From social media to hate crime legislation, women are offered little legal protection in an increasingly violent world. Reports of sexual assault are soaring but conviction rates are falling. Twitter routinely bans women for stating basic biological truths yet allows its users to threaten women with rape and violence. Women who wish to discuss a government consultation which will directly impact their legal rights risk their livelihoods; as the courts have ruled that a belief in the immutability of biological sex is 'incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others.'
Despite all this women are still not protected in hate crime legislation. How can a law be trusted when it ignores the safety of half of the population? What lessons need to be learned? To mark hate crime awareness week Make More Noise decided to invite some of the UK's top feminists, legal minds and academics to discuss what the authorities can do to address this glaring social injustice.
Julie Bindel
In the past decade a number of factors has contributed to a huge rise in men's hatred of women and girls, and the physical and psychological displays of such hatred. Men on the left consider us to be liberated if we are being sexually violated in pornography and prostitution; men on the right think we should be private property and confined to heterosexual married with children; and young women are being raised to believe that the only feminism worth being involved in is the type that doesn't antagonise men. In this talk, I will outline the reasons why, and the ways in which women are being silenced by these woke dudes that pretend to be pro-feminist, and suggest ways to resist a feminism the men, and adopt a politics that will truly enable us to find a way out of this mess.
Sarah Phillimore
The internet has provided a platform for some really appalling behaviour. 'Hate speech' on line can cause people to feel humiliated or intimidated - or in the worst cases, it acts as incitement to violence or self harm and suicide. Women are often targeted and much hateful speech has a strong element of misogyny. What are the limits to freedom of speech, can legitimate debate and discussion ever be labelled 'hate speech'? What can we do - individually and collectively - to improve our online experiences?
Kathleen Stock
l will talk about my witness statement to the Fair Cop case. I’ll describe how hate incidents seem to have been originally conceived of in the context of the Stephen Lawrence case and the later Macpherson Report about racism; and about how, in my view, the idea of a hate incident has since been shamefully devalued by applying it to the statement of facts about biology, or to the denial of fictions about gender. To apply “hate incident” to statements such as Harry Miller’s, I will argue, is effectively to frivolously shift important focus away from the thousands of people that experience genuine racist incidents in the UK. I’ll also discuss other comparative cases where the stating of facts is claimed to be hateful, and talk about the importance of relevant context; but equally, suggest that the police are normally ill-placed to judge relevant context, for anything other than obvious slurs, pejoratives, and negative value-judgements.
Kate Harris
Kate Harris
I will be discussing Stonewall’s successful policy capture of the UK’s public and private institutions and LGB Alliance’s actions to block this and restore rational dialogue across the United Kingdom.
Specifically, we will look at how Stonewall’s deliberate misrepresentation of the Equality Act, has become the accepted interpretation in schools, universities, the Police, the legal profession and even the EHRC and Government Equalities Office.
Stonewall Law replaces the protected characteristic of sex with gender, and gender reassignment with gender identity. These two seemingly innocuous changes achieve two things. The first destroys the rights of same sex attracted people. I will reference the words of a prominent “transwoman” Deacon Joy Everingham during my talk – she believes the gender spectrum will inevitably make homosexuals disappear!
The second undermines the position of transsexuals and, at stroke, normalises a narrow cult belief held, for reasons which we may touch on later, by a tiny minority of trans activists. This is driving thousands of young people, especially those who reject outdated gender stereotypes, (and we should note that this applies particularly to girls) along the pathway of a lifetime of medication, sterility and painful surgery.
If you would like to buy a ticket we have released a new batch for the event in Manchester next week. You can buy a ticket here.
Comments