The Value(s) of Making Misogyny a Hate Crime
What would the world be like if the state took men’s violence against women seriously? For the past three years the Law Commission for England and Wales has been pondering this idea in its review of Hate Crime legislation. At present the state is ambivalent about the safety of women, but a proposal to classify misogyny as a hate crime has sought to rectify this — to shift the state away from its tolerance of male violence. However, upon completion of its review, the Law Commission is not so sure, arguing in its report that men’s hatred of women is too complex for the state to effectively police.
In October, when Boris Johnson was asked about this proposition he gave a different, but related, response: “If you simply widen the scope of what you ask the police to do, you’ll just increase the problem.” For Johnson it is volume that provides the barrier; the state lacks the resources to address men’s hatred of women. Instead, women simply have to live with a certain amount of male violence.
For no other security problem would volume and complexity be deemed acceptable reasons to avoid solutions. If Islamist extremists or white supremacists were murdering someone every three days — as is the current rate of femicide in the United Kingdom — there would undoubtedly be a whole-of-government emergency to confront it. So why is the hatred of women…
