The PM said by “widening the scope of what you ask the police to do, you will just increase the problem”. Instead, he called for forces to “focus on the very real crimes” and “the very real feeling of injustice and betrayal that many people feel”.
Campaigners have called for misogyny - hatred or dislike of women - to be made a hate crime in England and Wales. A hate crime is when a crime is proven to be because of the victim’s race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. There is no specific hate crime offence in England and Wales, but when a crime falls into one of the above categories, judges have enhanced sentencing powers and can increase the punishment.
Labour MP Stella Creasy, who has long campaigned on the issue, previously told the BBC that in areas where police forces had introduced it, it had helped with “confidence in police and changing the culture in the police about how the deal with violence against women”.
Police failure to tackle violence against women ‘infuriating,’ UK PM Boris Johnson says
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has described the police’s failure to take violence against women and girls sufficiently seriously as “infuriating,” in an interview with British newspaper The Times after the killing of Sarah Everard and more than 100 other women in Britain this year.
“Are the police taking this issue seriously enough? It’s infuriating. I think the public feel that they aren’t and they’re not wrong,” Johnson told The Times on Saturday. There is an issue about how we handle sexual violence, domestic violence, the sensitivity, the diligence, the time, the delay…that’s the thing we need to fix," he added.
One woman is killed by a man on average every three days in the UK, according to data from the Femicide Census, an organization that tracks violence against women and girls. The group argues that the government’s new strategy to curb such violence “shamefully ignores” victims of femicide.
The government has promised to take action to tackle violence against women and girls, but activists and the opposition say the steps it proposed were inadequate.
Speaking to The Times, Johnson said that while there are hundreds of thousands of “wonderful police officers” in the UK, there are issues in the way that women are treated by the police and how complaints by women are handled. Far, far too many women are basically finding their lives lost to this system, waiting for their complaint to be taken seriously, waiting for their case to be heard, and nothing is happening," Johnson said.
Mysogyny and violence are two different things - Boris is right. We shouldn’t be criminalising people for what they say. You may not like it but that’s freedom of speech.
Your wrong as usual and you should learn the meaning of words.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has been accused of failing to understand the meaning of the word misogyny in an interview about violence against women.
Speaking to the BBC, he said “insults and misogyny is absolutely wrong whether it’s a man against a woman or a woman against a man”.
Misogyny refers to a hatred or prejudice towards women.
Opposition parties seized on his apparent confusion after he was corrected by the interviewer.
Labour’s shadow justice secretary David Lammy said: “No wonder the Conservatives are hopeless at tackling violence against women and girls.”
Liberal Democrat equalities spokesperson Wera Hobhouse said: “It’s little wonder the Conservatives are failing to tackle misogyny when their justice secretary doesn’t even seem to know what it is. These comments are an insult to the millions of women and girls impacted by misogyny and show just how out of touch the Conservatives are on this issue. Women and girls deserve better than these callous remarks.”
The Tories are out of touch reality on every level, it seems …
Your “hurty words” against women often demean, undermine, and belittle, leaving women with a sense of inadequacy, failure, low self esteem and lack of confidence. This leads to other mental health issues and often spirals downwards.
Shouldn’t the same rules apply to misandry as well? How many (just as an example) humorous birthday cards have you seen that demean men? They are rife everywhere, and yet no-one condemns them. Strange that you never see similar cards directed towards women.
This is about women who are subjected to daily retorts and undermining, and made to feel less than equal, due to men having a go at them. Verbal abuse takes many forms - it doesn’t always have to be angry.
I can understand why Boris has said no.
We haven’t enough police and resources to pursue all serious crime without adding to the police burden of investigation with another minor ‘crime’ .
I’m questioning on where you draw the line and who determines what is misogyny and what is not. For example, a woman gets wolf-whistled at while walking down the street. One woman might find it flattering and be secretly pleased at the attention, while another one might resent it and class it has a hate crime. Which one is right?
I totally get that…and to be honest, I don’t know. Its like asking if a woman gets offended at a man holding the door open for her…is she right or wrong. Its unfair I know…but all I do know is that if a man makes a woman feel rubbish through what he says - its wrong. Equally so for a woman against a man.
