‘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.
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. Its impact on sexual perverts will prove negligible considering the Bible contains a set of explicit instructions from God including ‘Thou shalt not kill’ yet murder has been constant. Sadiq Khan’s reign as mayor of London thus far has coincided with a violent crime wave so expect a boom in sexual harassment rates this summer.
When Covid came along and the State banned basic human mating behaviour (including hugging, kissing or sleeping with anyone outside your home) I did worry they were ushering in a Handmaid’s Tale style public health dystopia in which ‘freedom to’ live was replaced with ‘freedom from’.
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