Well Done Manchester Police and S.O.P.H.I.E

If anyone needs to know the importance of this in the UK, just look up the tragic, horrific murder of Sophie Lancaster and the vicious, violent assault on her boyfriend. 

And all the other cases that have got nasty enough to hit the news. 

I was not originally going to explain the good sense of including Goths and other subcultures into this legislation. Subculture, as I have mentioned before, is a life-altering choice as great as the choice of religion, and subculture, for many, is a stronger influence on daily life than local or national culture, but having read through comments on various articles reporting this story, I will.

Now I don't think the "hate crime" legislation as it stands is right. It has this rather specific set of groups of victims, and defines the hate crime by its victim rather than the hatred within the perpetrator, and I think it could be better worded to include any baseless hatred towards a random stranger due to a difference rather than personal attack. The kind of savage thugs that attacked Sophie Lancaster are liable to target anybody isolated, different, or perceived to be weak. Yes, they are as likely to attack someone for looking foreign, non-stereotypically gendered, of an unusual religion or disabled. It is just as vile and prejudiced to attack someone on the grounds of being ginger, or looking 'geeky' or having any other visually apparent difference, or even for having the wrong accent.  These things are unlikely to ever be added to the legislation. I also think that legislation that goes to further mark the victims out as 'special' is in itself divisive. 

It is the perpetrator that is more evil for being judgemental and prejudiced as well as violent, not the victim more special because they belong to a minority. 

The idea that anyone who beats up someone for being Goth or Punk or Lolita or Metal in Manchester will hopefully get penalised for their motivation and vicious intolerance of difference in the same way as the hate crimes already recognised as well as their violence is at least one good thing. This world could do with vast decrease in vicious intolerance, and the message that acting on it is wrong should go out.

I know that the hate crime legislation is partly there to promote a sense of safety amongst communities that have been traditionally the victims of institutionalised prejudice. I think the creative, self-expressive types who have formed the backbone of various subcultures (and proto-subcultures since at least the people inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and Arts & Crafts movements) HAVE faced a certain amount of institutionalised prejudice that can best be summarised by when, at one of the primary schools I attended and before I was even vaguely Goth, I was fed up with being bullied and ostracised by my peers and got the response "well, they wouldn't pick on you if you weren't so different' as if I could suddenly change my IQ (high enough to have meant I was into secondary school things by the time I was half-way through primary), my personality (far more imaginative, I would say, than many of my peers) and my personal circumstances (terrible, and I am not explaining on the public internet). I am who I am, and I have tried being more "normal" - I couldn't deal with the stress of having to permanently act, to permanently maintain an elaborate charade of normality and the cost to my then quite fragile mental health was huge. 

Even with that, I don't think the Goth community has faced, in the UK at least, anything quite as bad as the legislated prejudices that have historically caused vast and terrible harm to people of different races and nationalities, gays, bisexuals and lesbians, transgendered people and those of non-traditional gender and gender expression, the disabled, and women. 

But that does not mean to say that we have not faced problems. 

People think I am brave because I go out of the house looking visibly Goth, as if this is some act of deliberate defiance. It isn't; I just do what everybody else does and go about my life wearing my ordinary clothes. I know my clothes look different, but that is it. I know people who adore their Gothic finery, their Lolita dresses, their cybergoth creativity, but only wear it to clubs and events and go there by car or hide under long coats. Some even only wear it at home. It's not just those who are afraid of being beaten up, or having insults yelled at them by strangers, it is those who find the stares and whispered comments, the being treated with suspicion and alarm, or as some strange curiosity rather than as a curious human. If this addition goes some way to make people feel more comfortable in public as themselves, then that at least is a good thing.