Misogyny as Hate Crime

Irene Zempi, Jo Smith, Irene Zempi, Jo Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367903176
• eBook ISBN: 9781000430349
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Gender & The Law
• Index: Law

Misogyny as Hate Crime explores the background, nature and consequences of misogyny as well as the legal framework and UK policy responses associated with misogyny as a form of hate crime. Taking an intersectional approach, the book looks at how experiences of misogyny may intersect with other forms of hate crime such as disablism, Islamophobia, antisemitism and transphobia.

From the sexist and derogatory comments about women by former US President Donald Trump, to legislative changes in Chile and Peru making street harassment illegal, misogyny presents a challenge to scholars, practitioners, policy makers, and women globally. The increasing importance of the internet has seen misogyny move into these digital spaces but has also provided a platform for movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp, highlighting the scale of sexual harassment and abuse. In 2016, Nottinghamshire Police in partnership with Nottingham Women's Centre became the first force in England and Wales to record misogyny as a hate crime. Since then other police forces have introduced similar schemes to tackle misogyny. More recently, the Law Commission of England and Wales has undertaken a review of the legislation on hate crime and in their consultation paper of proposals for reform have suggested 'adding sex or gender to the protected characteristics'. In March 2021, the Government announced that police forces in England and Wales will be required to record crimes motivated by hostility based on sex or gender from this autumn. The murder of Sarah Everard has been a 'watershed moment' in the Government's response to violence against women. Sarah Everard's kidnap and murder who went missing while walking home from a friend's flat in South London on 3 March 2021, ignited a national conversation about violence against women. Against this background, the book speaks both to the proposed reforms of the hate crime legislation around misogyny, and the broader issues around experiences of and legal responses to misogyny. It showcases the work of leading scholars in this area alongside that of activists and practitioners, whose work has been invaluable in opening up public discussion on misogynistic hate crime and encouraging wider social change. In recognising the intersections of different forms of prejudice, the book provides an innovative contribution to these 'hate debates', highlighting the complexities of creating separate strands of hate crime.

Providing a comprehensive understanding of the debates around inclusion of misogyny as a form of hate crime, this ground-breaking book will be of great interest to students, scholars and activists interested in gender, hate crime, feminism, criminology, law, policing and sociology.

Part 1

Theorising misogyny, gender and ‘hate crime’

1 A feminist theoretical exploration of misogyny and hate crime

Marian Duggan and Hannah Mason-Bish

DOI: 10.4324/9781003023722-1

Introduction

Misogyny – the dislike of, contempt for or ingrained prejudice against, women – is the most pervasive and historic form of hatred that transcends time, space and place. ‘Hate crime’ as a standalone concept is understood as the targeted victimisation of a person on the basis of their identity, although currently in England and Wales it is only legally recognised if aligned to the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity. Many women who fear or have experienced male violence recognise that gender, both theirs and that of their assailant, often informs related actions and responses (Vera-Gray 2018). The obscuring of this fact by the demarcation of, and focus upon, legally ‘recognised’ facets of her identity is disingenuous to women’s individual and shared experiences of male violence as women. The degree to which misogyny informs hate crimes committed by men against women is difficult to discern as a gendered analysis is often omitted from examining rationales.

Few jurisdictions recognise gender as constituting a discreet category for legally recognised hostility. In England and Wales, the Law Commission have proposed a public consultation to discern the level of support for implementing a gender-specific focus to domestic hate crime legislation. This demonstrates that, like critical studies on race relations and religious persecution, feminist theorising on misogyny and sexism has finally resonated with policy makers. As with recognised hate crime strands, the emergent knowledge which critiqued structural and institutional discrimination and persecution has informed and sustained analyses of interpersonal victimisation. In other words, individual acts of hate crime do not occur in a vacuum thus must be understood in their wider cultural context. This underpins the strong argument for disaggregated data collection whereby gender hostility is foregrounded in order to expose the varied manifestations of misogyny. However, as we will argue in this chapter, the ‘hate crime paradigm’ is already inherently gendered as masculine, therefore adding identity categories to the list of strands is not enough. Instead, we propose a radical overhaul that recognises and addresses the silencing effect of current hate crime frameworks of analysis on women’s experiences of targeted victimisation. As feminist researchers working in the (largely separated) arenas of male violence against women and hate crime, we have long questioned the curious divisions between these two fields. In this chapter, we aim to present an insight into why they are, and will remain, uneasy bedfellows if gender or misogyny becomes recognised a distinct category of hate crime.

We begin by revisiting core feminist theorists on male violence against women to demonstrate how they (along with other civil rights advocates) informed subsequent hate crime theorising and policy implementation. Understanding feminist theorising requires an acknowledgement of historical perspectives in feminism. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, feminism focused on highlighting women’s oppression and inequality in a way which measured it against the rights and freedoms afforded to men. The original aim of feminist theorising was to prioritise women’s experience over – and in relation to – that of men. In doing so, approaches sought to espouse sameness (among women), demarcate difference (from men) and expose (patriarchal) dominance. Situating women’s social, political, structural, legal and economic positionality in relation to men helped to depict inequalities in citizenship, as well as how power informed and sustained gender hierarchies. This was often at the expense of recognising other important facets of identity, such as race, sexuality or class. Feminist terminology referring to ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ was often used interchangeably; more recently, greater understandings of diversity have emerged along with explorations of sex and gender as separate entities. Feminism’s focus on how gender stereotypes, roles and expectations contribute to and exacerbate women’s social and structural oppression has benefitted greatly from intersectional approaches. Therefore, our exploration of the hate crime paradigm employs an intersectional approach to highlight how the gendered nature of victimisation is obscured in this discourse. We conclude by suggesting that a gender-specific focus on misogyny is vital if society is to understand and address the true nature and impact of hate crimes towards women.

Analysing feminist theories on misogyny

A plethora of feminist research into men’s violence against women (such as intimate partner violence, sexual harassment/violence, female genital mutilation, trafficking, forced marriage, femicide, female infanticide and ‘honour’ killings) has exposed the inherently gendered nature of this harm. Importantly, research has shown that there are very few places women can consider as safe from male violence, especially when in the home, and that men’s fatal violence rarely comes ‘out of the blue’ (Dobash et al. 2009). Central to this work has been highlighting the ubiquity of misogyny, primarily through exposing the patriarchal infrastructures which inform and sustain the commission of gendered harms (Walby 1989). This section explores misogyny using a range of feminist literature on men’s interpersonal and institutional violence against women. The primacy of gender advanced understandings around gendered relations but negated to address other relevant aspects of identity (such as race, religion or sexuality). The emergence of greater intersectional analyses of gendered violence because of these critiques added both nuance and depth of insight, and are explored more fully in the subsequent section.

Situating misogyny: fear, safety and space

Feminist theorising on women’s safety in public and private spaces highlighted the primacy of (gendered) expectations around individual responsibility. Crime control, personal safety and avoiding violence had always been conceptualised as women’s responsibility (as the potential victim) on both a formal and informal basis. This was often rendered evident in so-called ‘safety’ campaigns and literature, aimed at women, which informed them how to act, dress and behave to lessen their vulnerability to male violence (Stanko 1992). These messages inferred that some degree of such violence was inevitable and that the targets would be (lone, inebriated) women. Furthermore, this state of affairs was not considered unusual or uncharacteristic; rather, it was carefully constructed to fit the culturally familiar ‘stranger danger’ narrative (Stanko 1995).

These patriarchal discourses successfully individualised and pathologised particular aberrant male assailants in a way that allowed masculinity as a potential cause of violence against women to remain unproblematised. Contrastingly, all women are expected to assume the role and responsibility of potential victims and protect themselves accordingly; failure to do so can result in victim-blaming and accusations of culpability (Burt 1980). How women are supposed to protect themselves from male sexual predators is also heavily influenced by patriarchal ideas. So pervasive are societal expectations of femininity that recourse to masculinisation was as likely to incur male wrath, albeit of a different, less sexualised, nature (Corteen 2002). Male violence towards lesbian, bisexual and queer women – particularly those who present in a way that has been socially coded as ‘butch’ or androgynous – is often more physical than sexual in nature (homophobia is explored further in the following section). Instead, women are expected to perform femininity for the male gaze but remain alert and ready to police this when necessary. Such efforts reinforced the focus on ‘stranger danger’ despite overwhelming evidence indicating that the most dangerous place for most women is in the home (Aldridge and Browne 2003).

Feminists had to fight long and hard to have women’s vulnerability to male victimisation in the private (domestic) sphere taken seriously. Patriarchal conceptualisations of gender hierarchies in the home situated the male in a position of authority and with control over his wife and children. The majority of domestic violence cases involve women as victims and men as perpetrators (UN Women 2013). In cases where the violence proves fatal, the overwhelming majority of victims are women and perpetrators are men. The growth and diversity in domestic violence research has led to greater awareness and understanding of how experiences may differ for victims who are in same-sex relationships (Donovan and Hester 2014), from minority cultures (Day and Gill 2020), or are male (Gadd et al. 2002). However, attempts to neutralise the gendered aspect of domestic violence perpetration are dangerous: compared to men, women engage in domestic violence less frequently, less severely and with far fewer fatal consequences. Women are much more likely to be harmed or killed by their current or former male partner than vice versa (Long et al. 2018). With a death toll averaging two women a week, domestic violence remains one of the most pervasive and sustained forms of misogyny in the UK (Long et al. 2018).

Similarly, the failure to consider rape within marriage a crime in England and Wales until 1991 demonstrated the patriarchal notion of women (wives) as male property. Upon saying “I do”, wives were considered to have consented to all future sexual intercourse with their husbands. Russell’s (1982) study with married women demonstrated the impact of this on rape victims. Despite finding that 14% of her sample had experiences that were commensurate with legal definitions of rape (at the time), fewer than 1% of these women described it as ‘rape’ (1982, p. 67). For many, the repeated nature of their victimisation (along with the identity of their assailant) may also have disabused them of the idea that it was rape due to the pervasiveness of ‘rape myths’ (Burt 1980). Cultural stereotypes of isolated incidents, occurring at night, involving young women being violently attacked by a male stranger came to popularise the imagery surrounding rape. A vital breakthrough in challenging this came from Liz Kelly’s (1988) seminal work which showcased that many women experience sexual violence on a ‘continuum’. She proved that sexual victimisation was a constant feature in most women’s lives, committed by men who were strangers or acquaintances (including partners), and evolved as they moved through the life course.

Importantly, Kelly’s research also showed how ongoing exposure to this violence led to the development of internalised (often unconscious) coping mechanisms. Women minimised, overlooked, excused, rationalised and justified male violence in ways that suggested either that ‘nothing really happened’ (Kelly and Radford 1990) or that the woman was in some way responsible for what had happened to her. Feelings of responsibility coupled with rape myths were powerful social regulators, ensuring that women conformed to patriarchal gender roles that demarcated between ‘good’ (i.e. chaste, married and compliant) and ‘bad’ (i.e. promiscuous, provocative or prostituted) women. They also worked in men’s favour, allowing them to commit sexua...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Theorising misogyny, gender and ‘hate crime’
• Part 2 Online and offline spaces
• Part 3 Identities and lived experiences
• Part 4 Practice and activism
• Conclusion
• Index