Emily Hill

Is it really a crime to stare?

  • From Spectator Life

‘A sky full of stars and he was staring at her’ is a love poem by a dead Roman but on the London Underground, all a man will find if he looks skyward is a TFL advert warning him if he stares at me in an Attican fashion I’m to call the police.

‘Staring’ (Sadiq Khan’s bright red public safety warning reads – with ominous eyeballs popping out of the ‘a’ and the ‘g’) that may be construed as ‘intense’ and of ‘sexual nature’ is now ‘sexual harassment’ and ‘not tolerated’. Should anyone ‘see it or experience it’ they are to text the British Transport Police or dial an 0800 sexual harassment hotline if they want to remain anonymous. Silence is violence, so staring is a sex crime.

Staring.jpg
TFL’s new poster

Ask a single Millennial female what her problem is and she won’t tell you it’s the wrong kind of man staring at her on tube trains

Assessed purely on the grounds of common sense this is a strange poster to erect because the overwhelming majority of Londoners take no interest in each other whatsoever so causing them to fear that they are, in fact, being stared at, and should report such stares, seems likely to increase incidences of staring.

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