My Lords, on an earlier day in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, said:
“The Bill seeks to raise the profile of domestic abuse in all its forms, and the wide definition should therefore help to clarify that wide-ranging nature for all involved in the criminal justice system.”—[Official Report, 3/2/21; col. 2286.]
I am increasingly concerned that this notion of profile-raising and these wide definitions are doing the opposite of clarifying and may unintentionally muddy the waters and see the legislation opened up as a vehicle to push a wide range of politically driven ideologies and hobby horses.
Here, we have what looks to be straightforward: the linkage of domestic abuse to the violence against women and girls agenda. These may seem obvious things to link. Certainly, I am of an age that I remember when this was a feminist issue. In some ways, it was simpler and there was more clarity when we talked of domestic violence—not abuse—and “battered wives” and “battered women.” I understand this legislation wants to be scrupulously gender neutral, but I have felt at times that this approach means erasing the reality that women are predominantly the victims of abuse, especially violent abuse. But I understand the Government’s desire to ensure equality under the law and to avoid as unhelpful the group victimhood of women or the labelling of all men as potential perpetrators. Also, we have greater knowledge now. We know that male partners can be victims, that women can be perpetrators and that same-sex relationships can be abusive. All that means we have a more inclusive approach.
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To help clarify, one could argue that what is required is more information and data so that we have incontrovertible stats about who are victims, who are perpetrators and so on. However, even this endeavour can become mired in ideological positioning. I was reminded of this when, in an early Committee sitting discussing Amendment 146, data collection became jumbled up, I thought quite inappropriately, with a discussion about whether misogyny should be a hate crime—by the way, when we discuss that as a proposed new law, I will oppose it. Regardless, that discussion revealed the pitfalls of muddling up contentious political arguments with lawmaking.
After all, even if we decide, or the facts prove, that women are largely the victims of abuse by men, it is not for this law or even this House to decide why that is true. This was clarified again for me in that discussion of misogyny, when no clear definition of it was given yet it was argued that misogyny led to specific hate-based violence against women and girls. For example, in that exchange, the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, quoting the White Ribbon Campaign, noted
“one in five British men thinks that feminism has gone ‘too far’”—[Official Report, 8/2/21; col. 54.]
as an example of misogyny on the rise. She then cited HOPE not hate, saying that online misogyny and interaction with men’s rights groups could be a gateway to and a recruiting tool for extreme racist and far-right hate groups. This argument is invalid because, in reality, it is a slippery slope to demonising men with political views that we disapprove of, who are labelled as being on the road to being abusers.
The politics around women’s issues are just not so black and white, and the Bill should steer clear of them. Indeed, while about one in five men think that feminism has gone too far, there are actually aspects of today’s feminism that I think have gone too far and are hugely problematic—maybe I have got internalised misogyny. Let us put it this way: I do not always share the orthodoxies of contemporary feminism.
Conversely, when we are talking about violence aimed at women and girls, many feminist friends of mine would argue that one of the rising examples of misogyny and abuse aimed at women is now coming forward from the toxic discussions surrounding the orthodoxies put forward by trans activists. I say “trans activists” and not “trans people” because there is a distinction between the two—a huge chasm, indeed.
Watch the sparks fly, the misogynist abuse flow and the threats come your way if you try to be a supporter of the writer J. K. Rowling or the SNP’s Joanna Cherry, arguing for the wrong views on gender, identity or— pertinently to this discussion—the need for single-sex spaces, such as women’s refuges, and on refusing to open up those spaces, or the delivery of intimate services for females, to those who identify as, but are not biologically, female.
I say this and try to look at a number of examples of where things are contentious because these matters are highly sensitive and difficult, and I simply do not want this Bill to get sidetracked by them. As such, I think that the Minister should avoid all the political
agendas when drawing up this legislation and keep it simple: get the bad guys or bad girls, but keep away from the politics.