Why is it that while almost all of the forms of discrimination that affect men are included in the anti-hate legislation, the form that most affects women is excluded? Race, Sexuality, Disability, even Religion which is an affiliation not an innate characteristic, are covered, but gender, no.
Isn't it time that we recognised that a proportion of, what the chief of police described several years ago as an epidemic of violence against females, as well as the daily insults, harassment and discrimination they experience is a form of sexist hate crime? Females are often specifically targeted by criminals and non-criminals because of their gender, and these activities are often accompanied by sexist insults, and yet sexual crime is always described as sexually motivated, and other forms of crime against women are assumed to be carried out because women are more "vulnerable".
If gender was added to the legislation, wouldn't we as a society be in a better position to identify material (including pornographic material) that crossed the line into incitement to hatred and misogynist propaganda, and to start treating it in the same way we treat racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic propaganda? That is to censor it and make it socially unacceptable? Isn't the current worry over children having access to "adult" material that is causing a rise in sexual assaults really a red herring? Isn't the problem that teenage boys have access to misogynist material that is causing a rise in sexist assaults?
Would the widespread response in the media and elsewhere of blaming girls, their families and culture for attacks on them occur if these had been racist, homophobic or religiously-motivated attacks rather than sexist ones?
Isn't this exclusion an example of sexism even within the equality agenda? Why are women content to allow this situation to continue?