Have you ever met a real misogynist? Probably not, because misogyny is a very strong word. Coming from the ancient Greek misos (hatred) and gyne (woman), it should only be used to define extreme behaviour: woman-hating to be exact.
And yet some people seem to think that British streets are full of woman-haters. Misogyny was made a hate crime in Nottingham two years ago, meaning that anyone caught wolfwhistling at women, being sexually explicit or generally mean to the fairer sex was liable to be investigated by the police as a woman-hater. This pilot scheme has been deemed to be a success; now some campaigners are calling for misogyny to be classed as a hate crime across the whole of the UK.
This is a bad idea for several reasons, not least because the experiment in Nottingham has actually been something of a monumental failure.
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