The Nottinghamshire police in the UK are taking action against misogynistic hate speech by allowing this kind of harassment to be recorded as a hate crime. Misogynistic hate speech can be defined as catcalling and basically men just shouting sexual stuff at you when you’re minding your own business.

The police force now defines a misogyny hate crime as:

“Incidents against women that are motivated by an attitude of a man towards a woman and includes behaviour targeted towards a woman by men simply because they are a woman.”

By having these kinds of crimes under the umbrella of hate speech, the Nottinghamshire police force are hoping that more victims of misogynistic hate speech will come forward and feel safer when reporting it as a crime.

Nottinghamshire Police Constable, Sue Fish, says that hopefully this will make the area safer for women, as the harassment that women face on a daily basis is “absolutely unacceptable and can be extremely distressing.”

Recording misogynistic harassment as a hate crime will hopefully pick up around the world, as daily harassment for being a woman should be unacceptable considering it’s 2016.