Hate crime receives a new dimension: Acts of abuse aimed at the female sex

Hate crime is something that wasn’t around in my young days — the name, that is. The crimes certainly were. Basically, if you were different — wrong skin colour, wrong football team, wrong religion, wrong accent, wrong hair — you could suffer for it.

In our more enlightened times, such behaviour has been outlawed, but by no means has it disappeared. Indeed, in officially listing and prosecuting incidents, an ugly and worsening picture has emerged.

In the week before and the two weeks after the June 23 referendum, which voted to take Britain out of European Union, there were 6,193 hate crimes, a huge, 20 per cent increase on the same period last year.

The figure peaked on the day after the result was announced with more than 600 offences. Clearly many closet racists thought it was now OK for them to express hatred openly and there were reports from all over the country of non-whites and foreign speakers being told to “go back to your own country.”

Hate crime is defined as “a crime motivated by racial, sexual or other prejudice, typically one involving violence.” Frequently, it involves racial animosity, such as defacing Polish or Caribbean social centres, but sometimes religion is in there, too, with incidents such as jerking off Muslim women’s face veils.

However, the scope is wider than that and includes areas such as disability.

A young man with a serious facial disfigurement, Lucas Hayward, described in a BBC interview how at primary school he was called names, punched and spat upon until his parents took him out of the school and taught him at home.

Wheelchair users report that they are sometimes abused or find their movements are blocked.

UNWANTED SEXUAL ADVANCES

Now the Nottinghamshire police force has added a new dimension to hate crime, officially extending it to misogyny, i.e. hatred and contempt for women.

It is the first force in the country (British police are organised on a regional basis) to do so. Behaviour that could now get you arrested includes unwanted sexual advances to women, verbal assault, use of mobile phones to send abusive messages, taking photographs without consent.

Said Chief Constable Sue Fish, “What women face, often on a daily basis, is absolutely unacceptable.”

It goes far beyond men wolf-whistling at pretty girls and often involves harassment online. What some men would hesitate to tell a woman face to face, they are willing to enunciate in the anonymity of cyberworld.

Professional women, especially high-fliers, report that they are often accused by male co-workers of achieving success by granting sexual favours. One woman dyed her hair because she was being addressed derisively as “blondie”.

Women’s groups denounce the objectification of their gender by some tabloid newspapers, for instance, how they concentrated on fashion and family issues rather than national policy, when Mrs Teresa May became Prime Minister.

There are also complaints about violent, anti-women references in popular music. A study of gangsta rap found 22 per cent of 490 songs contained violent and misogynist lyrics, while a separate study of video games reported 21 per cent portrayed violence against women, usually portrayed as scantily clad.

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Drug addict Steven Donnelly broke into the care home where his mother lives in search of things to sell. In the process, he caused damage of £1,962 (Sh260,700).

You might think stealing from your mum is about as low as you can get. But just hours later, Donnelly burgled his daughter’s house and stole £200 (Sh26,570) from his grandson’s money box, plus a games console and other valuables.

At Newcastle Crown Court he was jailed for 32 months.

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Joe walked out of church half-way through the sermon and the pastor was not pleased. When he spotted Joe in the street the next day he demanded an explanation. “I went for a haircut,” Joe said. The preacher was flabbergasted. “Couldn’t you have got a haircut before church?” he asked. Said Joe: “Before church, I didn’t need a haircut.”

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A group of women attended a seminar about how to have a loving relationship with their husbands. The leader of the discussion asked everyone to take out their mobile phones and text this message to their husbands: “I love you, sweetheart.”

Here are some of the replies:

1. Who the hell is this? 2. I thought we agreed you wouldn’t drink during the day. 3. Yeah and I love you, too, so what’s wrong? 4. Don’t beat about the bush, just tell me how much you need. 5. Did you wreck the car again? 6. I don’t understand what you mean. 7. What the hell did you do now? 8. Your mother is coming to stay with us, isn’t she?

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