The Gender Equality Checkpoint

[DanaC]

This does not help:

Martha led an anti-street harassment campaign while at university in Nottingham.

It led to misogyny being made a hate crime in the city.

"Women now feel safer on the streets of Nottingham. They can walk with their head held high.
"It doesn't mean these things aren't going to happen anymore, but if they do the police are going to act and take it seriously."

Officers in the city now define misogynistic hate crime as "behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman".

That includes things like wolf-whistling and cat-calling.

"I think it's very easy to say this is the end of flirting, but I don't think that's true," says Martha.

"I think if you're flirting in a way which you feel might be touchy ground, then you're flirting in the wrong way."

Martha ran around 40 training sessions for police on misogynistic harassment and now wants the rest of the UK to follow suit.

This is from an article on the BBC news site looking at what today's 'suffragettes' are up to. Much of which is laudable - like anti FGM work - but making catcalling a fucking hate crime?

Jesus wept.

This:

Officers in the city now define misogynistic hate crime as "behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman".

Is insane.

It didn't need a new law. There are already laws in place to deal with a broad category of anti-social or lewd acts - if someone is shouting 'show us your tits' at schoolgirls, then the broad category of 'breach of the peace' or 'causing a disturbance' could come into effect.

It's not a criminal offence (in England anyway - not sure about Scotland) nothing goes on your record. But the police can arrest you. You get a warning and agree not to do it again. If you break that agreement in a given period you have committed an offence.

Breach of the peace/disturbance is already suitably vague and broad to be able to cover a frightening amount of stuff without adding another terrifyingly vague legal definition with much more serious consequences.

Rest of the article (some of which highlights really important work)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-42949970

[xoxoxoBruce]

Agreed.