Phobic Incidents and Crimes
Without Prejudice South West: Angela Eagle, Minister of State, presenting a grant cheque from Citizenship 21 (Stonewall) for a crime-reporting partnership between Intercom, the Racial Equality Councils, and Citizens Advice in Devon and Cornwall. January 2001.
What is the difference between an "incident" and a "crime"?
A crime is an act which could be prosecuted in court if there is enough evidence. Crimes are defined in quite a technical way, which doesn't always correspond to the victim's sense of what happened. Examples of crimes are "threatening behaviour", "assault" (which can sometimes include verbal abuse), "harassment", "assault causing bodily harm", "attempted murder", "sexual assault" and (literally) thousands more.
If a defendant is convicted of a crime, and there is evidence that the crime was motivated by homophobic prejudice, the Court must increase the sentence to reflect the proven element of prejudice (see Section 146). However, there is not yet any similar provision for transphobic motivation. Intercom, Press for Change and others have protested strongly to central government about this anomaly.
An incident means simply "something that happened". Some phobic incidents are crimes, and can be prosecuted in the Crown or Magistrates' Courts. Some incidents are unlawful acts but not technically crimes, such as discrimination in the workplace or discrimination by people who provide services in (say) a shop or hotel, or in a school: these are called "torts" and are dealt with in the County Court. And there may be some incidents that are clearly discriminatory, but are not crimes and not torts, and have not caused you to suffer loss or damage: these may, regrettably, not be unlawful.
What do you mean by "phobic"?
We use "phobic" to mean "homophobic or transphobic". (see our Terminology page.)
"Homophobic" means "motivated by prejudice or hatred against lesbian gay or bisexual people". "Transphobic" means "motivated by prejudice or hatred against trans people---that is, people who are transgendered or transsexual, or against people who are transvestites or cross-dressers or drag performers". Most bigots don't see much difference here, which just goes to show the low level of public understanding we encounter. (And of course this low level of understanding actually helps build up the social environment in which these prejudices flourish.)
It's the motivation that's important. If a lesbian is randomly mugged in the street, or a joy-rider steals a car which happens to belong to a trans man, both these acts are crimes, but neither of them is phobic. The mugger and the joy-rider weren't aware that the woman was LGB, or that the man was trans.
Sometimes phobic crimes can be committed by LGB/T people ourselves. Some same-sex domestic violence is phobically motivated, especially when the abuser is living with internalised homophobia.
But if a mugger boasted to his mates that he'd just mugged a lesbian and showed prejudice against her for being a lesbian, that would make it homophobic. Similarly, if the joy-rider was a bigoted neighbour who had been phobicly harassing the woman in the recent past and knew it was her car, then that would suggest the theft of the car was part of a course of conduct that was transphobically motivated, so the crime would have been a phobic crime.
What difference does this make to me?
If you feel that you've experienced any kind of incident which was motivated by phobic prejudice or hatred, have a look at our page What Could I Do About An Incident?