Sunny Hundal

A too-casual approach to the posting of pictures of men on TubeCrush seems a bit off, but it’s true women put up with worse It was a light-hearted story, but something wasn’t quite right about it. Last night I tweeted a link to this news story about a group of friends who have set up a website called TubeCrush that encourages women to send in pictures (mostly of men) travelling on London’s tube. They can then choose to rate them on a sliding scale. I said in my tweet : “Erm, is it just me or if this site was about women, people would be getting arrested right about now?” Before I recount the huge response, I should explain myself. What struck me was the casual way that the Evening Standard reported on the story in a “oh look, cool young things have set up a website so we can perve on each other” type of way. Maybe it was just an extremely slow news day. But if the sexes had been reversed, would it have been seen so benign? Probably not. I just found the Evening Standard’s casual attitude a bit off. Some agreed: women and men . Andy pointed out that no crime was being committed, “it’s just creepy, whether men or women do it”. Jennifer said it was a form of stalking. But all this raises a few issues. First, women have to put up with far worse. As Hanna pointed out , “there are loads of sites out there about women. Upskirt shots, no less. No one gets arrested”. Soph said the comparison was ridiculous: “Men get photos taken of them and are whinging about it. No offence but I get stared at/talked to/touched all the time by men.” MyCrippledEagle blogged in response: “If a woman takes a picture of a man on a train and he sees her, one or both will be embarrassed but very few men would feel threatened by such behaviour. If, however, a man takes a picture of a woman on a train and she sees him, immediately she has to think about the possible dangers of the situation. Is this guy a creep? Is he a potential rapist? Is he going to follow up the action with some verbal or physical harassment?” Is it unreasonable for women to feel so worried? If you look at the statistics for rape and sexual harassment, don’t they have every right? Maybe that’s why I couldn’t work myself into an outrage over it: most men don’t face a daily torrent of low-level sexual harassment, so this wasn’t seen as a big threat. Alex found himself “5% demeaned, 35% flattered, 60% surprised”. But it’s AmieTsang who summed up most of the male responses I got: it’s all lighthearted banter until you come across a picture of yourself rated as *munter*. I’ve got my long scarf ready. Internet Mobile phones Photography Women London London Rail transport Transport Sex Sunny Hundal guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 19, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.