Online misogyny set to be outlawed

[MidsomerMurmurs]

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/02/03/online-misogyny-set-outlawed/

Misogynistic abuse should be banned online, the Government believes.

Michelle Donelan, the Culture Secretary, is understood to believe the Online Safety Bill has the power to stamp out attacks on women on the internet.

Under the new Online Safety Bill, currently being finalised, social media firms will be required by law to abide by their terms and conditions, which generally bar misogynistic abuse. Failure to enforce them will result in fines, and their services could be blocked by Ofcom, the online watchdog.

Interesting to compare to the Scottish Government’s approach to misogyny, and what sort of concerns are “valid”. Also interesting that there is an amendment which the government might have to accept:

However, a group of Tory peers including Baroness Morgan; Baroness Bertin, a former aide to David Cameron; and Baroness Newlove, a former victims’ commissioner, plan to put forward an amendment that would see the law go further.

The amendment would give Ofcom the power to fine social media companies up to 10 per cent of their global turnover if they failed to abide by a code outlawing online misogyny. The Labour Party will back it, raising the prospect that the Government may have to compromise or face defeat.

Woman isn’t defined anywhere in UK law as far as I understand it. I doubt that an Act regulating online speech will be the one to do that especially in the current climate.

If the 2010 Equality Act is amended to make clear the difference between biological sex and gender identity politics then job done, we’ll be back to sex based protections surely. Male people couldn’t use misogyny laws to cover themselves.

I agree about proliferation of laws being undesirable (and unnecessary, nonsensical or outdated and problem-causing laws like GRA should be scrapped IMO) but hate speech laws really aren’t the cause of hate. That’s not logical. There’s hate speech laws for other protected characteristics already so why not an anti sexist law that recognises misogyny?

Why is it better NOT to have hate speech protections for women? What advantage exactly does the status quo give us? When women are being driven off social media or made to feel like shit by threatening comments purely on basis of their sex. When increasingly taking part in digital life is essential for social and professional inclusion, employers expect a personal digital presence from their employees, business owners are expected to be visible online and so on?

There’s no way that the existing multiple hate speech legislation in the UK will be repealed. That ship has sailed. So since they do exist for other PCs and they will continue to do so.. and with Equality Act clarification so men can’t use misogyny laws as a weapon against women, and where women want and need to be able to operate freely as men in the digital world, this seems a good move to me.

yes make misogyny a hate crime FINALLY but also actually convict rapists too.

Hate crime legislation needs to be repealed, not extended.
this

100%.

1. This will likely lead to people being prosecuted for "mysogyny" in saying women don't have penis's or suggesting women are worse at sports than men
2. It will also restrict the speech of people I don't like. If someone wants to say all femoids are stoopid then that makes them a cretin but they have the right to say it. People will find work around anyway. The same way they use euphemisms for suicide etc
3. "Feminists" and women in general will be portrayed as having "asked for this" this fuelling more mysogyny.

In short it's a terrible idea.

It completely depends on the definition of misogyny, woman and hate. It could be brilliant or it could be terrible.

Why did this thread go live again, does anyone know? @Middlelanehogger?

Will homophobia and transphobia also be outlawed?

This thread is about MISOGYNY Donna

I agree with some posters above. "Misogyny" is very vague and much of it depends on views, due to feminism being vastly split on many topics.

Regarding things like rape or death threats, there are already existing laws to cover those, so I don't know what exactly the new law will do that isn't already covered.

It might be hard or impossible to discuss certain politics or feminist topics if your going to be considered "misogynist" (and be censored) if your view doesn't match whoever made the law.

Can you let women have fucking anything??

Are you worried about possible implications that might affect this forum if the bill outlawed transphobia?

No. Do contact MNHQ with examples of this (mythical) transphobia, though, they'll be happy to remove them for you.

Well there's a 790 post-long (and counting) thread about a transwoman who committed a sex offence like 25 years ago. You really got a thing for transwomen don't you?

Says the one who tried to derail a thread about women with plaintive pleas to remember the poor trans people!
Why is that thread transphobic, btw? Because the offence was like, 25 years ago so can't be of any possible relevance now?

What an amazingly bizarre post.

Maybe this board isn’t for you Donna, seeing as the part of Mumsnet specifically for discussing transgenderism?

If you aren’t interested in the criminal behaviour patterns of men who say they are women, perhaps you are more suited to ‘Baby Names’ or ‘The Doghouse’?

Transphobia, unlike misogyny, is already included in Hate Speech legislation.

HTH

Still curious about why this thread was revived, @Middlelanehogger. What happened?

It looks like it’s @aurorauk who renewed it.

So the government announced this via the press in February. Have they done anything about it? Will they do anything? I'm not confident.

After all, you'd have a case for prosecuting Boris Johnson and probably several other Tories if you did.

Absolutely ridiculous - more thought crime policing where women will, no doubt, be the ines to fall foul of this. The police's reputation is at an all time low amongst women.

Whoops, my mistake. Thanks @EmpressaurusOfCats.

So @aurorauk, has anything new happened?

Sorry @BellaAmorosa , I am not a huge fan of the Online Safety Bill and I took the chance to bash it a bit, didn't notice the date :)

The bill is very close to passing I understood, third reading in the Lords is scheduled for 6 Sept. I don't know if/how it could be prevented from being passed at this point. Just looking through the news there have been a few opinions pieces urging the government to think again but I doubt they have much weight.

Of course, I anticipate serious delays because it puts a lot of onus on technology, software and app providers to actually install various backdoors and so on and I don't see the likes of Meta, Apple etc doing that, but we'll see.

The only recent thing I can think of is there is an ongoing review of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (link) but it is less about hate crimes/misogyny and more about tracking. The public consultation closed a couple weeks ago without a lot of fanfare.

Please don't apologise for a post popping up in your notifications,@Middlelanehogger. I should apologise to you -
I was under the impression you had restarted it and I was just curious at to why since I wasn't aware of any developments.
A few threads have been revived recently for no apparent reason.

Much as I enjoy getting TRAs put on the naughty step on Twitter for their raging misogyny (amongst other things) I share the concern we’d end up with another piece of legislation that did not reflect reality & was thus used as a sword against, rather than a shield for, women.

I don’t think NOT having -any offences around misogyny is going that well for women… so I’m happy to be the FWR outlier on this and look at it with an open mind. if we have these offences for other types of protected characteristics why not sex?

I’m also pretty sure it’s not beyond the wit of lawmakers to define ‘women’ as not equalling men who feel they are women.

What are the other arguments against this apart from that?