Sheer madness, given that misandry is widespread and misogyny vanishingly rare. A piece in today’s Times:
Misogyny will be recorded as a hate crime by police in England and Wales after the government bowed to campaigners’ demands following the murder of Sarah Everard. Ministers have announced that from the autumn forces will be asked to record and identify crimes of violence, including stalking and sexual offences, believed by the victim [J4MB emphasis: women’s beliefs will result in men being criminalised] to have been motivated by “hostility based on their sex”.
Campaigners welcomed the move as a “game changer” that would encourage women to report public harassment because they could have more confidence that it would be treated as a serious crime. Eight in ten women say they have been harassed in public but 90 per cent do not report it because they do not believe it will be pursued.
Growing pressure had left the government facing a humiliating defeat in the House of Lords as the Domestic Abuse Bill passes.
The Law Commission had already recommended that police include data on whether crimes are motivated by sex or gender, saying that the vast majority of evidence suggested that hate crimes were linked to misogyny. [J4MB emphasis: What a pile of BS!]
Baroness Williams of Trafford, the Home Office minister, said: “Once we have considered the Law Commission’s recommendations we will shortly begin the consultation with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and forces on this, with a view to commencing the experimental collection of data from this autumn.”
Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow who led the campaign, said the change was the first policy the government had backed that was “actually rooted in evidence of what helps to tackle violence against women”.
At prime minister’s questions, Boris Johnson had promised to tackle the “underlying issue” of everyday sexism and apathy towards women. However, the prime minister said that new laws and tougher sentences could go only so far in the effort to eradicate male violence towards women and girls.
Johnson acknowledged that “we will not fix this problem” unless the government “understands that women do not feel they are being heard”. He urged all parties to work together for a “cultural and social change in attitudes”.
Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said that Everard’s death must be a turning point, just as Stephen Lawrence’s murder had exposed institutional racism. “The awful events of the last week have lifted a veil on the epidemic of violence against women and girls,” he said. “This must also be a watershed moment to change how we as a society treat women and girls.”
The Home Office has had 140,000 responses since its survey asking for evidence on how to combat male violence was opened on Friday. Ministers said the statements would inform a national strategy to be published in the summer.
Johnson insisted that although the government would listen to all proposals to change the law, there was also a fundamental cultural shift needed. “We can do all the things that we’ve talked about, two men arguing over the dispatch box, we can bring in more laws, tougher sentences . . . we can support independent domestic violence and sexual violence advisers, all that kind of thing,” he said. “But we have to address the fundamental issue of the casual everyday sexism and apathy that fails to address the concerns of women — that is the underlying issue.”
His sincerity was called into question after Downing Street refused to say that he regretted using “sexist language” in his journalistic career, however. In The Spectator in 1995 he said that the children of single mothers were “ill-raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate” and called for action to “restore women’s desire to be married”.
Allegra Stratton, his press secretary, said yesterday: “Women across the country now want real action and will be pleased to hear their prime minister evidently understanding that what too many of them experience on our streets at night — and sometimes in the day as well — is something being taken seriously at the top of government.”
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