Whisper it… but misogyny should be classed as extremism

How can anyone have a problem with Labour’s mission to halve cases of violence against women and girls within a decade?

It’s Monday morning and I’m in the kitchen, barking out sarcastic rejoinders to the guy calling into LBC about Labour’s new misogyny strategy. This is not unusual.
Radio call-ins, like quiz shows, basically only exist so that we can loudly berate strangers whilst folding laundry or waiting for the kettle to boil.
Only here’s the thing: this particular caller’s views were pretty much my views. I’ve made the points he’s making about the problems of policing misogyny in this column. 
“We don’t want things that are normal in society to be demonised,” he said. We don’t want “chivalry” to be re-branded “toxic masculinity” or “banter” to become a crime. And obviously I still believe those things, but yesterday something about the way the same views were being expressed by caller after caller depressed me.
It was the knee-jerk aspect: the fact that this has become a default position for many of us – particularly men, who feel put upon and tarred with the same brush as monsters – when it comes to discussing misogyny.
So when a headline informs us that the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has ordered a review looking at tackling “extreme misogyny” in the same way as far-Right and Islamist extremism, the first place we now go is “this is too strong” – “this may jeopardise free speech”.
Suddenly we’re no longer talking about violence against women and girls but immersed in vehement discussions about how nobody’s allowed to wolf-whistle or call a woman “baby cakes” anymore.
And what has any of that got to do with the two to three women murdered a week in the UK (because they are women), the one in 12 women who will be victims of a violent crime this year, and the 37 per cent increase in crimes against women over the past four years?
 In defence of anyone (myself included) who now instinctively feels an eyeroll coming on at the mere mention of “misogyny”, this is a classic “boy who cried wolf” scenario. If you let people use the wrong words, if you promote victimhood and prize “lived experience” and “my truth” over the actual truth, then a word like “misogyny” loses its value. It loses the power to shock.
Interesting that even with the Government sticking an “extreme” in front of it, and even with it stressing how many young men are now being radicalised online by misogynistic influencers such as Andrew Tate, there has been an immediate backlash to the plans.
How can anyone have a problem with Labour’s mission to halve cases of violence against women and girls within a decade? I can’t imagine they do. But likening it to extremism was always going to push the wrong buttons for some: the ones who have become cynical after reading too many news pieces about boys being expelled from schools for making silly jokes; the ones constantly being assured by commentators that those jokes are the beginning of the journey into incel culture.
Most importantly, the ones who can no longer trust that schools, companies and the government will react in an intelligent, measured, common-sensical fashion when it comes to anything that could be branded “misogynistic.”
I understand that thinking. I’ve become cynical. But I don’t want that to be my default position, my very first instinct, and when it comes to violence against women and girls and the growing threat of more to come, I’m not sure there is such a thing as “too strong a reaction”.
I believe that men like Tate are poisonous (but that he only exists because we’ve actively promoted a crisis of masculinity). I believe that the Plymouth shooter, Jake Davison – who shot and killed five people, including his mother and a three-year-old girl in 2021 – was a product of precisely the form of “extreme misogyny” our Home Secretary is referring to, and I believe that anyone who has a violent hatred for 51 per cent of the country can be described as an “extremist”.
As for whether the Government is able to focus on “deactivating” individuals like Davison before they commit acts of violence and not get mired in woke nonsense, I don’t know. As Ann Widdecombe, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, reminded everyone yesterday: “If you commit violence against women and girls, that’s already a crime.”
So unless the Government actually carries out any actual reforms, all this is semantics: the literal breaking down of words and phrases put out to make the country feel that, on this point, Labour means business. If it does, it can start by enforcing the existing laws first.