nice" just further entrenches their contempt for us. Oh yeah, sure I can earn as much as my husband, creating as much profit for my boss but I'm being fucked by both whilst championing my financial independence. And no, your boss and your husband don't see you as an equal. They still see you as a woman, albeit behaving like a man, and if anything that stokes more hatred.

Its not laws that need changing......we've been at this for some 300 years to no avail. What needs changing is no less than a wholesale sacking off of our entire social system. I've been thinking a lot about Della Costas unfinished theory of how the capitalist system exploits women's unpaid labour (the mechanism by which value is created by unwaged labour) and how as an inherently exploitative system the value of women's lives are tied to the hidden (value creation in terms of a Marxist definition of value) exploitation of caring, nurturing, childbearing and raising children and how on an ideological level this influences the way men value women. If the concrete reality that women's unpaid work creates economic value is hidden to us, whilst all unpaid caring work is seen as women's work then within a system that defines all values (actual, philosophical, economic, and moral) then no value whatsoever is placed on women's lives. Non, nadda, not one bean!

A mother presumably reared them, so I don't understand how so many can be so violent. I've been the victim of criminal behaviour from men several times. I think that boys are reared differently to girls. They also have different hormones, different levels of strength and height. A power thing too maybe? Boys are not being reared to be nice.*

I'm not sure it's just 'rearing' that's to blame, either. Parents can only do so much in isolation.

I agree. And this argument, or a version of it, tends to pop up in any discussion about sexism or male violence. ‘These men have been raised by women so it’s the women’s fault - aha!’

It’s just another tired, boring way of blaming the victims. But in any case, a woman can be the most dedicated feminist on the planet - there is still a limit to what she can do when her son is swimming in the tidal wave of misogyny and patriarchy that is our society.

If you are attacked because you are a woman and good reason to believe (or know) that a man would not have been attacked, it is a hate crime in my view.

Totally agree.

And yet we've been gaslit into believing that men have it worse.

@ItscoldinAlaska

YADNBU. It dismays me.

I have read three comments already that have laid the responsibility for male on female violence at the door of other women. Someone said its because mothers are rearing boys to dislike women ffs. Responsibility on women. Someone else said something along the lines of 'BAME/Older women need all women to group together' and went on about faux feminism, and whilst I agree that it is a problem, it is not a group of women's responsibility to stop male on female violence. And don't even get me started on the NAMALT, ALL violence matters shit.

It is not women's fault that men hate us. It is their fault. It is their responsibility to sort this out. There are plenty of women already trying. The (mostly female) ISVA's, IDVA's, domestic abuse workers, nurses, social workers, family workers, SARC workers, refuge workers, female family members literally mopping up the blood and tears and traumatized children of women who experience male violence against them. We are already doing the donkey work of outrage, asking for it to stop and taking responsibility to speak out when it happens. It is not fair.

Men (and specifically those men up top, in power) need to start ostracizing, shaming and socially excluding men who rape, murder, commit DV, cat call, laugh at women and make women feel uncomfortable and unsafe. Women aren't getting anywhere with it are they?

You are right it is not women's fault that men hate us. But when we bring up the various reasons why men hate us we are often shouted down, not just by men but by other women who then, because they are women, other people will say "She is fine with it therefore all women should be fine with it."

So that is where my frustration comes from. I think your post is very succinct too though.

"The term 'hate crime' can be used to describe a range of criminal behaviour where the perpetrator is motivated by hostility or demonstrates hostility towards the victim's disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity." I think that's an apt definition. In Italian they have a word 'feminicide' which I think is better than hate crime. At the end of the day, what's in a name? Murderers don't ever murder out of love unless it's a case of euthanasia for someone in unbearable pain. You can spend weeks getting cute about labels on here and then go another discussion and say you're a cool wife because you don't mind your DH watching violent porn and you even enjoy it yourself on occasions.

@FOJN horrifyingly I think you are right. Women are too big a group, that will never work, just leave them out all together. SMH.

At the end of the day, what's in a name?

The naming it, at law, means the hate aspect can be added as a aggravating factor - particularly relevant in sentencing.

@AvocadoBathroom I get it. I can almost pick out girls from my year who did similar, almost groomed other girls into thinking being treated badly by boys was worth it for their attention. All had very poor self esteem.

Last night Owen Jones posted something on FB about the recent murder and there were men on there who immediately said it was 'virtue signalling, wokeness'. As if being appalled at male on female violence was an anomaly. Most women gave them short shrift and pointed out how disgusting they were but some woman supported them and took the NAMALT line and basically stroked their ego (as if they need it). It is so frustrating, you are right. I don't know if some of them are so knee deep in their own low self esteem that the need for male attention and to be seen as sexual objects is their only focus, but even then, that isn't their fault is it? They seem to have been groomed by misogyny and swallowed it. Very worrying.

At the end of the day, what's in a name?

The naming it, at law, means the hate aspect can be added as a aggravating factor - particularly relevant in sentencing.

I disagree. The recent sentences for murdering women in the UK have been laughable. I'd first remove the pathetic diminished responsibility/manslaughter defense. Recent examples : the guy who strangled his mistress because she had texted his wife and the guy who killed his wife of over 40 years in the heat of a moment both got laughable sentences because they just lost their cool. It wasn't because these men were hating females, it was because they were nasty aggressive pieces of work. The lenient sentences show that men are not held responsible for not being violent so apparently it's up to women in their lives not to bait them

Treating it as a hate crime would be inconvenient for men
That's why it's not treated as a hate crime

@anamazingfind

I think there may be some misogyny in some male on female crimes, but to label it specifically as a hate crime is devaluing the term, and does a disservice to minorities who really need this kept specific.

What difference would it make anyway? Does adding hate to a rape charge raise its tariff?

Misogyny isn't a crime and that's what you're saying it should be

YABU.

But why shouldn't misogyny be a hate crime? Why would it do a disservice to minorities to view it as one?

Why is my sexual orientation a protected characteristic but my sex isn't when it comes to hate crimes? I have no control over either (Though I recently read that if I identify as agender or non-binary I could then be straight if I wanted...)