To the second comment: He is still specifically targeting her because she is a woman. Whether it is hateful or not, to my knowledge targeting someone because of their gender is enough.

The fact that there is often little evidence is another reason why having the hate crime status is important. On a side note, this is why the new version of the Violence Against Women Act was so detrimental, and so devastating it didn't pass this time. Regular law enforcement agencies are not qualified to tackle specific hate crimes. A gender hate crime agency would train officers and prosecutors to better identify the qualifications of a hate crime, and dismiss it when it's not. States need the federal funding in order to be able to support these though, and gender violence needs to be a hate crime in order for that to happen.

Addressing the last point, absolutely I agree that rape culture is a serious problem in society, in media, video game culture, and university culture in particular. It citing that statistic, I was simply attempting to show how rape terrorizes females in general, not just the individual, qualifying it under the definition of a hate crime.

I agree that there must be determination of gender hate. That's what a hate crime status is for: it creates specially trained departments of law enforcers who can differentiate. However, I am somewhat convinced that rape is a hate crime. Rape is born out of a need to control, and like I previously said, that's what hate crimes are about. No genuinely respectful and unhateful person rapes. Of course there's violence with no respect to gender. Gender violence is most commonly dealing with rape, domestic violence, and the likes, which often has a gender aspect to it.

It sounds a bit like you're comparing women with animals. I think human females have a bit more defensive ability than, say, a bunny rabbit.

Regardless, are you saying create a different category and prosecute it more harshly?

My issue is that it's rare for hate crimes nowadays to explicitly reveal themselves as such. People beating up black kids aren't going to flaunt their racism because they know they'll be facing a harsher penalty. I have found substantial arguments that most, if not all rape cases can be classified as gender violence. Male on female rape especially. Men target the victim because she is weaker. He targets her because he seeks to terrorize and control her. Those are characteristics of a hate crime. Control of one is control of the group. And, speaking as a woman, I can attest to the fear I feel when hearing about rape cases. That is another characteristic. The whole group feels threatened. In a study done in the nation's largest cities, 46% of women reported not going downtown after dark, compared to 7.5% of men. I agree that it needs to be specific, but I also that for rape, it's unconditional.