Urgent! APPG on Hate Speech/Crime Submit up to 2500 word by Weds 15th August

[SexMatters]

Hi everyone.

This one seems to be going under the wire. There is an APPG on Hate Speech/Crime but the news doesn't seem to have been spread to women and feminists, even though there is the possibility of misogyny being categorised as a hate crime www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/09/uk-police-chiefs-urged-to-adopt-harassment-of-women-as-hate

Here is the wording of this www.appghatecrime.org/inquiries/ link:
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Inquiries
The APPG on Hate Crime has launched an inquiry entitled, “How do we build community cohesion when hate crime is on the rise?”. We invite submissions of written evidence on this topic and we will be holding open sessions for further information in due course. The findings will be published in a public report at the end of the year, (2018).

What the APPG Inquiry aims to achieve

The APPG Inquiry aims to gather evidence of how hate speech and hate crime impact on communities, and to provide detailed recommendations on how community cohesion can be strengthened in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech.

The APPG explicitly focuses on all strands of hate crime and speech (race, sexual orientation, religious, disability, transgender [sex needs to be in here]*), and we are particularly keen on teasing out common themes, as well as potential divergences between the various hate crime strands.

To do this, the APPG invites submissions whilst considering the following questions:

Status Quo – What is the situation today?

What is the extent of hate crime and speech that is experienced by individuals or communities and what form does it take?
How does experiencing hate crime and hate speech impact on individuals, communities and their values?
How does online hate speech and hate crime impact on community cohesion? Is there a link?
How does hate crime and hate speech contribute to extremism, including intra-community sectarianism?
How does hate speech and bullying impact children and young people in schools and educational institutions?
How does hate speech impact on the emotional and mental-health of individuals who are targeted at a street and online level?
Recommendations – What can we do to build community cohesion?

Best practice: What schemes, initiatives and projects exist to build community cohesion in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech?
What can national and local government do to increase community cohesion in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech?
What role do police forces play in increasing community cohesion in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech? Are there practical examples of their work, say after major terrorist attacks when cohesion may be affected?
What role can community organisations, charities and others play to increase community cohesion in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech?
Are there projects that help individuals to support their emotional, mental health and practical needs when they are targeted online and offline?
How the APPG will gather evidence

The APPG is interested to hear from experts, practitioners, victims and their representative organisations, as well as academics and others with an interest in and knowledge of the topic.

Submissions should:

Be no more than 2,500 words in length.
Clearly state who they are from and whether they are sent in a personal capacity or sent on behalf of an organisation, and include a brief description of the submitting individual/organisation
Be emailed to [email protected]
The deadline for submissions is Wednesday, 25th July 2018.

Based on the received evidence, individuals and organisations will be invited to give further evidence during an open meeting of the APPG.

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It is vital that women and feminists submit evidence to this APPG. The slur 'T' is known to incite people to act hatefully towards feminists. When Maria MacLachlan was attacked by an individual who had just said prior they were going to "fuck up some Ts" the police officer felt that this should have been treated as a hate crime.

Imagine if someone had been filmed thumping someone of African heritage after saying they were going to 'fuck up some 'racist term of abuse', how about if someone was filmed thumping a gay man after tweeting they were going to 'fuck up some 'homophobic term of abuse'. It would be taken seriously, would never be dismissed as 'bravado. Why are women, feminist women in particular, not offered the same protection by hate crime law?

How many women feel unable to fully participate in our communities because we are afraid of misogynist assault?
How many women are afraid to attend political meetings because of anti-feminist harassment and assault?
How many women have anxiety, depression and other ill effects from misogyny and antifeminism?

How about the other end of Hate Crime/Speech? It is being used to specifically silence and harass women, feminist women in particular by proxy. Why was Posie Parker questioned for Hate Speech? How about Linda Bellos?

We need to submit evidence to this APPG pronto to make sure this does not happen - that Hate Crime law is not used maliciously to hurt women, particularly feminist women, or those assumed to be feminist.

Please could you join me on this thread to discuss what the key issues are so we can submit strong evidence, drawing on our personal experience to make sure we are not forgotten in the APPG and to make sure this is not going to be a way of making 'deadnaming' and 'misgendering' hate crimes where we can be lawfully punished, even imprisoned for stating facts or describing reality. This APPG is already known about widely in authoritarian, bullying ideological circles who seek to suppress free speech- so the submissions so far are likely to be very skewed in their favour.

Thanks.

*my addition

Thanks! Have any major women's groups submitted do you know?

Not sure - Please spread the word to any you know

The APPG Inquiry aims to gather evidence of how hate speech and hate crime impact on communities

If we take misogyny including antifeminist misogyny to be a hate crime. How does this impact on communities?

I personally know that I alter my routes and don't go to isolated places because I am afraid of misogyny. This means there are certain jobs I wouldn't take or voluntary services I would not offer.
I have a list of incidents that happened to be personally that I can provide as evidence.

Furthermore, knowing what has happened to other women, especially feminist women makes me more nervous and uncomfortable about going to certain places, attending certain events and participating in certain ways.

I feel anger, frustration and fear, because of my inability to be able to enjoy full public life because I may be attacked/abused simply for being a woman or being a feminist woman.

This fear is actually causing me to distrust authority such as the police, because I know that I may not be treated fairly and I see evidence of double-standards around hate speech and preferential treatment for lobby groups who oppose my feminism. This is not healthy for community cohesion.

to provide detailed recommendations on how community cohesion can be strengthened in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech.

Community cohesion can be strengthened by publicly recognising that misogynist and antifeminist violence and incitement are hate crimes and hate speech. To allow women to continue to meet and discuss feminism without harassment either by antifeminist/misogynist extremists or by the police acting upon malicious reports of hate speech. To ensure that extremist misogynist, antifeminist groups are not allowed to define what is and isn't hate speech and therefore be able to 'legitimately' harass feminists for saying truthful, politically essential things.

What is the extent of hate crime and speech that is experienced by individuals or communities and what form does it take?

Misogynist/antifeminist hate crime for an individual can be sex-specific name-calling (words such as bitch, slag, T*, whore, dog, etc), verbal threats or saying what you 'deserve' (eg rape, die in a fire, so many hideous things I don't want to write them but often involving female sex organs), physical intimidation (such as cornering and trapping while hurling abuse, raising fists, gestures of sexual assaults). it can be actual physical abuse (such as groping, hitting, spitting, grabbing, restraining, pulling hair).

For communities it can take the form of bomb threats to stop meetings, preventing groups of women entering buildings, malicious accusations and slander to prevent meetings and incite hate towards the group. This can make women very nervous to meet to discuss feminist issues, or to be able to be open about their feminist views in case their employer is hounded with defamatory statements. It can also take the form of malicious accusations of hate speech to make feminist women afraid to speak the truth. It causes an atmosphere of anxiety, distrust and authoritarianism.

How does experiencing hate crime and hate speech impact on individuals, communities and their values?

It intimidates and silences individuals, but also hardens them in their position, requiring extraordinary courage and self-restraint to simply participate in such a way that members of that group are not required before meeting and participating. It can lead to fear and isolation. It breeds distrust and encourages separation.

*not of that group

How does online hate speech and hate crime impact on community cohesion? Is there a link?

Many women are afraid to have controversial opinions or 'be seen to be associated with' those who do. It is splitting communities, chilling debate. This is actively fostered by 'witch hunts' where an outspoken individual such as Linda Bellos, Julie Bindel or Posie Parker are smeared openly, followed around online, no-platformed, etc. Many women would rather distance themselves from these women (and the women's rights they are fighting for) rather than be also be treated in the same way. Within universities, feminist women feel unable to engage in student politics because of this authoritarian, misogynist, antifeminist climate. This is causing political parties to fragment as women are becoming disenfranchised, community services to close down or become dysfunctional as the hateful treatment of women and feminists is becoming increasingly normalised by institutions and organisations and the media. In the media, the word T*** is used to describe women in a way feminists never (without irony) used to describe themselves. Many women feel that the wider community is hostile to them and their feminist views. Institutional misogyny and antifeminism is a problem.

How does hate crime and hate speech contribute to extremism, including intra-community sectarianism?

Opinions are becoming polarised. The strain of having to restrain oneself from reacting or taking the bait of people who engage in hate towards women and feminists, to keep holding fast to the truth whilst seeing those who do obviously get more hate, harassment and smears than those who keep quiet, how those who defend these women are also 'marked' for hate, is taking its toll. The feminist movement is undergoing some rifts, many women are becoming less compromising, more angry and more suspicious. However many of these differences are diplomatically managed, despite the friction and feminists gains seem to bring about escalations in misogynist extremist backlash, such as bomb threats where there had previously been only harassing venues holding feminist meetings by telephone.

How does hate speech and bullying impact children and young people in schools and educational institutions?

Sexual harassment of girls in schools is rife www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/12/sexual-harassment-rife-in-schools-but-largely-unreported-study-says also hatred of feminist women who are pejoratively described as 'T*s' means that young women are unable to safely engage in feminist communities where they may be able to tackle hateful behaviours towards women and girls such as sexual harassment and bullying.

How does hate speech impact on the emotional and mental-health of individuals who are targeted at a street and online level?

The harm is immeasurable. So many examples of women living in fear, needing psychiatric help, etc from misogynist/antifeminist online & street harassment.

Recommendations – What can we do to build community cohesion?

Roll out misogyny as a form of hate crime across the country.

Stop investigating obviously malicious accusations of hate speech/crimes against feminist women by the police. Allow women to seek compensation against the police and individuals who maliciously accuse feminist women of hate crime as a form of harassment by proxy.

A thought. Feminists are transgender according to Stonewall.

So to fit with:
The APPG explicitly focuses on all strands of hate crime and speech (race, sexual orientation, religious, disability, transgender), and we are particularly keen on teasing out common themes, as well as potential divergences between the various hate crime strands.

Feminists women can derive from stonewall

An umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth.
Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, two-spirit, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman,trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.

Feminist woman = nongender, genderless, agender women. We are subjected to hate for being opinionated, decisive, unapologetic, non-compliant, etc - which is a sign of rejecting 'feminine-gendered' stereotypes.

Bump

Thanks OP

Thank you. Bloody hell, we almost missed this. LAWS will be submitting.

What schemes, initiatives and projects exist to build community cohesion in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech?

Public meetings going ahead in spite of efforts to prevent and suppress them. For example 'We Need To Talk', A Woman's Place UK' & 'Let A Woman Speak' are helping women to overcome fear of hate to meet in person. The online Forum Mumsnet allows women who are afraid for their safety and jobs from hate attacks to speak anonymously and offer mutual support. When the police support women meeting by ensuring their safety it helps build trust. Politicians offering to meet with and speat to women''s groups with open minds it also fosters a climate of trust.

What can national and local government do to increase community cohesion in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech?

Defend the right to free speech, free assembly and peaceful protest. Ensure women are allowed to meet in women-only spaces and that women are allowed to speak up for and represent ourselves.

To educate people about dehumanising labels such as T is the first stepping stone towards justifying violence and cruelty towards that group.

Foster a climate to counter the rise of authoritarian intolerance of different opinions. Help people to respectfully disagree and value that freedom.

Help people to learn the difference between disagreement and hate.

What role do police forces play in increasing community cohesion in the face of rising hate crime and hate speech? Are there practical examples of their work, say after major terrorist attacks when cohesion may be affected?

Allowing peaceful protest rather than supporting the anger of authoritarians to using force to stop them (which would be illegal) For example, allowing the feminist lesbian women to go about their peaceful prostest at London Pride this year.

@SexMatters I've just seen this tweet reply from APPG HAte Crimes stating the period has been extended to 15th August.

twitter.com/appghatecrime/status/1019501614288261120
APPGHateCrime pinned tweet:
"UPDATE: after several requests, the deadline for individuals, groups, communities (anyone!) to provide evidence to our inquiry 'How can we build community cohesion when hate crime is on the rise?' has been extended to the 15th August. Thank you."

embedded link in tweet:
www.appghatecrime.org/inquiries/

Thanks Rowan that's great!

Thanks a lot! Had missed it. Tomorrow is the last day for submissions.

Sorry! It's extended to 15th August

I will get this done. Thanks sexmatters for info and help. Also going to do the ASa steroetypes one as I think indocrination from an early age via advertising is very significant. ( see thread)

Thanks OP, a very worthwhile opportunity to try to gain back some of the rights women have been losing recently

Fantastic posts SexMatters