What the heck is ‘extreme misogyny’?

Rape is already a crime. Domestic violence, stalking, drink poisoning, revenge porn, these are all very serious illegal offenses, despite the fact that the perpetrators are rarely punished.

Creating a new category of “extreme misogyny”, as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced as part of a review of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, will not help tackle these crimes.

On the contrary, I am deeply concerned that by treating misogyny as a terrorist crime, the government risks minimizing many crimes against women. What we need is to change our culture and challenge the impunity with which men commit such crimes.

This is a cheap move by Labour to win back the votes of feminists, after its shameful support for transgender rights, which are an extension of men’s rights over women.

To Cooper’s credit, she has shown initiative over the years to improve the lot of women. I don’t suspect she came up with this plan as cynical clickbait, to get into the headlines or strike a pose.

Around the world, millions of women live in fear of male violence. In some countries, for example, marital rape is considered normal – and in Britain, it is still common, although illegal. Women and girls Doing experience male violence and sexual harassment as a form of terrorism.

Male contempt and disgust for women has always existed. But it is on the rise, elevated to the status of a perverse fashion by online influencers who make money by stoking hatred, resentment and violence.

The young men who subscribe to this despicable lifestyle are very different from religious extremists. They do not see themselves as part of a common cause or as freedom fighters. And they have no twisted sense of self-righteousness.

Their behavior is driven by anger, a sense of sexual entitlement, depravity learned from easily accessible porn, meanness, alcohol and drug abuse, greed and narcissism – a vile mixture that can be summed up as “toxic masculinity.”

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I have been a campaigner against male violence against women and girls my entire adult life, and I see these attitudes spreading to younger and younger boys. Thanks to social media and the prevalence of online pornography, children as young as 10 are being manipulated into seeing women as subhuman.

Schools are one of the places where action is needed to tackle this toxic culture, and implementing policies against “extreme misogyny” is certainly not helpful.

A teacher who discovers a 14-year-old student distributing sexual images of a classmate should not hesitate to call the police. That is the obvious response to an increasingly common crime.

But how useful is it that the boy is reported to Prevent, the government’s anti-terror program? What can the Ministry of the Interior do that the police and the school cannot?

The perpetrator must understand that what he is doing is completely wrong. It is not a joke, it is not evidence of his sexual dominance, it is a crime punishable by a long prison sentence.

Telling him it is a terrorist crime does nothing to help him and boys like him understand the reality of male violence. In fact, it may have the opposite effect, by glamorizing it.

Many teachers may feel genuinely uncomfortable referring one of their students, a child they may have known for years, to the counterterrorism unit. The end result could be that crimes go unreported, even though the authorities were previously aware.

Post-lockdown, there is a catastrophic backlog in the courts and the Crown Prosecution Service, with waits of up to three years for domestic abuse cases to be heard. If Cooper is serious about tackling male abuse, she should start by solving this.

Yvette Cooper, July 2024

And if the focus is on terrorism, any misogynistic behavior that does not involve outright violence will be effectively devalued. But it is equally wrong to minimize how frightening and damaging it can be.

By introducing a two-tier system, borderline cases will ultimately be minimized and the bar for what gets reported will be raised.

Our culture needs to change. For example, boys and young men who are now making and sharing porn videos need to show that this is not the mark of a wannabe celebrity – it is sexual exploitation and bullying.

Often it is evidence of rape: a significant number of videos on the website PornHub, for example, show real sexual violence.

Violent sexism and misogyny are a threat to every woman in this country and we must put an end to it. But the way to do that is to use the laws we have and make them work. The police, the CPS and the judiciary must be motivated to take male violence against women seriously.