The circle of abuse. There’s no escape, because if you try to do anything about abuse, the abuse intensifies. The abusers are busy demonstrating that to Melanie Jeffs in Nottingham.

A woman who helped launch a police campaign to record misogyny as a hate crime has received hundreds of abusive messages.

Melanie Jeffs said one person “threatened to put a machete” through the back of her head.

Nottinghamshire Police has received 22 reports and made two arrests since recording misogynistic hate crimes.

They included verbal abuse, threats of violence, assault and unwanted physical contact.

Ms Jeffs, centre manager at Nottingham Women’s Centre, said she was “stunned” by the volume of tweets and messages posted on Twitter and Facebook.

I hope she paused to appreciate the irony though. She says misogynist abuse is a hate crime, so the misogynist abusers ramp up the misogynist abuse. It’s enough to make a cat laugh.

She said: “They ranged from the ridiculous to some that were quite aggressive.

“One person said I should get cancer, I had somebody threatening to find me and tie me up and lots of comments about my appearance.

“There is one that I’m having discussions with the police about, but most of them I just brushed off.”

She said “people think it’s completely acceptable to target women in this way”.

They do. A truly astonishing number of people think that.

Ah look, she did pause to appreciate the irony.

(Notice how very far from ugly she is. She’s not the slightest bit ugly; the difference between the photos is that she’s not self-consciously performing Hawt, and she hasn’t dressed and shaped her hair with a view to being that which is currently deemed Hawt. Merely not performing Hawt doesn’t make a person ugly.)