Joan Smith: Why does it have to be different for girls?

The evidence of the lethal nature of misogyny is all around us

Nearly 20 years ago, I published a book called Misogynies, in which I catalogued the routine denigration and degradation of women: everything from sexist jokes and song lyrics to football crowds in the north of England turning the Yorkshire Ripper into a folk hero. It has occasionally crossed my mind that I should publish updates, a quarterly bulletin identifying the latest and most egregious insults based on gender.

Eminem would get a place, for lyrics that glorify the murder of women, and bands such as Prodigy (for "Smack My Bitch Up") and rap stars who think it's cool to dismiss women as "hos". I'd include statistics that weren't available in 1989, such as Home Office research suggesting that one woman in four will be a victim of domestic violence, while two are killed each week by current or former partners. I would chart the vertiginous drop in convictions for rape, to a point where there is virtually no legal sanction on serious sexual assault in this country.

To the horrors in the original text, I would add a string of cases in which divorced or separated men have murdered their former partners and children, and the phenomenon of honour killings in which fathers, brothers and uncles murder female relatives who have supposedly brought "shame" on their families through their choice of dress, friends or partners.

But I don't need to do all that, because the evidence of the lethal nature of misogyny is all around us. Instead, in the week that MPs return to Parliament from the summer recess, I want to pose a question: is there a fair-minded backbencher who cares enough about the welfare of women to introduce a private member's bill outlawing incitement to gender hatred?

After all, the Government is in the middle of legislating to ban incitement to religious hatred in this country, claiming it is absolutely necessary to defend religious minorities; bizarrely, ministers have shown no interest in extending similar protection to women, even though we make up slightly more than half the population.

Is this fair? Of course not. Is it logical? No, because the Government defends its controversial Bill on the grounds that religion is analogous to race, pointing out that we already have laws banning incitement to racial hatred. Critics of the Bill have countered that the two categories are distinct: race is innate, something none of us can do anything about, whereas religion is a matter of personal choice. Laws outlawing race hatred and discrimination protect people, whereas the Government's Bill will have the effect of ring-fencing ideas, some of them barmy or downright offensive.

Personally, I have very little time for the Bible and find the Koran dull and repetitive, as well as containing passages that strike me as prima facie examples of anti-Semitism or incitement to hatred of Christians and non-believers. Ministers responsible for the Bill have not addressed this paradox - that it would protect the haters as well as the hated - or the fact that they propose giving legal protection to religious authorities, some of whom actively encourage discrimination and even violence towards women and gay men.

This is an area where rights conflict. Much has been written about the right to freedom of expression, which will undoubtedly be curtailed by the Bill, versus the right of the devout to protection under the law. What has hardly been addressed is the conflict between the latter "right", and the right of women to be protected from clerics who justify subservient roles for wives, or support practices such as lapidation.

While the Government persists in its attempt to criminalise critics of religion - the maximum penalty in the bill is seven years in prison - it has done nothing about the casual misogyny that continues to poison men's minds and allows women to be denigrated as slappers, slags, whores and bitches. Yet the parallel between race and gender, unlike the spurious link ministers make between race and religion, is real and incontrovertible.

I can't change the fact that I'm a woman - nor do I want to, as it happens - but MPs can do something about the non-stop stream of misogyny that creates an atmosphere of ambivalence, if not tolerance, towards domestic violence, trafficking and other forms of abuse towards women.

It goes without saying that the law I'm proposing would protect men as well, particularly gay men who continue to be targets of homophobic abuse. But the current imbalance between misogynist and misandrist invective suggests that women and girls would be the initial beneficiaries. So where is our champion, the backbench MP prepared to challenge the Government's myopic attitude towards misogyny and tell the House of Commons that it's no longer different for girls?