So much part of everyday life
A group of women MPs and charities are urging the government to treat misogyny as a hate crime within the government’s new domestic abuse laws.
Their amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill would require all police forces to record and track crimes motivated by misogyny.
Those two sentences say two different things. Tracking misogynist motivation for crimes is not the same as making misogyny itself a crime. That’s quite an important distinction, don’t you think? Sloppy wording not helpful.
A statement from Citizens UK and the coalition of campaigners – including Refuge and Women’s Aid – says this approach will “not create any new crimes but would provide critical data on the link between hostility to women and the abuse and harassment women experience”.
They managed to make the distinction clear, I don’t see why the BBC couldn’t do the same.
Labour MP Ms Creasy said it was “time for change”, adding: “Misogyny is so much part of everyday life that we overlook the harm it does – at the expense of tackling the root causes of violence against women.”
Ain’t that the truth.
Lib Dem MP Ms Jardine said: “Misogyny in far too many instances remains unnoticed and unrecorded. “We must do everything in our power to tackle violence against women, and the requirement to record misogynistic crime and how it interacts with domestic abuse is a key step to tackling gender inequality.”
Yes, yes it is.
I read it this way: if hate crimes are routinely recorded and tracked (I think they are), then requiring police forces to do that for crimes motivated by misogyny would be treating misogyny as a hate crime.
Anyway, yes, please. At last.
(I wonder if TRAs will object, because there’s no such thing as sex.)
About bloody time, too.
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TRAs won’t object, but they will demand that this be applied to trans women twice over. Being treated as a man (due to being male) should be considered a hate crime of a misogynistic nature, and also a hate crime against transness. So treating a trans woman badly for being a trans woman is twice as bad as treating a woman badly for being a woman, because trans women are more special I guess.
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Recording and tracking hate crimes is done VERY unevenly and inconsistently, at least in the U.S. Our sacred ‘States Rights’ mean that jurisdictions have no common language or technique. And Guess Which States go to huge lengths to avoid dealing with the issue?