Recognise misogyny as a hate crime

Sylvie Pope is a recent politics graduate and grassroots campaigner whose work primarily focuses on championing the rights and safety of women. She founded the award-winning organisation Misogyny IS Hate as part of the national campaign to recognise misogyny as a hate crime, and co-authored Citizens UK’s recent report: ‘Overcoming Everyday Hate in the UK’. This article was first published in inews.co.uk

One in five young British men think feminism has gone ‘too far’. Three out of five young British women report experiencing street harassment. For my age group, life is increasingly shaped by fear as a woman or being fearful of women. But as new research shows how misogyny is a “gateway drug” to wider division across society, tackling it must become an urgent priority for all. Misogyny needs to be recognised as a hate crime.

Beliefs that objectify and dehumanise women and girls are diffusing throughout the internet and radicalising young men who go on to commit acts of aggression designed to intimidate, humiliate and control women.

A recent Hope Not Hate report shows how young men interacting with ‘men’s rights activists’ (MRA) online are often on the first step of a “sliproad to more extreme parts of the far-right”. Their research tracks the growing links between an ideology that equal rights for women translates into a loss of dominance for men. This concept is then easily transferrable – lured in by the MRA movement, young men are learning that more rights for anyone – people of colour, the LGBT community, people with disabilities – is a threat to their status.

This is also well documented in Laura Bates’ – founder of the Everyday Sexism project – new book Men Who Hate Women. Bates provides a disturbing insight into the vast and growing online network of ‘alt-right’ extremists, ‘incels’, ‘men’s rights activists’ and ‘pick up artists’, whose profoundly misogynistic and racist beliefs are having a substantial impact on women’s real-life experiences of sexism, harassment and violence.

The consequences are clear. During lockdown incidents of violence and abuse of women soared – in homes and in the streets. Home Office figures from 2019 show that only 1.7 per cent of reported rapes lead to prosecution. There’s no respite online either – half of all women report receiving abuse when they use social media, with those from minority communities especially targeted. Yet as former Australian PM Tony Abbott’s appointment as UK trade envoy shows, misogyny is so normalised that Government ministers shrug at thought of it. In turn, we are told we are “woke” and “snowflakes” if we complain, or that if Jacinda Ardern can succeed so can we. As if one woman beating the odds means all can.

There is a better way forward. Seven police forces around the country now recognise misogyny as a hate crime and record instances of where women have been victims of crimes. The results are startling. In just three years Avon and Somerset police force reported over 800 gender hate crimes – just under 90 per cent of victims were women. Such trends are not a one off. Devon and Cornwall presents a similar picture with 118 gendered hate crimes and incidents recorded in the past two years, and just under 80 per cent of the hate crime victims were women.

This isn’t about recording when someone is wolf whistled in the street. Across the two forces, these women were mostly subjected to various forms of violence, Public Order Offences including harassment and threatening or abusive behavior, arson and criminal damage, and sexual offences. Crucially this approach is also changing the culture on the ground too – more women come forward to report such crimes, confident in the knowledge they will be taken seriously.

Despite the difference recognising misogyny as a hate crime can make to detecting and preventing such crimes, our national police leadership continues to resist this approach. The Law Commission review into hate crime promised in 2018 has already been delayed a year – the commission reports that it agrees on including misogyny in an update of hate crime laws, but there is little evidence of a timescale for action or support from any of the current Government.

With misogyny and violence against women on the rise, and being used to stoke further divisions in society, the question is what more will it take before policy makers grip this challenge. My generation needs more than a lecture on the perils of believing what you read on the internet. Making misogyny a hate crime is critical in the battle not just to end violence against women, but also change the culture in which division is breeding throughout society.

First published in inews.co.uk