Another day, another powerful politician who doesn’t seem to care to understand male violence – or just, misogyny in general – and what a wonderful week to be a woman in the UK. This morning, Dominic Raab gave an interview to the BBC in which he referred to misogyny as being both prejudice towards women AND men. Yes, really.
The Justice Secretary – you know, the guy in charge of the judiciary, the court system and prisons and probation in England and Wales – spoke to BBC Breakfast this morning when he reiterated Boris Johnson's opposition to make misogyny a hate crime, stating it would lead to ‘criminalising insults’. So apparently, he doesn’t know or care what a hate crime is either - nor that making misogyny one has proven effects on reducing harm.
He then added ‘insults, and misogyny is of course absolutely wrong, whether it's a man against a woman or a woman against a man.’
When BBC presenter Sally Nugent explained to Raab that the dictionary definition of misogyny is a hatred or contempt towards women and girls, he backtracked. ‘What I meant was, if we are talking about things below the level of public order offences of harassment, intimidation, which are rightly criminalised - if we are talking about, effectively, insults with a sexist basis, I don't think that criminalising those sorts of things will deal with the problem that we have got at the heart of the Sarah Everard case,’ Raab said.
‘Just criminalising insulting language even if it is misogynistic doesn't deal with the intimidation, the violence and the much higher level of offence and damage and harm that we really ought to be laser-like focused in on,’ he added.
His complete misunderstanding of misogyny has led to criticism online, with Labour's shadow justice secretary David Lammy tweeting ‘No wonder the Conservatives are hopeless at tackling violence against women and girls.’
‘It's little wonder the Conservatives are failing to tackle misogyny when their justice secretary doesn't even seem to know what it is,’ Liberal Democrat equalities spokesperson Wera Hobhouse added. ‘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.’
Raab's attempt to minimise misogynistic hate crimes shows how little he cares about protecting women.
But beyond Raab’s blatant misunderstanding of a prejudice that causes countless acts of male violence, his attempt to minimise misogynistic hate crimes by referring to them as ’insults’ and further equate misogyny with women insulting men shows his true lack of care for protecting women. If he cared, he would understand that millions of women are affected by male violence in this country, the root of which stems from misogyny.
Instead, he chose to invalidate that by implying misandry (which is the actual term for prejudice towards men) can harm men on an equal level. It simply cannot, given the patriarchal power dynamics that exist in our society, which vastly position women to be more vulnerable than men. What's he's doing then, is gaslighting the British public with the idea that the damage done by sexism ‘goes both ways’.
This is not an opportunity for politician power plays, this is a genuinely harrowing comment from a man that is responsible for reducing crime towards women. If our own Justice Secretary doesn’t understand what misogyny means, how can we ever hope for the department to tackle it adequately?
Read More:
Boris Johnson Refuses To Make Misogyny A Hate Crime Because It Would Overload The Police
'I Was A Special Constable, Now I'm An MP And I Know That The Police Need A Ruthless Culture Change'