In defence of staring

Like many people, I enjoy watching people. There’s a great pleasure in sitting in a café or on a park bench on a sunny afternoon and just watching people pass by. But increasingly, people-watching is becoming suspect, and even criminalised.

The latest and most worrying example is Transport for London’s campaign against what it calls ‘intrusive staring’. Posters all over the Tube now warn us: ‘Intrusive staring is a form of sexual harassment and will not be tolerated.’ Last month a man was sentenced to 22 weeks in prison after a woman reported him for ‘continuously staring’ at her on a train in Berkshire. Sarah White, leader of British Transport Police’s sexual offences team, has urged anyone who feels intrusively stared at to report it.

But what exactly is ‘intrusive staring’? Talking to representatives for both TfL and the British Transport Police, I discovered that there is no clear, objective definition. They say the line is crossed when a man looks at a woman in a sexual way that makes her feel ‘unsafe’ or ‘uncomfortable’.