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06th Oct 2021

WATCH: UK Justice Secretary gets question on misogyny horribly wrong

Danny Jones

Dominic Raab misogyny BBC Breakfast

Dominic Raab had a bit of a nightmare on BBC Breakfast…

It seems the recently appointed UK Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, may not understand the definition of a fairly important socio-political prejudice after he claimed “misogyny is absolutely wrong whether it’s a man against a woman, or a woman against a man”.

Speaking live on BBC Breakfast on Wednesday morning, Raab was asked for his thoughts on Boris Johnson’s comments that he does not support calls to make “misogyny a hate crime”, to which he replied with the following:

Upon being prompted for clarification, Raab went on to qualify that he thinks just dealing with “insulting language, even if it’s misogynistic, doesn’t deal with intimidation, violence and the much higher level of offence, harm and damage”, that cases like Sabina Nessa and Sarah Everard have raised once again.

However, Raab – clearly having not taken the hint – is then read the dictionary definition of misogyny: “Hatred against/directed towards women”.

Though he was clearly commenting on the damage that can be caused by any sexist attitudes towards another person and/or gender – whether that be towards a woman or a man – the question was specifically regarding misogyny.

As for the comments that presenter Sally Nugent refers to at the beginning of the clip, the UK Prime Minister was interviewed by Dan Walker during the early morning show on Monday.

As you can see below, he comments that “rather than introducing new laws, what you need to do is enforce the existing laws”.

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