The idea of making misandry a hate crime has the superficial appeal of appearing to uphold principles of equality, as Gaby Hinsliff (theguardian.com, 16 October) writes (with heavily underscored caveats). It also reveals the arrogance of those for whom legal special pleading is merely an attempt to restore a sense of entitlement. More profoundly, though, it entirely (deliberately?) misunderstands the nature of group hatred and the discrimination and violence it spawns, and does so especially in relation to feminist analyses of misogyny and patriarchy.
The argument for misandry ignores the structural nature of inequality that helps support personalised hatreds – structures that may be economic (unequal pay, discriminatory pension rights), industrial (unequal work opportunities, victimisation), social (name-calling, exclusion, shaming) or political (marginalisation, inaccessibility, non-representation) to name but a few.
Until it can be argued that men in general are subject to structural inequalities that enable, promulgate or strengthen discrimination or violence, and that consequently some men in particular are victims of a hatred of their sex (as opposed to their person), misandry can have no substantial reality outside of a thought experiment for those fortunate enough to have the time to contemplate it.
Paul McGilchrist
Colchester, Essex
• This eclectic extension of groups with protected characteristics (Hate Crime laws could protect goths, the elderly, and men, 16 October) raises an important issue. Will such proposed net-widening dilute the already patchy responses of relevant agencies to members of currently protected characteristic groups (race, disability, religion, sexual orientation and transsexuality)?.
In a study by the University of Sussex covering a two-year period (2015-16), out of 204,000 self-reported hate crimes by members of the five groups, only 12,846 alleged perpetrators were convicted, just over 6%.
So members of these groups already feel that the law is not taking their predicaments sufficiently seriously . How much worse will that be if the crime is extended – in theory at least – to 100% of the population? With the exception of goths and other such subcultures (and the murder of Sophie Lancaster in 2007 should serve as an enduring and tragic example of this), either existing legislation to do with bullying and harassment needs to be strengthened or new laws created so that members of these much larger groupings (women, the elderly, and men) can feel safer and more protected by the law without diluting the particular law concerned with hate crime.
Andy Stelman
Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire
• A lot of effort was made in the 1980s to broaden the awareness of power imbalances in the world, and their significance. Then came the inevitable backlash from those who enjoyed the more privileged positions (white, middle-class males, in particular) and awareness of the relevance of the power function, across society as a whole, is waning.
Because, in countless ways, women have less power in the world than men, establishing protections for women subject to mysogyny is more important, and more urgent, than establishing protections for men subject to misandry.
Had the progress made in the 1980s continued, we might not now be having to explain over and over again that support for the Palestinian people is not antisemitism.
Pete Stockwell
London
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