Hate crimes

[grimbletart]

Hearing on the news today that goths and punks are to be
added to the categories of offences against them being hate crimes - thus potentially attracting harsher sentences. It means that they join disability, race, ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation and transgender as the categories covered by hate crime.

Makes me wonder if rape could ever be categorised as a hate crime. Men who rape women have to hate them surely to inflict such a cruel and horrendous action on them, irrespective of whether we think rape is about sex or a crime of power and control.

If you are committing a hate crime if you attack, say, a religious person because they are religious, or a disabled person because are disabled, how is that different from attacking someone because they are female?

OTOH what about men who rape men...? Do they hate their own sex?

Where do we stop with hate crime?

I realise that I am not being particularly coherent here. It was just a thought I had on hearing the news item.

Maybe it wouldn't matter if we labeled it a hate crime if it came with a suitable sentence that said what you have just done is so fucking abhorrent that society wants you gone and for a long time?

I remember reading about a police officer in Scotland who investigated a group of goths who hung around a particular part of the city and were the subject of local complaints. There had been a rise in crime and the goths drew a lot of attention.

His conclusion was that the goths, as a group, were much better educated than other local youths, and particularly peaceable. They were middle class and had both more money and nicer phones. None of them had been arrested. Quite the reverse. The rise in crime was due to them being victimised by local thugs. Locals were alarmed by the goths' appearance, but he explained that they were all of good character. The problem lay with those who preyed on them.

And, of course, there was that poor goth girl beaten to death simply for her clothes. Horrible.

I love goths. When I am an old lady I plan to emerge as a total goth. I love the clothes I wear now, and they have the added advantage that my teenagers tell me I'm never embarrassing to be with. This matters to me. However....

When they're grown up, I shall emerge, like a glistening black studded butterfly.

OP - beyond rape, what if all violence and abuse against females that occur because the victim is female was tried and sentenced as a hate crime? As it should be. I can only think that the reason that it's not is because the system simply doesn't have the capacity.

I read that last year 19 men who raped were let off with just a caution. I'm sure if there was just one incident of other violence, with the same level of humiliation and violence, by white British men against a black or Muslim man there would have been a protests, riots, a huge public outcry and calls to bring back hanging.

Calling violence against women what it is would surely help shift the perception of the ugly norms of society.

It is ridiculous that goths etc are to be protected by hate crime laws when women are not.

It is also ridiculous that people referred to as 'chavs' (which is connected to social class and therefore genuine institutional discrimination) are not being protected by hate crime laws when goths etc are.

Should women be a "protected characteristic"?

That's quite a concept Kim, and arguing against myself, I see that promoting an idea of 'women as victims' and confirming misplaced ideas about us being feeble - a concept that infuriates me.

I am at risk here of disappearing up my own fundament

It wouldn't be making women a protected characteristic. It would be making gender a protected characteristic; men would also be protected from hate crime against men. That is the same for other protected characteristics. Race, for example, means all ethnic groups - not just minority ones. After Asian people, white people make the most reports of being a victim of race crimes. This is not presumably because there are a lot more white people than anyone else, and also possibly because people are attacked for being a white minority ethnic group (white Polish for example, or white Irish traveller). Sorry, getting a bit off the point. The point is that making gender a protected characteristic protects all genders, not just women. Women are no doubt more likely to be on the receiving end of gender based hate, but the law would not be phrased to protect them in particular or to paint them as victims.

kim147 what did Burchill say?

Sex, not gender, surely

Freya - can you explain to me what chavs are. Are they the people who go around looking like 12 year olds with track suits, white trainers and baseball caps and big gold necklaces or is it something else, I genuinely dont know. Oh dear, I am really old!

I think they're what an older generation called townies mrsclown.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

AIUI some feminists are reluctant to categorise VAW as hate crime at least partly because they feel lumping it in with other forms of hate crime would mask how utterly pervasive VAW is - it needs to be understood as part of the structure of patriarchy.

I was myself quite sympathetic to the idea of calling it a hate crime - I mean, it's sort of a given that perpetrators of VAW are misogynists - until someone on here explained what I thought were some fairly good reasons against it. I hope they will pop up again and explain it better than me.