'Laws, laws, laws. I'm so sick of laws!'

Human beings are instinctual animals who use a differentiating set of identity markers to understand who they are and how to relate to others. We can define ourselves by our work, family, religion, class, finance, community, kinship and nationality. Our most basic way to identify ourselves is through our biological sex as male and female.

This informs our behaviour and our relationships with each other. But this form of identity, as well as others, is being eroded and confusion, resentment and insecurity are taking hold instead. Thanks to creeping over-legislation normal human behaviour is being censored and our sense of identity as men and women is being manipulated.

We are being molly-coddled and legislated out of existence. With each law the government passes in attempts to socially engineer society, our freedom is disintegrating bit by bit. The most obvious form is the state’s addiction to imposing Orwellian hate crime laws on all of us. And all of this is a distraction from the more harmful and pertinent problems in our society.

Our weak and ineffectual government recently made up-skirting more of an issue than it is in an attempt to distract from their utter uselessness in tackling more serious crimes. Statistics show that there have been 78 up-skirting complaints to the police in the past two years. Up-skirting is pathetic and perverted male behaviour. But there are already laws in place to deal with such miscreants.

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We are being legislated out of existence.

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In comparison there are thousands of women and girls in the UK who have had female genital mutilation (FGM) inflicted on them. Another 144,000 are at risk of FGM. In the past year London has had a 20 per cent increase in rape crimes reported to the police.

Perhaps the police should try enforcing existing laws so the government can stop wasting valuable resources on redundant legislation. The police certainly have enough resources to patrol Twitter and investigate men for wolf whistling at pretty women yet cry poverty when it comes to preventing acid attacks on London streets.

Unwanted attention from a man may be irritating for a woman, but it is not a hate crime. To describe it as such is to do a disservice to those who suffer the most appalling acts of misogynistic violence – rape, honour killings, acid attacks and FGM. Chatting up a woman is not comparable to rape no matter how many times post-liberal Puritans and feminists try to insist that it is. A society which has to do this much navel gazing is a society in critical decline.

The government is terrified of pushing back against political correctness and social engineering bestowed by cultural Marxism. FGM and honour killings are viewed through the twisted prism of diversity and are mainly ignored. Instead endless laws assaulting our freedom are debated and passed. Westminster and the mainstream media also prefer to obsess over ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘the patriarchy’ rather than focus on the real misogyny and harm towards women.

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A society which has to do this much navel gazing

is a society in critical decline.

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It is far easier to criticise the ‘gender pay gap’ than to prosecute those guilty of inflicting FGM on girls. The fear of being accused of racism supersedes any sense of morality and courage. Our cowardly government, police and Crown Prosecution Service instead bow down to the twin gods of diversity and multiculturalism and attack an increasingly demonised target – Western men.

Western and westernised men, of all races and religions, are very aware of equal rights and most are not misogynists who want to harm women. Insults directed to men, like ‘toxic masculinity’, ‘gammon’ and ‘the patriarchy’, are divisive. The West has the least ‘toxic’ patriarchal formation in comparison to most global societies. Traditional African societies have immobile structures of patrilineal descent where power is centralised only with men. Women are disenfranchised second-class citizens in Islamic countries.

But there are bigger issues at play here. We are losing the precious agencies of individualism and self-responsibility. Our freedom to be men and women is being eroded. Draconian laws designed to ‘protect women’ reduce women to fragile creatures to be cajoled into private spaces for their own safety. Men are increasingly reluctant to connect with women lest they are hauled in front of a court for the ‘hate crime’ of made-up misogyny.

Over-legislation is shaping us into politically correct, subservient and sexless beings. It unnecessarily and destructively alters how men and women identify themselves and their ability to relate to and communicate with the opposite sex. We are being forced to self censor our very human words and behaviour. The fear of being accused of sexism or racism is palpable and realistic, as this can result in the loss of livelihood and reputation.

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It is far easier to criticise the ‘gender pay gap’ than to prosecute those guilty of inflicting FGM on girls.

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Instead of creating an ordered and decent society, over-legislation is contributing to a breakdown in society. The Torah has only 613 laws. G-d and Moses thought they were enough for the people of Israel. Jesus, a Torah-observant Jew, summed up the Torah in two. Is there a lesson the postmodern West can learn from legislation in the Bible?

Too many laws take away our freedom and our sense of identity. They are a distraction from the establishment's compete lack of any competence in governing over us. If this carries on unheeded we are headed for a dystopian future where we will all be silently dressed in sexless sackcloths and women will be forced into hiding from the true culprits of toxic masculinity. Perhaps we are already there.

(Karen Harradine is an anthropologist and freelance journalist. She writes on anti-Semitism, Israel and spirituality).