VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN | UNITED KINGDOM | ADVOCACY & POLICY | CULTURE
Misogyny and Femicide in Britain – Men’s Problem to Solve
WORDS BY JOSHUA EDWICKER | JOSHUA@THEIWI.ORG | 16 SEPTEMBER 2024
The latest edition of the Femicide Census was published on the 1st of July 2024, analysing the calendar year 2021. It found that the majority of women killed by men in that year had been or were still engaged in intimate relationships with their killer. Domestic violence remains an ugly scar on British society. Since the publishing of the report there has been a number of egregious acts of violence carried out by men on women.
The most publicised of these acts was the murder of three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport, a small town on the West coast of England between Liverpool and Blackpool. Social media became a blaze of misinformation and presumptions about the race of the perpetrator that led to mosques being attacked in the local area and a week of social unrest and race-based rioting that the United Kingdom had not experienced for a generation or more. Amongst all the guessing in regard to the assailants ethnicity, there was one aspect of his identity which was known, that he was a man.
Whilst those on the right-wing rushing to characterise the attack as a problem of immigration and of failed multiculturalism, the real problem that the attack uncovered is as obvious as it is unspoken, this was a young man who had attacked young girls engaging in a stereotypical act of femininity, a dance class, one that was inspired by perhaps the most famous woman or person in the world, Taylor Swift. Behind all the horrors of the race baiting lies lay a sinister truth, this attack was at its core a misogynistic terror crime. The victims, their location and their activity all point towards an individual who targeted them for their femininity.
Since the murder of Sarah Everard in March 2021 by a serving police officer, The Independent revealed that over the next three years over 350 women had been killed by men in the United Kingdom. In addition to this the charity Refuge found that whilst around 1 in 4 women experience domestic abuse in their lifetime only about 24% is every reported to the police, and yet the police still receive a domestic abuse call every 30-seconds. Domestic abuse and femicide are explicitly gendered issues; 93% of defendants in domestic abuse cases are men, whilst 84% of victims are women. For far too long domestic abuse, femicide and sexual assaults have been labelled women’s issues. They are not. They are issues perpetuated by men and as such they are men’s issues to solve.
Even more concerning is the rampant rise in misogyny amongst young boys in Britains schools. The rise of a new form of right-wing online content characterised by Andrew Tate has been disseminated across Britains schools. This philosophy, if one could possibly ever call it such, is grounded on a belief in the inferiority of women, their stupidity, and the justification of their use for objectification and sexual pleasure. Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, has called for an independent inquiry into the rising misogyny which the teachers he represents have seen across classrooms and playgrounds. The increasing ease with which younger and younger children can access violent content and hateful and discriminatory rhetoric is incredibly concerning.
Indeed, from 2017 there has been a vast increase in Ofsted, the body responsible for monitoring Britains schools, reports which mention sexism and various forms of sexual abuse. As more and more of Britains children grow up with misogynistic content at a young age, the danger is that such misogyny will become engrained in their intellectual frameworks. The mind of a child is highly malleable and the exposure to such content will have a measurably detrimental effect on how Britains boys treat their female peers throughout their lives. A report by UCL found that ‘social media algorithms amplify misogynistic content to teens’ , with boys particularly targeted.
What content misogynistic like Tate creates is an environment of dehumanisation towards women, it is an environment that can create an individual who at 17-years-old can murder three young girls in cold blood. It is an environment which preaches the difference and incompatibility of women and men, one that creates a dangerous incel (involuntary celibacy) community that refuses accountability for their own loneliness and places the blame at women whom they view as callous and promiscuous. Domestic violence is a problem as old as time itself, however the misogyny of the internet, the rising radicalism of Britains school children and the dystopian nature of social media algorithms create a new problem for British society.
The digital age in which we now live is being used by charlatans like Andrew Tate for profit, but the real-life impact on women and girls of this content must be named and labelled, particularly by men. It is not enough to ignore anymore the root misogyny behind this violence, neither is it good enough to view concerns about misogynistic crimes as a problem for women to solve, it was never their problem to solve in the first place. Britain must place a proactive programme of education toward its boys at the primary school level and guard against the radicalisation of our sons through education so that we may better protect our daughters.