Last summer, the UK was rocked by the violent murders of three young girls, and the serious injury of eight more in Southport. Two adults were also critically hurt in the attacks targeted at a Taylor Swift themed dance class. Misinformation driven by the Far-Right incorrectly attributed these attacks to a Muslim asylum seeker and led to widespread violence and destruction across the UK in the form of racist riots and mob violence.
Amid this social and political chaos, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, ordered a rapid review of the UK’s counter-extremism policies. The reason for this review, as we now know, was that the Southport attacker, a UK citizen, had been referred to PREVENT, the UK’s counter-radicalisation programme three times, and was not deemed a threat, each of these three times. The report from the rapid review was leaked last month, with its core recommendation that the government’s approach to extremism should focus on behaviours of concern, rather than on specific ideologies. Under this new focus, the report highlighted the threat of violence against women and girls and misogyny. Yet, Cooper has decided to go against this expert advice and has rejected the inclusion of violent misogyny as a behaviour of concern and indicator of extremism. The rationale for this rejection? The UK should continue to focus primarily on Islamist and Far-Right violence, framed as the more pressing and most dangerous ideologies. I argue that both the expert report and the Home Secretary are missing the point. Violent misogyny is a behaviour of concern and an extremist ideology. Violent misogyny is both a symptom and a cause of extremism. So why can’t politicians see violent misogyny for what it is? Only last month, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, spoke vaguely about the threat of a cohort of loners who are extreme. Both Cooper’s rejection, and Starmer’s framing, paint violent misogyny as sporadic and isolated. This is incorrect and dangerous.
The scale of violent misogyny across the UK, firstly, very clearly tells us that it is not just random acts committed by random loners. Rather it is deeply embedded in society, culture, and our democratic institutions. Nowhere is this more glaringly obvious than here in Northern Ireland; one of the most dangerous places in Europe to be a women or girl. Between 2019 and 2024, 30 women and girls were killed by men in Northern Ireland. In 2023, there were over 4,000 sexual violence and abuse reports made to the PSNI. Violent misogyny is already here. Moving across the island of Ireland, lenient sentencing for sexual and violent offences against women further points to the prevalence of violent misogyny. Add into this toxic mix a celebrity culture, best exemplified by Andrew Tate, where women and girls are commodified as sexualised objects, then we can pinpoint a culture of acceptability in seeing women as lesser, at best, and as targets for violence, at worst. These are core characteristics of an extremist ideology of violent misogyny.
But how is this problem linked to extremism and terrorism specifically? How is this not just a dangerous, but sadly ordinary societal ill? This is where contemporary feminist interventions in terrorism studies help us to question the placing of violent misogyny as solely an individual or loner behaviour of concern, rather than an organised and active extremist ideology. From the widespread violent targeting of US abortion clinics in the 1980s, to the Montreal Massacre 1989, to contemporary Incel violence, there is a long history of violent misogyny and femicide evident in both extremist atrocities and extremist ideologies. Of further concern is that while Yvette Cooper omits violent misogyny in favour of focusing instead on Far-Right terrorism, research has shown that misogyny is actually a consistent underpinning element in Far-Right violence. Indeed, Professor Caron Gentry has shown how there actually is no Far-Right extremism without misogyny, such is the centrality of the hatred, and punishment, of women and girls to the Far-Right worldview. Thus, arguments that a focus on violent misogyny would detract from the more pressing threat of Far-Right violence do not understand the threat that they are trying to tackle.
This recognition of the close links between the Far-Right and violent misogyny, coupled with the prevalence of violence against women and girls in its many forms then begs questions about what we see as extremism and who we see as extremists. In other words, we need to call violent misogyny exactly what it is: an extremist ideology that is already present and operating in society. The political appetite may not be present to do this, though, as it would force us to reckon with how deeply embedded and commonplace violent misogyny is.
What is the end result, then, of this reluctance to see violent misogyny as extremism? Politicians and policy makers tell us that omitting violent misogyny from an expanded definition of extremism will reduce stress on an already overwhelmed counter-terrorism sector. After all, we cannot counter all threats, and we need to focus on those that are most dangerous, they say. But lived experience – backed up by research – tells us that violent misogyny is a pressing threat to the lives of women and girls, and it is a symptom and a cause of extremist ideology. Ignoring this problem will not make it go away and political handwringing over naming and defining this phenomenon misses the point: violent misogyny is already on our doorsteps and in our homes.
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