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‘Show us your cock!’ Exploring Some of the issues with the Nottinghamshire Police Misogynistic Hate Crime Strategy

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Here Dr Ben Hine, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of West London and co-founder of the Men and Boys Coalition, explores some of the deeper issues behind recent moves by police forces to re-categorise crimes against women that are motivated by their sex as hate crimes.

Since the 4th April 2016, Nottinghamshire Police Force has classified incidents targeted at women, specifically because of their sex, as hate crimes. This was in response to the Misogynistic Hate Crime Review 2016 by the same force that found an alarming 38% of women who had experienced a hate crime explicitly linked it to being a woman, and that, even more shockingly, only 28% of women would report such crimes to the police[i]. Indeed the scale of the problem is evident, both through direct observation and discussions with family and friends (quite uncomfortable ones at that I can assure you), and through disturbingly ironic incidences such as the public harassment of BBC reporter Sarah Teale as she reported on the change[ii].

Clearly, misogynistic harassment of women is a serious and prevalent problem in our society, and the creation of this classification can be viewed as an important step in encouraging women to report their victimisation and to show how seriously police officers take crimes of this nature. Indeed, a number of additional police forces across England and Wales are now considering expanding their definition of hate crimes to include misogyny[iii]. However, before this becomes common practice, for me there are a number of issues which haven’t been fully considered in taking such a move.

The review itself describes misogynistic hate crimes as ‘incidents against women that are motivated by the attitude of men towards women and includes behaviour targeted at women by men, simply because they are women’. The examples provided range from unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement, to the taking of photographs without permission. It is also important to note that this new categorisation is not a crime within itself, but rather elevates existing crimes that meet this definition to a higher priority on police systems once reported.

‘Inherently discriminatory and sexist’

So what’s the problem, right? I believe one comment from Nottinghamshire Police’s Facebook page sums up the main issue – ‘Will the harassment of men also be deemed as a hate crime? If not then this policy is inherently discriminatory and sexist’[iv]. To put it frankly, and in the hope you will read on, I have to agree.

Whilst I can list a huge number of incidences of harassment towards women by men that I have either directly witnessed or heard second-hand, there are also plenty of examples I can conjure of the reverse. Bar-men harassed whilst women order drinks, men’s bums pinched on the dance floor, and inappropriate, presumptive, and very forward advances towards men by women who find them attractive. As the title of this post suggests, I have also genuinely heard groups of women (think hen-dos) shout ‘show us your cock!’ to men they see on the street. We must therefore recognise that a number of men find themselves experiencing similar types of harassment to women, by women. And whilst some don’t feel aggrieved, many report feeling deeply uncomfortable, and sometimes even threatened by some of these advances. So, whilst these incidences of harassment are based on the fact that they are men, and whilst they could report the harassment itself as a crime, why does no opportunity exist for them to have that report specifically classified as a hate crime?

There are a number of reasons. 1) Maybe people believe harassment of men by women isn’t as serious because they think it doesn’t happen as often? Well, the frequency of such incidents is difficult to assess as at the very outset men and women may perceive, categorise, and report harassment of this nature differently. Whilst some men do think of a pinched bottom as harassment, many don’t, whereas women almost certainly would. That being said, whilst many statistics do suggest that prevalence is higher for women, a significant proportion of men are also affected[v]. Regardless, as with domestic and sexual violence, just because fewer men are victims of these crimes, this doesn’t mean that male victimisation is any less serious.

2) Maybe it is because people believe men don’t mind, or even like the attention, so therefore it’s not harassment? This is also a popular belief, and again one where it is hard to assess prevalence/impact. If it turns out men really don’t view harassment towards them as seriously as women do, is this because they have been told by society that that is how they should feel? Or because they genuinely don’t mind as much as women? Or both? Some would question whether the harassment of men is even a problem because men don’t mind sexual attention of any kind or in any form, as long as it’s attention! However, as mentioned above, many men report feeling uncomfortable by some of the comments and actions taken by women towards them.

Balance of power

3) Finally, maybe people believe that whilst both men and women may experience harassment, it’s more serious for women because it’s more threatening and/or dangerous. This, for me, is the most important, as whilst all of the reasons outlined above can be argued to have some validity, this particular idea ties into fundamental beliefs about the balance of power between the sexes that affect our perceptions of many interactions, including crime.

Many theories of gender socialisation would suggest that, from a young age, boys and girls are taught to believe that they inherently occupy different positions of power within society – boys are socialised to believe they are powerful, girls are socialised to believe they are powerless. This is part of a broad system of beliefs and processes that help to shape our understanding of gender, and the abstract associations that accompany masculinity, manliness and being male, and femininity, womanliness and being female. And whilst these processes are undergoing some change, socialisation of power between the sexes is still prevalent and highly influential in shaping children’s understanding of the world around them in terms of gender.

These socialised beliefs then manifest in our understanding of things like harassment and other ‘gendered’ crime. For example, whilst domestic violence is most certainly perpetrated towards both men and women, studies demonstrate that abuse scenarios are routinely perceived as more serious and severe when perpetrated by men towards women than the reverse[vi]. These effects are found despite the fact that the physical attributes of the men and women involved are controlled (i.e., they are described as having a similar physical stature).

What does domestic violence ‘look like’?

We can argue therefore that perceptions of men and women in these scenarios are fundamentally rooted in who we feel has more power (as well as more ability to threaten, intimidate and control in any given situation), as well as our traditional beliefs of what domestic violence ‘looks like’ (i.e., aggressive male being physically violent towards a scared, weak female)[vii]. When a man harasses a woman, this is seen as a powerful and threatening act towards someone in a position of less power. When a woman harasses a man, it is not seen as serious or threatening, because women aren’t inherently viewed as threatening. Take what happens when a woman and a man walk alone on the street. If a man begins to follow them, a woman is likely to cross the street as she feels under threat, whereas a man will not. Neither will cross if it is a woman following.

Regardless of the extent of one’s subscription to the narrative that crimes like domestic/sexual violence and harassment are direct results and representations of a patriarchal society, and men’s exertion of dominance over women, beliefs regarding imbalanced power between men and women exist in many of us, and clearly affect our interpretations of crimes when they occur. Combine this with other beliefs tied to gender, such as men’s supposed appreciation of any kind of sexual interaction regardless of how it comes, and you get a clear distinction between serious male-on-female harassment and funny female-on-male ‘attention’. A distinction which, I feel, is actually reinforced by the categorisation of harassment specifically by a male towards a female, as a hate crime.

Maybe some view the elevation of these crimes as just a natural way of addressing that imbalance of power, by placing the law on the side of women? However, whilst with one hand this delivers a message regarding the seriousness of such crimes (a message which I wholly support), with the other it reinforces the idea that men are powerful, predatory and dangerous as harassment perpetrated by them is deemed particularly serious. This as an idea which not only serves to undermine the idea that a man can be harassed by a woman (or indeed another man) because of the fundamentally ‘powerful’ position men occupy, but helps to reinforce the idea of women as weak and needing extra protection and provision within the law. I would draw similar criticisms of sexual violence legislation in this country – for example, why is rape a gender-specific crime (i.e., can only be classified as rape if the assault involved penetration by a penis)? Does this not create a clear distinction between the seriousness and trauma of ‘proper rape’ (of a man or woman by a man), as opposed to say sexual assault by penetration (performed maybe by a woman on a man)? Aren’t they both equally traumatic and violating?

More harm than good?

As I stated at the start of this post, the sexual harassment of women is a serious, dangerous, and abhorrent feature of our society. I have spoken to many female friends who feel threatened, and even physically endangered when approached, and sometimes persistently pursued by men. At one party recently, a female friend of mine felt the need to arrange a complex system of interactions with us in order to finally convince one guy to ‘fucking leave her alone’. However, whilst classifying misogynistic incidences as hate crimes is a bold and important statement, it is not without issue. How are we to ever to challenge conventional beliefs about power between the sexes, and the narrative of ‘men as problem, women as victim’, when we are almost enshrining that imbalance within the law itself.

I am not sure what the alternative is, but I can’t help ask whether we shouldn’t maybe instead focus on highlighting the negative effects of harassment and abuse regardless of gender? And in doing so, help to re-educate men on their perceptions of what is/isn’t harassment? This would not only help to encourage men to recognise and call-out any harassment they experience, but also help them to more fully understand how intimidating their behaviour towards women is. And should we not also focus on breaking down the model of socialisation experienced by both girls and boys’ experience that leads to the unequal perception of power, and that may lead boys and men to believe such behaviour is acceptable, and lead girls and women to believe such behaviour is inevitable?

Above all, I believe that equality before the law is essential. Whilst crimes such as harassment are not gender-specific, the new hate-crime classification essentially creates a two-tiered system, where crimes towards men and women are not viewed equally. It is not my place to say whether this is right or wrong, but I do question where it leads us. Will this spread to other ‘gendered’ crimes, such as domestic and sexual violence? And what does this do for the smaller proportion of male victims? What of their pain and suffering that arguably becomes further diminished and trivialised by emphasising the importance of female victims and the severity of their victimisation? And whilst changes to these laws may help in some ways (i.e., encouraging reporting), do they actually end up encouraging our perception of women as ‘victim’ or as weak? Or am I coming at this whole question from a position of male privilege? Unable to fully understand or assess the problem because I have no idea what it feels like to experience harassment from a female perspective? And have I just interpreted any harassment I receive differently because of my male upbringing and my belief that I am never under threat? Regardless, research tells us that there is a clear difference in the way that harassment and other crimes are evaluated based on which genders are involved – and enshrining such perceptions within the law could end up doing much more harm than good.

By Dr Ben Hine

Dr Hine is a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of West London and a chartered member of the British Psychological Society (BPS). He is a co-founder of the Men and Boys Coaltion.

[i] Misogynistic Hate Crime Review (2016). Nottinghamshire Police.

[ii] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-36775398

[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/10/misogyny-hate-crime-nottingham-police-crackdown

[iv] Misogynistic Hate Crime Review (2016). Nottinghamshire Police.

[v] http://www.stopstreetharassment.org/resources/statistics/

[vi] Seelau, S. M. & Seelau, E. P. (2005). Gender-role stereotypes and perceptions of heterosexual, gay and lesbian domestic violence. Journal of Family Violence, 20, 363-371

[vii] Dutton, D. G., & White, K. R. (2013). Male victims of domestic violence. New Male Studies: An International Journal, 2, 5-17

  • disqus_QL05BqU79X

    What garbage! What utter rubbish! How on earth can anyone claiming to have an educational bakground in science even conceive of a piece like this? Ah, sorry. Psychology: the area of science most controlled by Feminist women and poisoned by Feminist think-tanks. Maybe shift to Evolutionary Psychology? Just a piece of sage advice.

    Notts police, led by Feminist aggravator, Sue Fish, have been driven to team up with noted local radical Feminist group leaders to simply broaden the net of arrest policy, which they have no right or power in Law to do at all. In fact, such a sexist, anti-male policy based on faked data is an abrogation of the police oath for which all involved constables should be charged. This directive is not being led by actual male-perpetrated harrassment or crime against women (which is remarkably low today) but a means of coercing and teaching more and more young women to see the very existence of masculinity and any masculine expression as a tangible threat. It is bigoted feamongering, enacted to create more arrests of men.

    The more you silence and subjugate men, the more you will see low-status males express in more vulgar ways, and it’s these men, who are relatively less “successful” with women, who show off to their friends when they yell boorish things at women. What the key Feminist players are trying to do is actually increase, not decrease, low-status male disdain for growing female supremacy, while giving women more power to unlawfully “criminalise” men. It’s not that difficult to understand. It looks to me like my own city is being used as a testing ground to put new UK legislation in place which will eventually make it a legal offence to criticise Feminism. I have predicted several major changes in legislation and policy and haven’t been wrong yet. I just wish I was.

    The alleged “harassment” of Sarah Teale was actually an example of a silly trope whereby a male passer-by loudly shouts: “F**k her in he pussy!” at anyone presenting to camera before running off. There are collections of such videos on social media, some of the recipients of the utterance being male presenters, oddly enough. It’s no more than a dumb, rude joke. If you, or childish bigots like Teale, had any sense of the real world, you would know this. Maybe step outside of the soft-headed world of academia once in a while.

    You certainly need to read more real scientific material and not cherry-pick papers and Lysenkoist anti-science that corroborate your Fem-lite, moderate stance. Male-perpetrated aggression and violence is almost totally directed at men and property. We’re talking perhaps 99% here. Violence against women is by far the least common form of male violence. We simply do not naturally do it in any way. We have a neurological inhibitor in our brains that deter us from it. Women do not have this and men lacking it also are aberrant and thankfully rare. This notion of “gendered crime” you have lapped up from the dirtiest, greediest liars around is backward. Violence between the sexes is more female-to-male by a factor of multiples. DV and street violence are not even remotely related.

    For your information, women also actually rape men more than the reverse. Until you understand why, you’re mired in a pseudo-scientific marsh.

    Your ideas of social power being based on the relative size of the male compared to the female is Feminist nonsense. The female of our species is the biologically-privileged and socially-powerful sex, not the weaker one. If social power were conferred by size, our societies would be ruled by the biggest men. We’re not like that and nor have we ever been.

    • Tom B

      I do wonder of the notts police actually police the city centre , how can they fail to notice legions of hedonistic females off their heads puking up in the gutters , engaging on the spot casual sex and beating each other up , defences victims are they ? This hate crime nonsense is just to keep the feminist funding coming in .

      • disqus_QL05BqU79X

        Of course. On top of the usual suspects there’s a new “NG:She” group starting linked in with this madness, all members of which already have their well-manicured hands out. Their whole manifesto is based on the mirror opposite of truth.

        For such Feminist groups, and the state agencies, the beauty of women now acting in manners to which you allude (e.g. more like “men” and getting drunk in clothes more suited to a bathing pool than a bar) is that these young adults are throwing themselves at men with drunkenness as their prime get-out clause if they later regret their behaviour or the sex they often demand. I’ve been raped by several drunken women in the past and there’s no practical defence against it aside from running away – and even that’s often an option that such women can circumvent if they know where you live. They just get a cab to your place, beg their way in and then say they’ve no more money to go home and so they need to “stay over.” You cannot use strength against an adamant, horny, drunken woman, because you’re liable to face an assault charge; even for self-defence. This is usually how women rape today, and thus a large portion of the false DARVO-type rape claims.

        • Tom B

          It’s the total hyporicrisy of it all , did anyone read about the pub in Scotland where the male bar staff had to stop wearing kilts because of women sexually harrasing them ? Any arrests made ? None

          • disqus_QL05BqU79X

            I did indeed, yes. Troosers back oan fae tha bawgrabbers! Same disparity in behaviour can be seen in stripping; male strippers expect regular assault as an occupational hazard but lapdancing clubs have eagle-eyed bouncers.

  • CitymanMichael

    Left out of your summation is the intrinsically biological differences between the sexes. That not only includes differences in body size and strength but differing brains and differing sex reproductive actions and reactions. Unless, of course, being an academic you have completely swallowed the feminist mantra that sex is a social construct.

    Your main thrust is correct in that equality before the law is prohibited these days because of the feminist driven VAWG agenda and the resultant denigration of all things male, especially their normal and natural reproductive drive, which is as you say leaving boys and young men feeling physiologically like they are in the tenth round of a heavyweight boxing match. The law/police is the referee and their intervention and support was never more in need.

  • Groan

    I think your final paragraph says it all. There are a lot of questions. I was interested in the actual NUS “research” that fuelled the “rape culture” moral panic. The data that went unreported was for male students that on many questions reported high levels , often only a few % differing for the female reported levels. In a way this was even more interesting because one might have expected such reporting of unwonted behaviours to be much lower in males for reasons you expand on.
    To the specific “hate crime” of course the law is gender neutral it is police policy that is at stake in terms of what they put effort into. In other words the Law protects both sexes but the police have made a decision to ignore males’ complaints. Of curse in his instance the Police are the power of the Crown and as such the most powerful institution in the nation. Now of course the other problem is that hate crime is usually not the charge but an aggravating factor. It has introduced a somewhat ridiculous notion for law, that the intention/motivation of the defendant is not a matter of fact to be established, but a matter of opinion for the complainant to assert. Which of course has the inherent human problem that they may be wrong. After all it is well established that people’s feelings about all sorts of things can be quite wrong, in criminal justice for instance the groups least at risk of crime are the most convinced they are at greatest risk.
    Given the pretty broad list of things that might be harassment it would seem many are likely to be motivated , in both sexes, by a wide range of things other than a hatred of women per se. If one were to seek to define all the unwanted harassment reported by males in the NUS survey as a hatred of Men, Misandry, then some of the fundamental absurdity and potential injustice of harnessing the Crown’s power to such a sexist agenda becomes apparent.
    Cases of female teachers abusing male pupils and the recent stories of historical abuse in football coaching illustrate the differing nature of “power” beyond some frankly juvenile idea that all people with one set of genitals have it and those with different genitals don’t.

    This gives a good antidote to the silliness and nonsense about “power” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/01/prisons-overflowing-immature-vulnerable-men-jails?CMP=share_btn_tw
    Some such young men (and a few young women) have crossed my professional path, actually powerless people imprisoned by criminal justice or MH act. And as a Psychologist you’ll know that most untrained violence has its roots in anxiety and insecurity not “power”.

  • Groan

    This reminded me. In a slightly more enlightened age at the start of the Equality Act and before VAWG Strategies the guidance on sexual harassment duties included a real case study of a successful employment case. In which a young man was sexually harassed by a group of older women workers. I looked into this case as well as the case study. Essentially the young man was subjected to a whole load of “teasing” and “banter” from these older colleagues about his sex life and habits. This as found to be oppressive and harassment. It was a good example of the complexities of power, in this case a single young male in an all female team including supervisor and mainly much older than he. Of the “in group “cultures in all female groupings which generate a lot of “ribald banter” and trashing of “men” (familiar to me after 30 years in health and social care). And of the shifts in generations, in this case the young man and his Union took seriously his distress in a way novel for a man. And situation, for outside of this context he was a keen sportsman and tall (physically intimidating in a Rugby match). In the modern parlance “nuanced” perhaps.
    A microcosm of the issues you explore. Sadly since the early promise in similarly intelligent examples (the early EA Guidances often seemed to be full of such cases designed to challenge easy assumptions on gender, race, disability etc. ) this early promise has been lost in the VAWG Strategy which, as Ally Fogg points out, can only see boys abused as “Girls” . Taking Victorian social values (should all females be chaperoned by Notts. Police ?) and replacing enforcement through social etiquette with enforcement by the Crown.

  • paul parmenter

    There is nothing new in this action by the Nottingham police.

    It is part of a continuing pattern whereby the most powerful force in the land – the police – is being steadily re-educated and re-trained according to feminist principles. The benefits to the feminist cause are absolutely huge, which is why there are such sustained efforts to make it work. Those benefits include the extension of the definition of criminality into as many aspects of male behaviour as possible (while ignoring the selfsame aspects when demonstrated by females); the reinforcement of the narrative of female as perpetual victim and male as perpetual perpetrator; the tilting of the balance of power decisively in favour of females by ensuring the police are on their side regardless of every other factor; and of course maintaining a continuous flow of government funding into projects controlled by the sisterhood. It is a strategy that has been extraordinarily successful, and manages to continue unabated all the while it can remain hidden behind smokescreens of feminist “research” which “proves” that men are the exclusively violent and hate-filled sex that has to be restrained, controlled and punished at every point in our lives.

    Sadly, many of the people who are best placed to expose and stop this dangerous and malicious nonsense – politicians, government agencies, the media, the legal profession, the police themselves – are up to their necks in perpetuating it. Because of course they also gain by doing so.

    I also want to make one specific point about the legal definition of rape, which I understand is based on the concept of “penetration” – and which therefore slants the law heavily against males while excluding the possibility of females ever being capable of performing the act. My point is that I really see no great difference between penetrating an opening in the body of another person against their will, perhaps accompanied by the act of ejaculation; and enclosing part of another person’s body with part of your own, also against their will, and perhaps accompanied by the act of extraction. In other words, I believe forcible sexual enclosing (which is more readily undertaken by a female but could also possibly be done by a male) should be as serious a crime as forcible sexual penetration (which is more readily undertaken by a male but could also possibly be done by a female).

    But would we ever see such a change in the law?

  • AJ

    The article fails to mention the most disturbing aspect of Nottinghamshires misogynistic hate crime strategy that it classifies incidents which are not crimes as ‘hate crimes’ against women.

    From the referenced article: ‘The force defines misogyny hate crime as: “Incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman.”

    The classification now means people can report incidents which might not be considered to be a crime and the police will investigate.’

    The point is that much of what is described as hate crimes are trivial and unimportant raising isolated rude, crude and or annoying remarks to the status of crimes and hyping their prevelance and severity does nobody any good least of all women. The end result is women who are scared to go out because somebody said hell to them

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/20/sexual-harassment-women-curfew

    The Sarah Teale clip is a good example, it is clear a rudere mark is made, which in an ideal world would perhaps not be made, but it is also clear their is no harassment and the ‘victim’ is amused abd certainly not scared. This clearly should not be a crime otherwise any badly judged joke risks prosecution and was the motivation mysogynistic or just opportunistic?

    There is a sexist disriminatory agenda to demonise and discriminate against men by exaggerating the importance of harmless incidenst and conflating them with much rarer severe incidents but the solution is not for men to do the same but to stop doing it.

    I actually have bene attacked in my teenage years bystrangers on the street on mor ethan one ocassion and only in teh case where I suffered an injury wa sit reproted to the police. In all but one case it was multiple attackers against me and in that one cas eI was atatcked from behind. The adivce I was given was not to walk home drunk and alone, and it was something that happens when you are a youn g man and not to let it affect you. Good advice. I was not cosseted and told to lock myself indoors, because the impact and danger was not exaggerated but minimised the incidents did not affect my life to any great extent. These were real crimes despite nobody being prosecuted or two out of three cases it even being reported but treating a rude word more seriously than being kicked on the ground by a dozen youths is crazy and deeply damaging to women who are being infantisied and men who are being deomonsised and discriminated against. Women who have the eodd remark made to them they do not like should be told it is part of life and to get over it. If they report it to the police they should be told not to waste police time. Only if there is a sustained pattern of abuse by the same individual against a man or women should action be taken.

  • Rick Bradford

    You forgot to mention that the concept of hate crime is intrinsically totalitarian. In my opinion there should be a principle in law that crimes must relate to an event which could, in principle, be objectively verified to have actually occurred. Thus, making someone fearful should not be a crime – since a state of mind is not objectively verifiable even in principle. This is to be distinguished from acting in a manner which any reasonable person would find threatening (and hence could be expected to make someone fearful). Such behaviour is, in principle, capable of being verified by an independent observer, even if none were present.

    But in addition to this point of principle, there are many problems with this ‘law’. Making “unwanted verbal contact” illegal is a truly awful development. The fact that this is applicable only to men addressing women establishes a caste hierarchy. Speak only if you are spoken to first, you men. What is this: servants and masters? The result is likely to be that the unpleasant characters will behave exactly as before whilst decent men will shy away from contact with women out of fear. Many young men now do indeed avoid intimate relations with young women, not because they are “MGTOW” but simply because women have become too hazardous to approach. Who is it that wants such an unfortunate outcome?

    This ‘law’ did not come about spontaneously. It is the result of long planning, originating within the women’s refuge sector. Is it truly about protection of women? Or is it part of a deliberate policy of vilification of men? Does the sector have something to gain from such a stance?