Another aspect of the Sussex Police dispute is that Sussex Police are blissfully unaware that sexism and misogyny exist.
Go look up hate crime on our website, they told us.
So I looked, and found what I expected to find. There’s a long list, but women aren’t on it. We never are. It’s said to be because of the wording of the most recent Equality 2020 Sentencing Act, which apparently forgot women exist.
Hate crimes and hate incidents
In most crimes it is something the victim has in their possession or control that motivates the offender to commit the crime. With hate crime it is ‘who’ the victim is, or ‘what’ the victim appears to be that motivates the offender to commit the crime.
A hate crime is defined as ‘Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.’
A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.
But nothing to do with being a woman. Nope. Women are blissfully free of bullying, abuse, harassment, pestering, assault, rape, murder.
Comments
6 responses to “Be sure to omit women from the list”
Women are blissfully free of bullying, abuse, harassment, pestering, assault, rape, murder.
The police (some of them) are guilty of crimes against women – hate crimes or otherwise. No wonder they don’t want to mention us.
The awesome colleagues of Wayne “The Rapist” Couzens, who used to joke and laugh so heartily about their friend’s harmless eccentricities, would know, wouldn’t they…
This explicit disconnect from reality never fails to leave me gobsmacked.
Just some clarifications:
The Equality Act (2010), still the version in force, does indeed include women (“sex”). The protected characteristics are: “age; disability; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation”. E.g.: link.
But the Equality Act doesn’t define “hate crime”. This is defined as part of the Sentencing Act (2020), which says that something that is *already* a crime can be aggravated (attract a higher sentence) if motivated by hostility regarding race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or transgender identity. E.g. link. Women (“sex”) are not additionally protected by this section (though obviously the underlying crime is still a crime).
This (quoted from Sussex police) is, I think, simply untrue. The “perceived by the victim or any other person” is wording underlying the police-invented concept of a “non-crime hate incident” (“incident”, not “crime”).
The wording regarding actual crimes (Sentencing Act 2020) is:
“at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, the offender demonstrated towards the victim of the offence hostility based on … or … (b) the offence was motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards …”.
Ah, thanks, Coel. I was thinking as I typed that bit that I should look it up, because I wasn’t sure it was right.
Looks like they adopted Stonewall’s preferred wording, the wording they like to use when lying to people about the law.