If upskirting is set to be a hate crime, what about upkilting?
Are you thinking she’s thinking?
So here we are again. A Labour MP is still pushing for misogyny to become a hate crime as ministers announce a review of current legislation.
The Law Commission will look into the ‘coverage and approach of hate crime’, including whether misogyny should be considered an aggravating factor in criminal offences. This would mean that guilty men could be further punished in the courts if it was proved that crimes against women had been provoked simply because of hostility to women.
Does this mean that prosecutors who showed beyond reasonable doubt that, for example, sexual attackers were motivated by a hatred of women rather than a misplaced lust for women would receive higher sentences?
If so, that would be fantastical, because who can ever fathom the private darkness of the wicked mind? It would require the law to be telepathic, which is an impossibility. Certainly an exigence too far.
For centuries, the justice system in this country has been built on the golden principle that legislation is equal for all, without discriminatory clauses.
however, we are now in danger of the dice being loaded against men, who will be discriminated against before any case even gets to court.
We will be encouraged to regard women as a new caste of super-ultra-victims, against whom any transgressions must be punished far more severely.
That is hardly progress — even though I completely understand that many women feel vulnerable in public places and have to deal with a lot of hostility online and elsewhere.
Yet so do men — and such a seismic shift in the laws of the land seems too extreme to cope with the current situation.
Movements such as Time’s Up and #MeToo show that females aren’t going to grin and bear it when it comes to sexual harassment any more. That’s a good thing.
I admire younger women for standing up for themselves in a way that previous generations did not. And yet. LABOUR’s stella Creasy has tabled an amendment to make misogyny a hate crime under a new offence of ‘upskirting’ — the diabolical practice of a man sticking a camera up a woman’s skirt to take unsolicited photographs. This would certainly close a gap in the law, which sometimes struggles to keep up with the perverted opportunities that new technology provides.
Yet why does it apply to only one sex?
handsome scottish actor richard Madden wore his kilt to a wedding in Glasgow last week. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that overheated female fans of the bodyguard heartthrob might have been motivated to indulge in a wee bit of upkilting themselves. or a mirror on a stick, at the very least.
Would they be viewed more leniently by the courts for such wanton misandry?
one wonders why stella Creasy and like-minded pressure groups have not attempted to preserve the dignity of all kilt-wearing scotsmen in their far-reaching legal plans. The omission seems sexist, to say the least.
Ministers have said that rather than change the law just for upskirting, the Law Commission will look into whether a more farreaching overhaul and rebranding of crimes against women is needed — but why?
Much has been written about Nottinghamshire Police, who have been incorporating the prosecution of misogynistic ‘hate crimes’ into policy for the last two years.
This is always cited as an exemplary illustration of progressive policing, but no one seems to have noticed it has also been a total waste of time. In the two years since the pilot scheme started, until June this year, there were 181 reports of hate crimes against women in Nottinghamshire, ranging from wolf- whistling to harassment. of that number, less than half ( 74) warranted full investigation, which led to four arrests and one prosecution.
so only one case (involving two counts of harassment) made it to court. And what happened next? THAT sole case was dropped. Which means there has not been one single successful prosecution of a so- called misogynistic hate crime in more than 24 months.
It remains to be seen if the policy acted as a deterrent, or that demiperverts in Nottingham carried on as usual.
The problem is that while upgrading misogyny into a hate crime sounds super-feminist and will sure look good on any MP’s CV if he or she votes for it, the law is unenforceable in real life.
Apart from anything else, if stretched police forces don’t have the time to investigate burglaries, assaults and domestic robberies, how much time can they devote to upskirting and — yes, I insist — upkilting on a busy saturday night?
We have plenty of laws which cover harassment, voyeurism and revenge porn which do not involve adding the accusatory dagger of gender into the mix.
Men are without doubt capable of behaving badly and certainly some are guilty of misogyny and deserve to be punished.
however, re- branding their pathetic delinquencies and lawbreaking activities as hate crimes really, really doesn’t help anyone.
In fact, it only serves to diminish the impact of real hate crimes.
And in this day and age, in this fervent climate, that is the last thing we need.