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Misogynic Violence: Hate Crimes?

Dec 01, 2010 Editorial

In an intervention that should be considered by all concerned Guyanese, Dr Julia Long, a feminist activist and academic in the UK has suggested that maybe violence against women should be treated as a “hate crime”. After giving the mind-numbing statistics of the phenomenon in that putatively “advanced” country, Dr Long notes that, “it includes: domestic violence, rape and sexual violence, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, crimes in the name of honour, trafficking and sexual exploitation. It is mostly committed by men that women know or are in a close relationship with’. One in four UK women have been affected by domestic violence and according to the Department of Health two women are killed each week by a violent male partner or ex-partner.”
Sounds like Guyana.
She continued, “One of the most important achievements of feminism has been to locate patriarchal power, gender inequality and misogyny at the heart of all forms of violence against women. Feminists make connections between individual acts of rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence and femicide, the broader context of women’s ongoing inequality, and a culture which variously normalises, trivialises or glamorises violence against women.  In making these connections, second wave, radical feminists such as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Brownmiller argued that violence against women occurs within a misogynistic culture, underpinned, enabled and sustained by patriarchal power relations.
However, the struggle for these insights to influence mainstream debates and attitudes to violence against women is ongoing.  Within mainstream culture, media, politics and the legal system, violence against women continues to be viewed primarily as a personal, individualised issue.  Incidents of violence tend to be seen as either the actions of ‘monsters’ or ‘psychopaths’; the result of unfortunate domestic disputes or choice of spouse; or as attributable to negligence on the part of the woman herself  – her clothing, her location, her behaviour, whether she had consumed alcohol.
Given that violence against women, in spite of its pervasiveness, continues to be constructed within mainstream discourses as a mainly individualised issue, it is pertinent to consider how feminist insights might best be brought to bear in order to transform debates on violence against women.  Would including women as a category protected under hate crime legislation help to bring about a recognition of the systematic and generalised nature of violence against women, and highlight the crucial role of structural power relations between women and men?
The legislation on hate crimes, “neatly encapsulates several of the key feminist insights regarding the systematic nature and structural effects of violence against women.  Similarly, a recognition of the particularly serious nature of these crimes when it comes to sentencing would also seem appropriate and desirable. However, feminist campaigners have expressed reservations regarding the desirability of utilising a ‘hate crime’ approach.  (Their main objection is that unlike most of the instances of violence) hate crime legislation is generally designed to deal with ‘stranger’ or ‘outsider’ violence: violence from a person outside of one’s personal and social circles.
The reservations of feminist campaigners with regard to hate crime approaches highlight important inadequacies in the way that such approaches frame acts of violence based on structural inequalities.  However, I would argue that the concept of hate crime does at least bring considerations of discrimination and the generalised effects of violence into the picture.  The notion of hate crime facilitates and supports a recognition that inequalities and discrimination experienced by certain groups exist on a spectrum that ranges from racist, homophobic and disablist language, through discrimination in employment, goods and services, and ultimately to acts of violence and murder.  So whilst the term has its problems, it does at least serve to make links between cultural attitudes, discrimination and acts of violence.  What is necessary is a further re-framing of the issue in order to recognise that power and control are key motivations for violence against women and girls, and that individual acts of violence are supported by a context of structural inequality and cultural misogyny.”

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