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I’ve been waiting a year to post this

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Hi all,

I am going to leave this blog. I have been here for about five years, since I was 14, and now feel like I have outgrown it. I will also be moving and need a fresh start with studying. To add to that, I also want to focus my activism on tangible things outside the internet.

I want to thank the lovely ladies of radblr for giving me a community and helping me make sense of my life in the past few years. Many of you have become role models (@opabiniawillreturn, @magnetictapedatastorage , @radicallyaligned , you come to my mind especially) and all of you helped me grow as a person, reflect on my values and ideas and supported critical thinking. Thank you for being you!

I don't think many (any?) people will see this, but I wanted it to be said.

That being said, here is a summarizing lord of the rings quote:

"I don't know half of you as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

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i <3 abortions. reblog this if you <3 abortions

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Hi all,

It’s 100 days until the start of Filia 2022 - the largest grassroots feminist conference in Europe, held from the 22nd-24th October, in Cardiff, Wales. 

The conference will include sessions with Fair Play for Women and Women’s Place UK, and will be attended by representatives from Vancouver Rape Relief, as well as Julie Bindel, Pragna Patel, and many more. It will provide numerous opportunities to meet other women who are passionate about women’s rights, learn about our history, opportunities, and successes so far, as well as be in a space that is almost exclusively occupied by women. 

You can buy tickets at the link below, from £15 a day or £36 for the full three days - though if you are able to pay more than the concession price, and support the organisation, please do. If you would like to find other radblr women to share travel and accommodation costs with, or would like to meet during the conference, please message me and I’d be happy to see if I can put people in touch. 

Looking forward to meeting you in October!

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Silence of the Girls is fantastic. So much better than all the "Achilles is a soft uwu gay boy" books about the Trojan War that either pretend enslaved women actually had a lot of power and choice at the time, or completely disregard that the women were held as sex slaves. Disturbing book, but oh so good.

I know this is a read of Song of Achilles but that book is why I wanted to read Silence of the Girls because of how Briesis shuts down Achilles in SoA!! I wanted her perspective of the Trojan War.

The same reason with SoA when the seer told Agamemnon that he had angered the goddess Artemis and that the wind would not allow them to make their voyage until Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess. It made me curious about Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, who thought she was sending her beloved daughter to a wedding.

So I read a book from Clytemnestra's perspective, called Daughters of Sparta. Which I absolutely recommend.

So I enjoyed SoA, a lot, because it introduced me to so many stories I was able to dig in deeper to!

Reading begets reading, imo!

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I remember when people said “omg don’t talk about the fact Kobe Bryant was ever accused of sexual assault because um.. reasons <3 it makes us feel sad!” Then people also decided to say “also you can’t say his victim would be sad to see people celebrating him because you aren’t in her head <3£ oh wow Sherlock you’re so intelligent. It doesn’t take a genius to know that it wouldn’t feel great to know the world is celebrating your rapist! It’s not hard to imagine that it would feel shit. But twitter activists sure felt proud of themselves for spouting abuse apologism.

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This is Misty Upham.

She was a promising young Native American Actress who appeared in the Oscar Winning August: Osage County.

She was allegedly raped at the 2013 Golden Globe awards by an executive from Weinstein’s company in the men’s bathroom, WHILE A GROUP OF MEN CHEERED HER RAPIST ON.

She never came forward for fear of her career and her life. About a year later she went missing and was later found dead. It was ruled a suicide, even though the autopsy stated that the cause of death was several blunt force trauma injuries to her head and torso. Her name was not spoken at the Golden Globes that following year.

I was shocked to learn about this the story other day, and as May 5th is a National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Native Women and Girls, I needed to share her story here. 

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I just need some advice. I'm a 35 year old black female, atheist, single, asexual, and childfree. I escaped a cult (jehovah's witnesses) when I was 20 and lost my whole family because of it. I have no support system and I'm terrified because I live in a southern red state. I'm looking for places I can move to as a single female that are less religious in general. I was thinking of using my career in emergency dispatch to try immigrating to Canada or maybe upstate NY.

I'm not well-acquainted with how things work, practically, in the US. @nansheonearth has a post with women from all over the world sounding off. Maybe you can find someone in your state with whom to connect, or who can offer you actionable resources. Give it a few day and then look through the notes on this, some women will probably indicate that you can reach out to them for help.

Good luck, anon, and remember that you're a very capable and brave woman.

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TW: sexual harassment

“The noise greets her the moment she walks into the classroom. The sound is guttural, a low, insistent moaning. It begins with one boy. Quickly others join in, enjoying her confusion and embarrassment when she understands the intended meaning. It is a daily sport.

I first became aware of the phenomenon of sexual moaning in our institutions of learning when visiting a large public school in regional Queensland early in 2021. I asked the girls what messages they would like conveyed to their male peers.

‘Please ask the boys to stop making sexual moaning noises in class.’ This was new to me. ‘How many of you have heard boys make these noises?’ I asked. In unison, 300 girls raised their hands.

It wasn’t just in the classroom either, they told me. It was on the school bus. At weekend sport. At a party. In the line-up at Maccas. While walking down the street. Even at home, where an older brother had trained the younger in the art of sexual groaning. But this community was not an outlier.

From then on, I asked every female student in every school I was able to enter in the COVID-disrupted year that followed if they had been similarly confronted. ‘Yes, of course we hear these noises.’ ‘It’s normal.’ ‘We thought we just had to put up with it.’ They think this practice of boys simulating the noise of orgasm at any female in their midst is normal. Not unusual, not rare, not out of the ordinary, but normal.

I added ‘Please ask boys to stop making sexual moaning noises’ to other messages girls routinely asked me to relay, including:

Please ask the boys to stop telling us about the porn they watched last night. Please ask the boys to stop ranking us according to the bodies of porn stars. Please ask the boys to stop making jokes about our bodies. Please ask the boys to stop rubbing up against us in the corridors. Please ask the boys to stop sending us dick pics. Please ask the boys to stop pressuring us for nudes.

These everyday sexual affronts tell us a great deal about how entrenched the objectification of girls is. They also tell us how widespread is the callousing of our young men, the erosion of empathy, the decay of civil behaviour, and the social arson caused by mass pornography saturation.

At a NSW Christian School just before the June 2021 lockdown, girls said boys were filming themselves simulating masturbation using hand sanitiser bottles.

At a Perth public school, girls arrived on their first day back after lockdown to be greeted with photocopies of boys’ penises taped to their lockers. And the most recent story, from a regional NSW public school: boys were masturbating on the school bus in front of girls.”

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As someone with no expert knowledge in relevant fields, or money, what can I do to improve the lives of women around me?

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I do not believe that consumers of pornography (or environmentally harmful products, as well) as a whole will realise that their patronage or viewership is harmful; the producer has to be directly legally stopped.

I do not believe that men's behaviour will change because they realise that they are hurting women; they'll only stop when there are severe social and legal consequences for misogyny and there's a high chance they'll get caught.

I do not believe that most people in society will learn to have constructive debates and change their beliefs when confronted with the truth; the people who spearhead the side of truth of justice need to be the ones at the top of media influence and guide the propaganda in the right direction.

I believe that things can change, definitely, but not because people are going to become overcome with compassion one day. I'd love if it did, but when has that happened in society? I mean really, I'd love an answer. We've seen society change as a result of fear of punishment and legal provisions many times before, but not so much out of people's love for each other. Love alone isn't enough. :/

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“Do you know what else I remember? I remember a friend of mine texting me one night in 2019 that she had just met Amber Heard. Amber was working with a charity my friend was involved with. The night my friend met Amber, she ended up telling her my story. After I got that text, I called her, and she gave Amber the phone to talk to me. Amber didn’t just talk to me. She stayed on the phone for the better part of an hour, stepping away from the group of people she was with so she could listen to my story and offer me support and advice. Amber Heard, a celebrity, who regularly had to change her phone number, gave it to me, a stranger, so she could continue offering support. I have never forgotten her kindness.

It took me months to send Amber a text. I was nervous and I didn’t want to abuse the privilege of having her phone number. She texted me back and she supported me whenever I needed it. She was one of the few people who believed me, who said, “I am here, and we have to stand together.” Amber’s support got me through the tough moments when the people in my life who should have supported me told me they didn’t want to take sides. I’ve heard people say a lot of things about Amber, and most of them don’t have first-hand experience with her.

Amber’s support was life-changing for me. I am not exaggerating when I say that it could have been the end of my life if I hadn’t had support like that. In a lifetime of repeated trauma and poverty, my court case was my lowest point. In many ways, it felt more traumatic than my actual abuse. When I was being questioned on the stand, later in 2019, before Amber ever took the stand in the UK or in Virginia, I thought about her and the support she was giving me. Knowing I had that support, just a text away from someone so influential, so supportive, changed the course of that proceeding. I felt taller. I felt stronger. While Amber wasn’t in the courtroom, I still felt like she was with me, helping me speak out. It might seem like a small thing, just texting, but to me it was everything.

In her testimony in court, Amber said, “Now, as I stand here today, I can’t have a career, I can’t even have people associate with me because of the threats and the attacks they have to endure. And I can’t do my charity work.” She can’t participate in advocacy on behalf of survivors like me because of the backlash it would cause. As someone who sees the value in her work and has experienced and benefitted from her support, this stands out to me as one of the many tragic consequences of her case. I know others are being deprived of her support, support that could change lives like it changed mine.”

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Wtf. I can't fathom how you could say that to a partner.

dump him

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Let's talk about femicides in Latin America, especially Mexico. Tw: explicit descriptions of violence. This post is really long and i'm not adding a read more.

Femicides in Mexico started being recognized as a problem approximately since 1992/1993, The first well known cases were in 1994 with a group of 76 women that are now called "las muertas de Juárez" (the dead women of Juárez, a city in Mexico), most of these were young girls that were r*ped and str*ngled, and they were mostly from the working class, chosen by the killers most likely because these girls' families didn't have any money to move the justice system. This was a very tragic case to which the gobernor back then said the reported cases of murdered women were a "normal and expected number". Femicides in Mexico weren't even recognized as a crime in the "Código Penal Federal" until 2012. ever since then more than 32 criminal codes and laws have been created to protect women in different Mexico's states. However it's known that most of the murderers still go unpunished and sometimes the man in question is not even discovered.

In 2015, the movement called "Ni una menos" (which i can roughly translate as "Not one woman less") was created in Argentina due to the femicide of Chiara Paez, a 14 year old girl. The movement has spread across Latin America and in Mexico, women who align with this movement create marches and protest against femicide and other forms of violence against women.

This is a video about the women who protested against the rise of femicides in Mexico in 2018. Since then, the cases have been growing and getting worse no matter how much feminists protest. In the video, an expert also explains why femicides are a bigger issue in Latin America than in other countries.

Source

During 2020, there was an increase of reported femicides with more than 2.000 murdered women from January to July. Mexico is considered one of the most dangerous countries in Latin America for women. One of the most well known cases was the one of Fátima Aldrighett who was only 7 years old, this case enraged people greately and created a new wave of protests against femicides.

(The signs say "I march because i'm alive and i don't know for how long" - "i'm the scream of the women who are no longer here" - and "are you tired of hearing it? we're tired of living it")

Most of the cases of femicides are not even recognized as such, only about 6% of the murders of women are. The rest are usually qualified as regular homicides. To truly battle this issue, recognizing it as a problem and recognizing that women are murdered by men just for being women, would be the first step. But we're very far from getting there. When people (especially men) accept this is a real sex-based problem where men are the opressors, they see it as something normal in Mexican Culture because Machismo is so ingrained everywhere, and most of the time women are the ones getting blamed for walking alone at night or walking through dangerous places, or getting into relationships with the "few bad men", etc. It's like constantly going in circles with this flawed victim blaming logic.

(Here's the polemic wall (why is it even polemic?) that women filled with names of the victims of femicide in Mexico. It was named by the government as "the wall of peace" to prevent the harms made by feminist protests, which they changed to "the wall of memories" to prove their discontent and give light to the issues they're fighting for)

Femicide is the highest level that violence against women can reach, everything with the end goal of mantaining women scared and submissive, so that men can stay in power. The ideals of Machismo are so strong in Mexico and so ingrained in the culture, that this is one of the societies where is harder to dismantle the patriarchy and take the power away from men.

"Machismo is a form of masculinity, which typically has a negative connotation and used to describe how male dominance and superiority are encouraged by parents and societal forces (Bilmes, 1992; Mayo & Resnick, 1996). The term Machismo is a Spanish word usually used pejoratively in describing an attitude of male dominance and superiority which is legitimized through patriarchal social systems and reinforced through cultural values and norms (Bilmes, 1992; Mayo & Resnick, 1996). Latin societies have been influenced by Roman law, which firmly incorporated males as patriarchs. Some associate machismo with the repeated rise and fall to political power of men who are able to dominate other men and women (Wolf & Hansen, 1972). [...] In trying to understand the Latin concept of masculinity, generalizations are often made and obviously, these generalized stereotypes do not apply to all Latin males. Although many people seem to consider machismo as a purely Latino concept, machismo in the form of ostentatious manliness and often sexist attitudes seems to exist in many societies" - Sharon Larisa Segrest, Darla J. Domke-Damonte

Margarita Bejarano Celaya in her article called "Femicide is only the tip of the iceberg" explains that femicide is not only the ending act in which the woman is murdered, but a long process of violence against said woman that tragically ends this way.

" Due to its characteristics, physical violence is the most visible, but not necessarily the most brutal and impactful. According to Segato (2003), moral violence is the most efficient of the mechanisms of social control and reproduction of inequalities, as he argues that "because of its subtlety, diffuse character and omnipresence, its effectiveness is maximal in the control of subordinate social categories" (Ibid., 114). It is this distinctive invisibility that allows it to be socially accepted and validated, and for this reason it is more insidious than physical violence, as it leaves no visible marks, but undermines the self-esteem, confidence and capacity for action and the search for autonomy of the woman on whom it is imposed. [...] Feminicidal violence uses moral violence to generate around women a whole context of persistent, progressive and multiple types of violence to threaten their existence, just because they are women, in a society in which the feminine is subordinate and this lethal moral principle is not up for discussion. Thus, the legitimacy of moral violence allows it to be a strategy for the reproduction of the androcentric system of male domination. [...] It is important to point out that on occasions - and for various reasons - the femicide does not succeed in ending the woman's life. Despite his attempts to demonstrate his superiority over the victim, the woman manages to survive; however, the intention of the perpetrator is clear: to attempt against the integrity and life of the woman. According to this premise, attempted femicide should therefore be considered as part of the phenomenon [...] What follows is the tortuous, long and costly process of seeking justice for women and their families and real punishment for the aggressors, in which the institutions are also incarnated as aggressors, lacking functional mechanisms for access to justice, lacking trained and sensitized personnel, and not considering the replacement of the damage. "

Nelson Arteaga Botello and Jimena Valdés Figueroa in their article called "Socio-Cultural Contexts of Feminicides in the State of Mexico: New Female Subjectivities" think the increasing rates of violence against women can be explained due to the rise of sociocultural/economic/emotional independence for women in the recent years, they think men have had the "need" to heighten their violence against women to keep them subjugated as it gets more difficult to keep them away from their freedom.

" However, this change does not mean that things are easy, that the process is free of tensions and conflicts. Resistance can be observed in women themselves and, of course, in men; in both there is a reluctance to accept women's entry into areas previously considered masculine, which is why more violent mechanisms of resistance have also been used - particularly by men (although not exclusively) - to reinforce control, discipline and authority over women. The increase in violence against women in different spaces (the workplace, the family, the street) can be understood in this context in which men, accustomed to a perspective based on androcentric roles, seek to reestablish the old order (Touraine, 2006). [...] In general, the cases shown here suggest that women with greater independence over the meaning and use of their lives, bodies and sexuality are more likely to be victims of murderous violence by men, insofar as they represent a greater threat to traditional forms of masculinity affirmation. Any form of independence or resistance to control "incites" or "provokes" male violence. As Radford and Russell (2006) point out, on the streets, it is the "unmanly" women who receive the most abuse and aggression. At work, those who resist men's attention-seeking strategies are the ones who suffer the most harassment. In this sense, the outraged masculinity signified by violence tends to be affirmed in the negation and objectification of female subjectivity. As Russell (2006) notes, when people perceived as inferior (e.g., women) frustrate the hopes or expectations of those who see themselves as superior (e.g., men), a very different reaction is provoked than when the same frustration is caused (actually or imagined) by someone conceived as superior or equal (e.g., other men). The greater the inclination of frustrated men to violence, the greater the likelihood that this form of sexism will be expressed violently, even to the point of death. "

Rosa Cobo (2011) also considers that femicide is the response to the incrase of success in women's liberation and related issues.

" She proposes the thesis that the worsening of "traditional" forms of violence against women, in addition to the emergence of new forms of violence, is a misogynist response to the advances achieved by women in various areas, but especially in the field of violence against women. The emergence of new forms of violence against women, is a misogynist response to the progress achieved by women in various areas, but above all in their relations with men, particularly in the family and in the family and social spheres. in their relations with men, particularly in the spheres of the family and marriage, the central units of the sexual contract the family and marriage, central units of the sexual contract that vertebrates patriarchy. In this sense, she affirms that we are witnessing a "patriarchal reaction" that uses as an argument the minimization of aggressions against women. b) proposes that violence is not an ontological attribute of men, a fundamental assessment to refute the claims that attribute aggressions against women to personality problems or to the inability to contain the impulses of men; and c) proposes that violence is not an ontological attribute of men, a fundamental assessment to refute the claims that attribute aggressions against women to personality problems or to the inability to contain the impulses of men, and d) proposes that violence is not an ontological attribute of men. or inability to contain aggressive impulses. On the other hand, male violence male violence, on the other hand, is one of the faces of the configuration of inequality between women and men, which is the result of the relations between men and women. the result of power relations and domination that have tipped the patriarchal balance in favor of men, which explains why men have the power to violate women's rights. the power to violate women, any woman, from the position of power and privilege that they hold and privilege that they hold in terms of gender, which is strengthened when other attributes of power such as gender and gender identity are added. other attributes of power such as social class, race, ethnicity or membership in criminal groups. or membership in criminal groups. In Cobo's words, "violence is inherent to relations of domination and subordination" (2011: 146). "

This issue is of course not only limited to Mexico but it's prevalent all over Latin America. The following video talks about femicide in Honduras. Trigger warning because it's very descriptive about the violence against women. And it's longer than the first one, but watch it if you want to see the awful reality women face everyday.

My heart aches for all my latina sisters. How long will we have to keep begging for justice?

To sum up everything above, men are so afraid of losing their power over women that their only solution is to murder us so they can silence us and mantain control. But we can't stay silent about this and we have to keep fighting for our complete freedom, no matter how hard they try to stop us.

"Thanks to the feminist movements that work so that gender violence ceases to be a private matter and becomes a public issue, every news of femicide moves us and forces us to think about what kind of society we are building for our children and grandchildren. In each femicide there is a story of violence that began before; a woman who suffered in silence; who felt unsafe even in her own home and to whom as a State we did not know how to reach her with confidence or with sufficient efficiency to make her feel that she had an ally there. Violence against women does not discriminate according to age, socioeconomic status, educational level or geographic location. There is no distinction of political colors, nor should there be in the fight for its eradication. Violence against women is an issue that summons us all. Together we must move towards a society where equality ceases to be a utopia and becomes the basis of relations between men and women." - Graciela Villar

Sources / articles you can read to know more about the topic (some if not most of them are in spanish tho):

one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven | twelve | thirteen | fourteen I'm sorry / not sorry for the long post. This topic is really important.

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Female doctors have launched a “surviving in scrubs” campaign to expose sexism and sexual assault in healthcare.

The campaigners want the General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates doctors, to explicitly condemn sexist behaviour, claiming that advice to simply “treat colleagues fairly and with respect” has not had the desired effect.

Dr Becky Cox and Dr Chelcie Jewitt have set up a website where women working in healthcare can report harassment and bias for publication.

In its first few weeks the project has received dozens of stories, including rape threats from patients being brushed off, claims that male nurses have better contracts, and a male doctor being told by his boss to rate a female colleague’s bottom out of ten.

One health professional wrote: “A patient I was working with made repeated and very explicit threats about how he planned to rape me and graphic sexual fantasies he had about me. I felt intimidated and did not feel safe on the ward. I spoke to my line manager. He laughed and said, ‘Well, what do we expect, bringing a beautiful woman on to the ward?’.”

Another told of a male matron known to make sexual advances to junior female nurses and to retaliate against them professionally if rejected: “He targets her for months, or until she leaves; he criticises all of her work, spreads false information about her, publicly belittles her, denies her training opportunities, blocks promotion.”

A junior doctor described how a consultant slid his hand up her thigh while they discussed a sick patient in A&E. Another was shocked when a consultant grabbed her buttock.

Other stories include a woman who informed her educational supervisor that she was pregnant, only for him to say “he had thought that might be the case because my breasts were much bigger than they had used to be”.

Jewitt, 31, an A&E doctor who has previously worked on a Sexism in Medicine survey for the British Medical Association, said she had been shocked but not surprised by the submissions. The project was prompted by her and Cox’s personal experiences. She said: “I’ve had loads of sexism at work. The straw that broke the camel’s back was in front of a large, multidisciplinary team meeting, with about 15 people in the room. A consultant called me a silly little girl. Bearing in mind, I was 28 at the time. Not silly, not a little girl.”

The BMA survey found that 90 per cent of female doctors suffered sexism at work, with 31 per cent reporting unwanted physical conduct and 56 per cent unwanted verbal conduct.

Cox, 33, a GP and researcher, said she believed the culture began at medical school and that there needed to be an independent system where incidents could be reported and investigated. The women have written to the GMC, which is updating its guidance for doctors, Good Medical Practice.

In the letter Cox and Jewitt said that the stories shared with them included “a range of behaviours from abusive language and discrimination up to serious sexual assault and rape”. They added: “We believe there should be an explicit statement in Good Medical Practice advising doctors not to behave in a sexist or misogynistic manner and treat female colleagues with respect.”

A draft of the new guide included for the first time an instruction not to “demonstrate uninvited or unwelcome behaviour that can be reasonably interpreted as sexual”, or to “abuse, discriminate against, bully, exploit or harass”.

Professor Colin Melville, director for education and standards at the GMC, said: “There can be no place for misogyny, sexism or any form of sexual harassment in the medical profession.”

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Police officers have been told they should no longer investigate legitimate debate or treat trivial online spats as hate incidents, in a move hailed as a victory for free speech.

New guidance issued by the national standards body yesterday emphasised that people contributing to political and social debate must not be “stigmatised simply because someone is offended”.

The College of Policing said that police needed to focus on cutting crime, take a commonsense approach and “not get involved in debates on Twitter”. It said that it expected a reduction in “non-crime hate incidents” after 120,000 people in the past five years were recorded by police even though their behaviour did not meet the criminal threshold.

The police action provoked a fierce freedom of speech debate after it emerged that they recorded every incident where a victim perceived hostility on the basis of race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender issues. The records can show up on enhanced DBS criminal checks.

Judges ruled that non-crime hate incidents could have a chilling effect on public debate. There were also fears of them being “weaponised” by people who would report those who disagreed with them to the police.

The updated guidance makes clear that incidents must not be recorded where they are trivial or irrational. The perception of the complainant is no longer enough and there must be evidence that an incident is motivated by hostility before it can be recorded.

Andy Marsh, the college’s chief executive officer, said: “The public rightly expect the police to focus on cutting crime and bringing criminals to justice. While we work to protect the most vulnerable in society, we also have a responsibility to protect freedom of speech. This updated guidance puts in place new safeguards to ensure people are able to engage in lawful debate without police interference.

“In all types of crime it is important for the police to record incidents that could lead to, or be evidence of, criminality — something that has been demanded by public inquiries such as the Macpherson report into the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence.

“The police regularly deal with complex incidents on social media. Our guidance is there to support officers responding to these incidents in accordance with the law, and not get involved in debates on Twitter.”

The college said that records should be made in the “least intrusive way possible”. It might be necessary to record an incident to build an intelligence picture but names and other personal data could be removed.

The change comes months after Harry Miller, a retired policeman who was visited by his local force after tweeting about transgender rights, won a battle over free speech with the college. The Court of Appeal ruled that the guidance breached Miller’s human rights. He said the new approach would reduce “ludicrous” cases such as the Bedfordshire man who ended up with a police file for whistling the theme tune to Bob the Builder at his neighbour, who perceived racial hatred. Miller questioned, however, whether forces would routinely enforce the guidance as there were still separate rules, governed by another policing body, that allowed incidents to be recorded based on a victim’s perception.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, raised concerns last year about the scale of non-crime recording, saying “people may be inhibited from expressing views in a legitimate and legal manner”.

A Home Office source said that the new guidance was a “step in the direction of common sense and free speech”.

The college and senior officers have emphasised that the recording of such incidents can be crucial to build an intelligence picture. They point to the case of Fiona Pilkington, who killed herself and her disabled daughter Francecca in 2007 after more than a decade of abuse and bullying. Incidents were reported but treated in isolation, whereas recording could have ultimately built a picture of horrendous antisocial behaviour and harassment.

The guidance is interim only. It will be in place until the Home Office publishes a new code of practice.