Extreme misogyny will be treated as a form of extremism under new government plans, the Home Office has said.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, has ordered a review of the UK’s counter-extremism strategy to determine how best to tackle threats posed by harmful ideologies.

The analysis will look at hatred of women as one of the ideological trends that the government says is gaining traction.

Ms Cooper said there has been a rise in extremism “both online and on our streets” that “frays the very fabric of our communities and our democracy”.

  • beepnoise@piefed.social
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    4 months ago

    Nice, at least the UK is *attempting* to counter the online misogynistic content by Tate and co.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      You would like to think the primary target for an anti-misogyny policy would be football hooligans and biker gangs.

      But if you’ve got the MET police exclusively targeting Mosques, and rounding up anyone who fails that paper bag test as “high risk misogynists”, that could be a problem.

      I could also see this aggressively leveraged by the JK Rowling types to harass queer people.

      • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
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        I could also see this aggressively leveraged by the JK Rowling types to harass queer people.

        This is exactly what I was thinking, she and her ilk cry misogyny often while going after other women. Are they going to be held responsible under this policy? Or is this going to muddy the waters even more for “political points” while actually doing fuck all.

      • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        JK Rowling is two K’s short of a klan.

        I’d love to see these laws work against her and her followers. Terfs are just as misogynistic as Tater Tot, it just looks different.

        “Oh no, we might be mistaken for trans, ban all trans women.” - Terfs.

        It’s no different than homophonic men being afraid of being mistaken as gay. It’s immature and pathetic.

        I guess it’s a matter of who is interpreting and applying the law though. Which sucks.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    This is Britain and what’s going on here is almost certainly something altogether different than Fighting For Equality.

    I remember some years ago in the UK when some Tory who happenned to be female spewed some almost Fascist shit in Twitter and then when she was criticized she claimed the criticism was all because of her gender.

    Similarly over the years some of the New Labour members - from were this lady hails - who happened to be female have said horrible shit and then claimed the criticism of them was sexism.

    There absolutelly is Misogyny in the UK (the so called “Benevolent” Sexism - the ridiculous idea that women are “fragile and emotional creatures who need to be protected”, which implies they’re “weak” and must be “guided” - is especially common), and Racism, and even Misandry (in different contexts than Misogyny, generally when the person with the most power happens to be female), and Class discrimination, and Wealth Discrimination: IMHO, the UK is one the worst countries in Europe when it comes to Equality in all axis except the treatment of the LGBTA+ (and even there they’re not the best, though maybe better than most). [edit: from reading other posts, apparently even this has turned to shit since I left that country]

    When a politician from the Hard Neoliberal faction within the “Not quite as Rightwing but certainly not Leftwing” Party of the duopoly of power in Britain (which, like the US, also has First Past The Post and associated evils) comes with something like this, especially one who has a history of abusing this kind of accusation in the past to deflect valid criticism of her own words (just like Zionists - who curiously this Party unwaveringly supports - use the accusation of “anti-semitism” to deflect valid criticism), be very very wary of the honesty, goodwill and fairness of this.

    Want to see the real deal genuine fight for Gender Equality, look at places like Scandinavia and The Netherlands (and at the genuine Feminists of the older generations in the UK), not at the crooked Neolibs of the fakest most anti-Equality country in Europe.

    • Jojo, Lady of the West@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      When a politician from the Hard Neoliberal faction within the “Not quite as Rightwing but certainly not Leftwing” Party of the duopoly of power in Britain (which, like the US, also has First Past The Post and associated evils) comes with something like this, especially one who has a history of abusing this kind of accusation in the past to deflect valid criticism of her own words (just like Zionists - who curiously this Party unwaveringly supports - use the accusation of “anti-semitism” to deflect valid criticism), be very very wary of the honesty, goodwill and fairness of this.

      What an incredible paragraph sentence.

      • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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        I am particularly proud of how many “for-reference comparisons with things Lemmy readers might be familiar with” I managed to shove into it.

        I am however not proud of the level of “lightness and easy to follow” of the result.

  • schnurrito
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    4 months ago

    Remember when center-left social-democratic parties were more likely to defend civil liberties, less likely to be authoritarian, than center-right conservative ones?

    You know actually I am not sure this was ever the case in the UK (I am old enough to somewhat remember Tony Blair), but in theory it is how it should be and it makes me angry when it is not.

    • wewbull@feddit.uk
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      I’ve never seen any major party give a shit about liberty. Both major parties in the UK and US are paternalistic in their thinking. They know best and nobody is allowed to disagree.

    • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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      Unfortunately, given the extremely transphobic rhetoric that’s come out of Labour lately, this is almost certainly them throwing JK a huge bone. UK TERFs love to characterize any criticism of them as misogyny (especially when it comes from trans women, who they claim are angry male sexual predators). I have the horrible suspicion that this will do nothing to combat actual misogyny, while being used heavily to silence anyone standing up for trans rights.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      That’s an open question. I could very easily see a Labor government claiming “misogyny is when queer people illegally use the restroom”.

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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        She is, yes. But probably not in the ways that this will be used to target.

        JK is TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist; this is the term they came up with to describe themselves, before retroactively deciding it was a slur when people used it to describe them). She thinks of herself as a feminist, but what she does in practice is misogyny.

        First off, she spends a LOT of time attacking other women, primarily trans women, but also any woman who dares to say they’re actually cool with trans women (so, most cis women). Very often these cis women will be accused of being secretly trans so that JK and her cult don’t ever have to stop and question the whole “Wow, we sure spend a lot of time demonizing women” part of their “feminism”.

        Second, in order to justify her transphobia, she (like almost all TERFs) practices a brand of gender essentialism that runs directly counter to most modern feminist ideals. Basically, in order to create her impermeable wall between who is or is not a woman, she has to create increasingly constrained boxes around who and what women are allowed to be. Women have to have a vagina; fuck you if you’re intersex but feel more comfortable as a woman. Women have to be capable of childbirth; fuck you if you’re sterile. Women have to have periods; fuck if you’re post-menopausal. And so on.

        But equally importantly, in her fucked up world women have to look and act a certain way. The Imane Khan incident recently is a perfect example of this. Khan has the audacity to be a cis woman who is good at a combat sport while also being relatively tall and having strong features. Because she doesn’t fit the perfect idealised weak submissive hourglass figure heart shaped ass anime face vision of womanhood that Rowling and her posse envision, they immediately declared that she was secretly a man, and demanded to have her well deserved victories thrown out. That is pure misogyny, plain and simple; attacking a woman for not looking and acting the way they think a woman should look and act.

  • Darth_Vader__@lemmy.world
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    Newsflash 2030:

    Single after 30 tax increased yet again by 5%! This decision should come as a good hit to all misogynistic extremists who propogate hateful ideas under MGTOW and evade responsibility!! Hell yeah!

    Misogynism Terrorist arrested in [insert place] On [date/time], John Doe is arrested after vicious verbal attack during rejecting a proposal of [woman]. The brave woman resisted his attack and called the local police department which immendiately neutralised and arrested the target.

    Survey shows top 10% jobs only has 60% women Our society is transitioning to matriarchy and the importance of top 10% of jobs cannot be overstated, for a society to blossom, it should be lead by wise women, and still 40% men’s participation still shows the presence of hatred and misogyny in workplaces. Thankfully more and more companies are making more reserved positions for woman in top 10% is helping a lot.

    For legal reasons this is a joke

    • kux@lemm.ee
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      For legal reasons this is a joke

      no other reasons apply

    • Obinice@lemmy.world
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      …I’m a what?

      Thanks for insulting over 60 million people. Very nice of you.

    • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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      You should know that the racists elon has been agitating didn’t go further because they are like 5% of the population max, it really isn’t what elon imagines it to be in his psychotropic stupor.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        I know, but they are the right 5%.

        You have the Guardian publishing their tripe, you have labor MPs all anxious about self-ID laws etc.

        Unless the other 95% start making up for some serious lost time, it’s going to remain TERF island.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          No idea why this is getting down voted. Anyone with ten minutes of exposure to British Press (and not even the bat shit fascist stuff on The Spectator or GB News) should know all about the horrendous slanders trans people have to put up with on a daily basis.

          Ffs, the UK literally just had people rioting in the streets last week.

          Folks on Lemmy can be as clueless as they are heartless, sometimes.

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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          I remember some years ago some self-proclaimed “Feminist” writting articles in The Guardian about the “evils of men who use sex dolls” (I! Kid! You! Not!) totally unaware of the heavy parallels with how, some years before that, people would criticized sex between people of the same gender, something which at the time when she wrote that article that writter wouldn’t do because it was unfashionable and frowned upon within her social circle.

          The mindset amongst the supposedly liberal literaty there wasn’t one of “what people do in the privacy of their homes with their bodies and other consenting adults is not for me to judge”, it was still the same Pearl-clutching Moralism from the XIX century, excluding some “groups” since it was unfashionable and frowned upon to moralize about them.

          So it doesn’t surprised me to discover that in the years since I left that country, they reverted back to also moralize about and critizing LGBTA+

        • Mr_Blott@feddit.uk
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          4 months ago

          Have you tried changing your news sources from gutter-tabloids to something a bit better?

          • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            Dude. It’s the Guardian too. No where is safe from the TERF brigade.

            That’s the shocking thing about being trans in Britain. There are no allies in print or politics anywhere In the main stream. Just fascists and terfs.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      Considering crossdressing has been a major theme in British entertainment literally for centuries (see the Christmas panto for a famous example), I would wager that, JK Rowling notwithstanding, there are a lot more TERFs in the U.S. Not to mention just open bigots who don’t make any faux-feminist excuses.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        I’m all about taking pot shots at the US, but “better at trans rights than Texas or Florida” isn’t what you are looking for.

        Also, if the best you can do for “we’re not transphobic honest” is cross dressing entertainment, well, yikes.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          Far, far, far better. As I said, since crossdressing has been a theme in British entertainment for literal centuries, it is much easier to accept someone saying they were born the wrong gender.

          If you’re already used to seeing a man in a dress, you’re going to be a lot less upset about it overall. That’s why Eddie (now Suzy) Izzard got very little pushback both when he (at the time) did sold-out comedy shows wearing women’s clothing and, more recently, when she came out as trans. She does say she is fine if you call her he, and Eddie, but prefers she and Suzy.

          Queer comedians in general have also had a long history in the UK. Even in the modern era, you had openly gay men like Kenneth Williams being hugely popular in the 1960s and 1970s.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_and_Sandy

          • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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            That cross-dressing tradition comes from the very opposite direction you’re assuming.

            For example in their time Shakespeare’s Plays were entirely played by men, including female roles. This was not because they were very forward thinking about cross-dressing back in 18th century England, it was because it was deemed inappropriate for women to be actors.

            It’s a reflection of the so called “Benevolent” Sexism still widely prevalent in those isles, especially in the Middle Class and above - women “are emotional and fragile creatures” and “must be protected” (were do you think the phrase “the gentler sex” comes from?), a paternalist take that justifies denying women access to certain things “to protect them” and certain responsibilities “because they’re too emotional and unlike men can’t handle the stress of such posts”.

            You’re seeing the visible, surface artifacts of a society and applying your own values (very likely those of somebody with a high level of formal education and a big city upbringing in one of the most forward thinking areas in America) to try and derive the reason for those things when what you’re looking at is a society which is has been highly calcified socially for centuries, which, except for a bright period after the War that lasted until the 70s, has been dominated in terms of Power and Culturally by a very small section of society whose privileges are passed from generation to generation and were appearances are far more important than action, so with values massively mistatching yours, hence you’re drawing erroneous conclusions.

            It’s not cultural openness that drives them, it’s various alive and well streaks of Victorian Values mixed with an unhealthy concern with “keeping up with appearances” (curiously there is a humoristic TV series with that name and tellingly it makes fun of Working Class or Low Middle Class people some whom desperately trying to look higher class, though probably one needs to have lived in that country for a couple of years to read the social context)

              • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                4 months ago

                What you have to me is literally the trans ally-ship equivalent of “there is no race problem, black comedians are so popular”.

                It’s not worth engaging with other than with empathy and pity.

                Hence “oh honey”.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                  I never said there was no problem. So no I didn’t literally do that. I said it was much more accepted there than the implication that everyone in the UK was a TERF.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        Considering crossdressing has been a major theme in British entertainment

        If it was mature and sincere, rather than mocking and crude, maybe.

        But British Pantomime is closer to an American doing blackface than an A24 production doing transgender themed cinema.

        I would wager that, JK Rowling notwithstanding, there are a lot more TERFs in the U.S.

        There’s heavy cross pollination. Brits feed on American hysteria to fatten up their rumor mills and Americans use British accents to dress up their bigotry as sophistication.

        But the percentages suck everywhere.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          I realize this. It’s about getting people to accept those different than you, especially if they are queer.

          • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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            I wrote a post just above about some self-proclaimed Feminist some years ago with a regular column there writting an Opinion Article in The Guardian about the “evils of men using sex dolls” without noticing how that Perl Clutching Moralizing about peoples sex practices was just a variant of the same thing that was being written a decade or two before about sex between people of the same gender.

            I moved to Britain from The Netherlands and the spirit when it came to “accept those different than you” couldn’t be more different between those countries: the Dutch were all about “who am I to judge” and “as long as I don’t have to see it you can do whatever you want”, whilst at least the English (can’t really make informed statements about those from other nations) were all about “if I say certain things it will make me look bad” and “it’s not appropriate to voice criticism of <group>”.

            I can’t speak for the past, but at least by the time I got there (mid 00s and for over a decade) the impression of “acceptance” projected by that country wasn’t driven by natural tolerance of others or the cultural repealing of Moralism (I would say, quite the contrary), it was driven by people not wanting to look bad in their social circle.

            I’m not at all surprised that such Potemkin Village of “Acceptance” would so easilly collapse.