Spilling over into the real world
The Guardian reports that police in various bits of England and Wales are considering the creation of a category of misogynist hate crime.
The initial success of Nottingham’s crackdown against sexist abuse has drawn national interest after the city’s police revealed that they investigated a case of misogyny every three days during July and August, the first months to see specially trained officers targeting behaviour ranging from street harassment to unwanted physical approaches.
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Dave Alton, the hate crime manager for Nottingham police, said: “The number of reports we are receiving is comparable with other, more established, categories of hate crime. We have received numerous reports and have been able to provide a service to women in Nottinghamshire who perhaps wouldn’t have approached us six months ago. The reality is that all of the reports so far have required some form of police action.”
Incidents reported by Nottingham women ranged from verbal harassment to sexual assault. Initial claims from sections of the media that wolf-whistling would be reported by women have proved unfounded. So far, two men have been arrested for public order offences and actual bodily harm in incidents classified as misogynist.
It’s tricky. There are good reasons to resist making everything a crime…but at the same time, relentless street harassment can make life hellish for women.
The force defines misogyny hate crime as “incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman”.
The new classification means women can report incidents that might not be considered a crime and the police will investigate.
Last week it was revealed that prosecutions relating to violence against women and girls in England and Wales have reached record levels amid warnings that the increasing use of social media is fuelling the rise. Campaigners believe misogyny is spilling over from the virtual world of the internet into the real world.
It would be very odd if it weren’t. Internet misogyny trains a great many men and boys to have contempt and loathing for women, and there’s no obvious reason that wouldn’t spill over into the real world.
Not really the main point of the post, but what a baffling way of putting it. It almost seems as if the author believes anti-female sentiment originated in a forum somewhere and is now splling out. But the virtual world is exactly as real as the rest of the world, and is populated by exactly the same people, and there have always been misogynists.
There have always been misogynists, but there’s never been such an awesome way to collect huge quantities of them in one place to work each other into rages at women, until the virtual world came into being.
I got groped against my wishes a lot when I was a kid, long before the Internet.
Rather like police violence against black people, what the Internet has done is expose how big the problem is, and how big the underlying problem is. It has also given men new ways to access women’s lives to threaten them.
As the relevant Select Committee said this morning – in a report on the failure of schools to get their act together – if it’s illegal in the workplace it should be illegal in any school. Ditto the street.
As individuals we can fight back but somebody, somewhere has to tell misogynists their behaviour is unacceptable. No court cases have yet come out of the Nottingham trial but a good few people have had that fact pointed out to them. Firmly.
When I was a teen, getting groped was not an uncommon thing – pretty much expected in highschool and university. Getting whistled at and propositioned was supposed to be taken as a compliment. Up until the last few decades of the last century, getting groped at the office was pretty much expected to happen to secretaries. But these days, there seems to be a new level of nastiness (including threatening violence) that has become more acceptable to express in public.
Theo Bromine, there has definitely been a significant push back against feminism that has resulted in many women (and men) distancing themselves from using the tag and dressing up a feminist light version under the name of some other ideology, often on an apparent whim. The problem with that approach is that the arguments in favour of feminism then lack clarity, unity and are subject to being hijacked for other purposes.
That said, I don’t think the kind of nasty harassing behaviour (or the desire to behave that way) has ever gone away. In the past our societies had a supposed standard of acceptable behaviour (really a double standard since there was the whole ‘boys will be boys’ and ‘what did the slut expect attitude’) that if blatantly breached led to censure. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost that. In part that may well be a result of the success of the SJW movements. Society is more accepting than it used to be of different behaviour and lifestyles. Sadly a large chunk of the population take this increased liberty as licence to behave poorly and a substantial plurality look on with either tolerance or feel dis-empowered to react for some reason.
I’m sure I’ve seen someone express the sentiment here before, but individuals seem to behave better than groups on the whole.
Rising prosecutions, for offenses that have been ignored for decades, is Good News. And may have no connection to how many incidents are happening. Aren’t more prosecutions supposed to function as a greater deterrent?
Its rather like all those universities that are proud of having no sexual assault problem…
The possibility of silly law-writing, or inept social engineering does loom. I don’t know the working details of Nottingham’s policies. But it is VERY reassuring to see:
‘… that all of the reports so far have required some form of police action.’
That would seem to indicate a pretty damn’ good set of standards.
Our local paper usually only carries articles about the closure of the Darlington Market Toilets (something that happened at least ten years ago). Occasionally it reports on a car being broken into (nothing much happens around here).
And then today, out of the blue, it published this: http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/local/darlington/14738882.Calls_to_end_sexual_harassment_of_girls_in_school_as_exposure_to_hardcore_pornography_twists_pupils_views_on_sex_and_relationships/
I assume it was published by mistake, but it’s welcome.