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"In the last week there have been two crimes in which angry men violently murdered women, it appears, for just being women. The more well-known incident is Joran Van der Sloot, the Dutch man who was a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of American student Natalie Holloway in Aruba, who confessed to the recent murder of a Peruvian woman. Another incident over the weekend was when a gunman shot and killed his wife outside a Florida restaurant, then went into the restaurant, targeting women but not men, killing three before he shot himself.  Then, of course going back a bit, who could forget George Sodini who, in 2009, went into an early morning women&amp;#039;s aerobics class where he killed three and injured at least 10 others (intentionally all women) before killing himself. After which, the police found homemade videos of him going off in hate-filled rants against, that&amp;#039;s right, women.  His problem was that women didn&amp;#039;t want to date him. How dare they sense something was wrong with him and not feel safe or comfortable in his presence? How dare they say &amp;quot;no.&amp;quot; And sadly, the list goes on. There was a woman in New York who refused a man&amp;#039;s advances in a club so he followed her to the bathroom and beat her up, etc., etc. When people are targeted for their race, religion or sexual orientation, it is quickly labeled a &amp;quot;hate crime.&amp;quot; But when women are targeted for their gender, while people are horrified, it is rarely called what it is \u2013 a crime against women.  Maybe it&amp;#039;s because we are so accustomed to male on female violence that it doesn&amp;#039;t garner the same attention for its deep-seated prejudice as it would if it were race or religion-based. But if someone walked into a restaurant and systematically targeted African American diners, or into a Jewish cultural center and sprayed bullets, there would be no question that the attack was prejudicial. It&amp;#039;s not that every crime perpetrated by a man against a woman is a hate crime. Sometimes people just get into bad situations with people. But in these instances, when the targeting of women was so deliberate, so intentional and so clearly filled with hatred towards them as women, I&amp;#039;d feel a whole lot more comfortable if we&amp;#039;d just call it for what it is. Women are being more and more objectified in entertainment and media, while in my opinion men are being emasculated. In other words, I think media is giving the message: &amp;quot;Women are just objects but you&amp;#039;re not a man unless you have (and control) one.&amp;quot;  But where do we draw the line? If I was in that Florida restaurant with my brother, I would very possibly be dead, but he definitely would not be. So why can&amp;#039;t we just admit that there are men out there who hate women, all of us, for being women. And something has to be done about it.  If you know a woman, or anyone else for that matter, who is being abused, read &amp;quot;How to Help an Abused Loved One,&amp;quot; for ways you can help them get out of the situation. - Alexandra Gekas, Associate Editor "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/life/news/a44639/are-recent-crimes-against-women-hate-crimes-2709/>