At the time of writing, the United Kingdom is still reeling from the tragic news of a shooting in Plymouth, which took the lives of five innocent people, including a little girl of three. To make the pill even more bitter, it now appears that the weapon used to commit the murders was lawfully owned, and that the killer was actively posting extreme misogynistic hate online. The gunman, 22 year old Jake Davison, had had his firearms permit revoked in December, after having been accused of an assault, but received it back in July. An investigation is underway into how Davison managed to obtain and regain his licence, and there have been calls for an urgent review of gun laws more generally.
As a separate issue, however, Nazir Afsal, former Crown Prosecutor for the North-West of England, has asked why Davison had not been placed on a Government watch list in light of his online activity. Mr Afsal argues that extreme misogyny should be regarded as terrorism, and that this approach would broaden the range of options and powers open to authorities in relation to intelligence gathering, whilst increasing the number of possible offences for which those spreading hate might be prosecuted.
Although information is still very much continuing to emerge, it seems that Davison was immersing himself on social media “incel culture”. The term “incel” refers to involuntarily celibate males, who blame prevailing societal attitudes and feminism for their emotional isolation and sexual frustration. The movement has no single, coherent ideology and is neither monolithic nor cohesive, but it is clear that: 1) blame, and consequently hatred, directed towards women is at its core; and 2) it has links with the extreme right and alt right in the USA. (For a detailed explanation of many aspects of this, we would highly recommend the BBC documentary linked below, Pepe the Frog: Feels good man, which chronicles the efforts of artist Matt Furie, whose cartoon character was hijacked by toxic, incel culture, and his efforts to redeem the brand image).
Undoubtedly, any ideology or perspective which demonises or degrades an entire category of people, and sees them as intrinsically lesser than others, is harmful, and there can be no “but”, or qualification, to that statement. It is also the case that the State has a right and a duty to recognise incitement to violence on the basis of hatred as a call to terrorist action, and that a more nuanced and less stereotyped understanding of terrorism might have led to Jake Davison being identified and monitored more closely. Nonetheless, it would also be dangerous and counterproductive to imagine that we have, therefore, found a silver-bullet for tackling the incel movement.
In the first place, States do not have sufficient resources to “keep an eye on” everyone who might theoretically pose a danger, and even if they did, there are real questions about privacy versus civil liberties. Furthermore, hatred is spread through insidious means and human interactions are complex. The very fact that the contemporary Alt Right, and “incel culture”, are disparate groupings with porous boundaries, means that people and organisations which might be categorised as such, can have links to other, less extreme communities. Moreover, having opinions which conflict with the mainstream consensus does not equate to terrorism, even if the views being expressed are distasteful to many of us.
In short, we would whole-heartedly agree that extreme misogyny and incitement to violence against women should be classified as terrorism, but that still leaves us with the twin problems of where to draw the line in defining “extreme misogyny”, and how prevent individuals being sucked in and radicalised. Whilst some websites and expressions are unambiguously directing hatred towards women (for what we hope are glaringly obvious reasons, we are not going to provide links or examples), others occupy more contested ground. For instance, some conservative Christian Evangelical Churches, as well as “trad wives” advocates who are openly religious, promote the idea that women should submit to their husbands. There are many strands of opinion on what submission means and looks like (and of course, many Christians and denominations strongly reject the idea of submission in its entirety).
Within the milieu of pro-submission voices, there are some who argue that women have a duty to make themselves sexually available at their husband’s behest, regardless of their personal inclinations. There are also those who would go one step further, and maintain that the husband cannot morally rape his wife. In our view, defending rape and sexual assault is clearly inciting violence against women in the most repugnant and dangerous way imaginable. Nevertheless, we would also stress that not everyone discussing marital relationships within the context of wifely submission is endorsing rape (or even the idea that women are acting inappropriately by sometimes refusing their spouse’s advances). In the thick of real world, messy exchanges, particularly online, identifying the point at which dialogue transitions from acceptable advocating countercultural gender norms, into unacceptable defending or even advocating violence, is often challenging. Furthermore, debates around wifely submissions are just one example, there are countless issues of comparatively complexity. Consequently, the task of identifying terrorism is far less straightforward than it might at first appear.
In addition, as we already know from experience with Islamic and Far Right terrorism, efforts to combat extremism run the risk of building barriers, rather than bridges, inadvertently increasing divisions and a sense of oppression, which can in turn fuel the fires of hatred and radicalisation. Incels, by their very nature, are already feeling persecuted and ill-treated, and the fact that this is objectively unreasonable as far as other people are concerned, does not make these sentiments any less powerful.
Our criminal justice system still needs to take misogyny far more seriously than it does at present, and police and prosecutors should label behaviour as terrorist when it is appropriate to do so, but this is only one aspect of tackling and confronting a complex and systemic problem, and we need to look at societal attitudes towards gender and human relationships in a wider and more radical way. In a single, brutal instant, the life of each of Davison’s victims was stolen, but the events and context leading up to that final moment were years in the making. We didn’t create the culture of misogyny overnight, and dismantling it is a long-term project, and as a result, reshaping our collective perspectives is going to require long-term commitment.
Related Articles
Plymouth shooting: police urged to take misogyny more seriously The Guardian (14/8/21)
Plymouth shooting: what happened and who are the victims? The Independent (14/8/21)
Plymouth shooting: Starmer asks why gunman had license BBC News (14/8/21)
Pepe the Frog: Feels good man BBC Storyville (2020)
