FOR the first time in England and Wales, a police force is going to record misogyny including wolf-whistling women as a hate crime.

Nottinghamshire Police are concerned about what they see as the current scale of sexist abuse and intimidation that many women regularly face, and could take action against people who wolf-whistle as a public order offence of threatening or abusive words or behaviour.

The reality is that a single act of someone wolf-whistling is unlikely to result in a prosecution, but if this was constant behaviour – part of an online campaign of harassment, for example – it could.

While I completely understand the uncomfortable and often scary situation prompted by wolf-whistling males to vulnerable females, there is danger in this principle of complete over-kill.

For a start, it may devalue those who are subject to terrifying and constant harassing behaviour in all its forms. Might the implication of any prosecution for wolf-whistling cause a shift in the perception of the genuine importance of taking harassment crimes and their necessary prosecution very seriously indeed?

This might not only shape pubic opinion differently on the subject but also deter those suffering from such a campaign from reporting it to the police in the hope of successful prosecution.

It is many years since I was actually worried about going close to a building site or idling group of men for fear of being embarrassed by wolf-whistling or cat-calling. Time has a habit of sorting out that one.

But I can soon recall the horrible sinking feeling as I approached them, the flush of being singled out so publicly (however much they might have felt they were flattering me) and the fear of it recurring.

However, in the general scale of sexual harassment, a single wolf-whistle is hardly a major incident. And most females today are really more than able to handle this, probably turning the tables and coming back with a smart remark.

I’ve also seen groups of women out and about together wolf-whistling men. Presumably, the same threat of possible prosecution applies here if it’s sustained and embarrassing.

Today, as online abuse reaches its peak, that little bit of male appreciation used more in hope than in real expectation of anything happening seems a bit pathetic to me. So can we please keep a sense of proportion about wolf-whistling, and not lose sight of the bigger and far more important picture?