It does get misused in that exact way sometimes. I’m from Mexico, these cases have been making big headlines here for a while now, some prosecutors are misclassifying cases as femicide to grab attention to their political careers.

Local one a couple of years ago where a dude ran over a woman. Local prosecutor was pushing for femicide, fortunately it was moved to manslaughter as it should have been from the start. Not everything constitutes a hate crime and cases like that (in my opinion at least) would make the distinction meaningless

Indeed. I was bullied in elementary school. Became a bully in high school when I moved out to another state and I also got bigger than the average.

Been working through it in therapy for a few years, it was mostly out of fear. I’d be the big bad bully before someone did it to me, not an excuse since I did hurt people and that’s on me. But it is a common thing