North Yorkshire Makes Misogyny A Hate Crime

By William Collins: When Nottinghamshire police made (so-called) misogyny a hate crime last July it was inevitable that the contagion would spread. Sue Fish, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, had been in post only 3 weeks when Nottinghamshire police decided to enhance public harmony in this manner (see The Law Is A Joke). Now it’s the turn of North Yorkshire to give the latest blow to the wedge being driven between the sexes by following Nottinghamshire’s lead and declaring ‘misogyny’ to be a hate crime. I’m sure it’s just coincidence that the Police & Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire is a woman, Julia Mulligan, and that the deputy Chief Constable is also a woman, Lisa Winward, who took up her post only at the start of the year – oh, and that the Assistant Chief Constable is a woman, Amanda Oliver, who has been in post only since February.
Certainly these women led the charge for this change to the de facto law. They express the hope that the rest of country will adopt the same policy soon. I’m sure they will.
The PCCs and Police Forces do not act unilaterally in this matter. No, I don’t mean they are responding to changes in the law as properly sanctioned by our legislature or judiciary. I mean they act after being directed (“trained”) by those of suitable ideological authority – by which I mean the all-pervasive feminist priesthood.
Left: Police & Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire, Julia Mulligan - Right: Deputy Chief Constable, North Yorkshire, Lisa Winward.
The unelected feminist lobby has been more or less writing our laws for some time. The January 2016 domestic violence coercive control enhancement is a case in point (see also here). In the case of Nottinghamshire’s new ‘misogyny’ hate crime, it was the Nottingham Women’s Centre who schooled the local police in their duty. (Nottingham Women’s Centre proudly boast to be run by women for women. They seem to want the whole world to be the same). In the case of North Yorkshire, the role of éminence grise was filled by “women from York St John University“.
I note that the Pro Chancellor and Chairman of York St John University is a woman, Ann Margaret Green, CBE, and the Governor and Vice Chancellor of the University is also a woman, Professor Karen Stanton. I’m sure this is also quite immaterial.
But the wider feminist lobby was certainly behind the North Yorkshire initiative, such as the Sheffield Feminist Network, who were holding ‘strategy’ meetings to ‘influence this change’ prior to the change to the law being announced.
Domestic violence is a particular concern of female PCCs (Vera Baird, for instance). Julia Mulligan is no exception. In a recent blog post on her PCC site she notes that,
“Domestic abuse is often a ‘hidden’ crime no matter where it takes place, but new figures from the National Rural Crime Network (NRCN) suggest it is even more so in our rural areas.”
Heck. I guess those NRCN data must have shown a particularly high incidence of DV in those rural areas of North Yorkshire? Nope. The opposite. She continues,
“There appears to be lower reporting levels in rural areas – indeed approximately half the number of incidents per head of population. This follows the trends identified in the NRCN’s rural crime survey two years ago.”
To anyone without the perspicacity of Ms Mulligan it might seem perverse to be downcast at rural DV figures which are half the figures elsewhere. But Ms Mulligan sees straight through this apparently good news: in truth, DV is being under-reported in rural areas. She writes,
“The latest project that I have commissioned is the IDAS Champions scheme, a campaign aimed at recruiting volunteers who will reach out to people in rural areas, helping to change attitudes about domestic abuse.”
Absolutely. Their attitudes must be changed. They must report more DV, the slackers. Seriously, though, I mustn’t be too dismissive. It could be that the rural areas really are under-reporting. How should I know? But I assume that Ms Mulligan would not be happy if rural areas reported twice as much DV as elsewhere – so there is something strangely elastic in her reasoning.
However, I digress. Back to misogyny hate crime…
Some of you may be confused. You may be thinking that only our legislature, our Parliament and due process, could change the law? Ah, but you are confusing the law as it is practiced – the de facto law – with the law that is officially the law of the land – the de jure law. You can have a nice little chat about this distinction with the police officer as he, or she, arrests you. They are not likely to listen.
What do you call a society in which the law is being decided by the police, rather than by the elected legislature? You can supply your own term. But that couldn’t possibly apply in good old Blighty, could it? Could it?
What exactly is the new so-called misogyny hate crime? Well, it’s explicitly gendered. It is a crime category which, by definition, can be committed only by a man or a boy, and the victim can only be a woman or a girl. The offence is any male person doing the following to any female person,

• unwanted or uninvited sexual advances;
• physical or verbal assault;
• unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement;
• sexually graphic and explicit obscene language;
• use of mobile devices to send unwanted or uninvited messages or take photographs without consent.

Oh dear. There are a few problems with this. Leaving aside that an unelected body should not be defining our laws, there is another reason why the police should not be doing so. You see, it’s quite tricky to write laws without introducing unintended consequences. Also, if you are unscrupulous, it’s very easy to deliberately introduce consequences which are not immediately apparent to the uncritical eye. What, for example, is “verbal assault”?
As far as I am aware, “verbal assault” is not a recognised offence in English law. There is existing legislation which recognises that it is an offence to use abusive, threatening or insulting words, language or behaviour with the intention of causing alarm, distress or harrassment. However, I suspect the offender would need to “pursue a course of conduct”, i.e., be persistent in the behaviour, to be guilty of this offence.
But consider,

• uninvited verbal contact or engagement

What this means is that a male person must not initiate verbal contact with any female person. A man, or boy, must wait to be spoken to before he may address a female person of any age. Clear? Think Victorian servants and their masters (or, rather, mistresses).
Oh, but the law wouldn’t be abused to apply to benign exchanges, would it? Would it? Are you sure? If you think that, you underestimate the extent to which many young women now regard all men as creepy. They may claim to be traumatised and their life completely ruined by you, my friend, merely for saying “hello”. Daisy Buchanan made this perfectly clear in her Guardian article, “I’m tired of being kind to creepy men in order to stay safe” .
Next consider,

• use of mobile devices to send uninvited messages

Err….but virtually all telephone calls and texts are uninvited. That’s rather their point, in general. Oh, you cry, they mean – you know – nasty stuff. Not ordinary messages. Oh really. And who is to decide which is which? Well, let’s see – “perception is reality”, “always believe the victim” – are they the guiding principles? The point is, laws should not be formulated in such a manner as to give unlimited latitude in their interpretation. Actually, all “hate crimes” are a very bad idea, for they are types of thought crime. Increasingly we now have categories of crime for which it is impossible, even in principle, to establish by objective means that they have even occurred.
Now consider,

• use of mobile devices to take photographs without consent

This happens all the time. But now if a male person takes a photograph of a female person without permission he has committed a crime – at least, if the female person says so. The reverse is perfectly fine, obviously. Take the web site http://tubecrush.net/, for example. This site exists solely to post pictures of ‘fit’ looking young men taken surreptitiously on the London tube, almost entirely by women. The photos are accompanied by a caption, provided by the woman photographer, of drooling lasciviousness. (In passing I note that these lady photographers seem to quite like manspreading rather than the reverse). For men to take similar photos of young women on the tube, let alone post them on-line with sexually explicit captions, is not acceptable. The TubeCrush site itself proved the point. It notes,
“When Tubecrush hit the internet back in 2011 many copycat websites sprang up that imitated what we had set out to do but with just images of women. These sites were quickly taken down due to (amongst other reasons) public outcry at the sheer idea of men (or women for that matter) photographing women in a public place.”
Call it hypocrisy or call it double standards, but whatever you call it, our society is pickled in it.
And finally, think a little about the consequences of banning men from initiating…

• uninvited sexual advances

Well, to be fair I’m not sure how that one plays in the modern world of app driven hook ups. But in good old fashioned cases of real physical presence, what it means is that women must initiate all potential sexual encounters – because for a man to do so is now a crime. Sounds good to me. Let the ladies take the rejections, then. Except it won’t happen. A lifetime of experience tells me that, in this brave new world of female initiated overtures, any boy or young man who is currently a virgin can expect to die that way – and our civilisation will shortly be finished. Increasingly, I no longer regard that as a bad thing.

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