Ella Whelan

Let’s not pretend misogyny is a hate crime

Have you ever met a real misogynist? Probably not, because misogyny is a very strong word. Coming from the ancient Greek misos (hatred) and gyne (woman), it should only be used to define extreme behaviour: woman-hating to be exact. 

And yet some people seem to think that British streets are full of woman-haters. Misogyny was made a hate crime in Nottingham two years ago, meaning that anyone caught wolfwhistling at women, being sexually explicit or generally mean to the fairer sex was liable to be investigated by the police as a woman-hater. This pilot scheme has been deemed to be a success; now some campaigners are calling for misogyny to be classed as a hate crime across the whole of the UK.

This is a bad idea for several reasons, not least because the experiment in Nottingham has actually been something of a monumental failure. Over the last two years, only 174 reports were made by women. Of these, 73 were recorded as crimes and 101 were classified as incidents. A misogyny epidemic? Hardly. Nottinghamshire’s population of 810,000 people means that just over 0.02 per cent of Nottinghamshire residents reported a misogynistic hate crime over two years.

Not to be deterred, some are apparently still desperate to suggest that misogyny really is out of control. The ‘Misogyny Hate Crime Evaluation Report’, carried out by the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, concluded that ‘nine out of 10 (residents) had either experienced or witnessed street harassment’. ‘Whistling’ was at the top of the list, with ‘sexually explicit language’ in close second. But if this is really the case, why weren’t more of these incidents reported?

It’s also worth asking whether it is wise to add another hate crime to the growing list. Indeed, even the very concept of a hate crime is questionable: there are already laws which criminalise assault and harassment, so labelling something as ‘hateful’ doesn’t seem to add much to the pursuit of justice.

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