> The detective said: “It’s human nature to stare at things. However, it’s very different when someone is staring, leering, or there’s a sexual motivation. We want to know about that staring because that is the behaviour that suggests to me that someone is thinking about a sexual behaviour that supports that staring.
Surely it’s got to be pretty clear it’s of sexual motivation, or Dave with the creepy resting face and the lazy eye is fucked.
How exactly do you differentiate staring of a sexual nature from just staring or just looking at someone because they’re doing something weird. Seems very subjective and open to abuse, racial profiling etc. You’d hope the police would be sensible and prosecute the actual cases but I don’t think you can reasonably have any faith that they will do that nowadays.
This happened to a friend in Manchester, woman reported a man for staring at her the whole trip…. yep 4 big police officers got on the train to arrest him one took a good look at him and said sir are you sight impaired……. yep my friend is blind lol he is very good at staring at space
> The detective said: “It’s human nature to stare at things. However, it’s very different when someone is staring, leering, or there’s a sexual motivation. We want to know about that staring because that is the behaviour that suggests to me that someone is thinking about a sexual behaviour that supports that staring.
Jesus, full on thought policing. Have to question the people who called the police for this, they clearly have some issues.
Since the police response towards actual physical assaults on the tube is ….mixed, at best (often because they don’t have the personnel) and since every new week brings a fresh allegation against yet another Met officer of some horrible sexual crime or another, I can’t help thinking this is a bit of desperate window-dressing on the police’s behalf.
I’m beginning to think those people that yelled defund the police had a point.
‘intrusive staring’ isn’t something that the police should ever look into.
What’s next? People being reporting to police for breathing on the Tube?
“Officer, arrest this man, he blinked”
don’t these arseholes know you only stare at tits or cleavage when wearing sunglasses ?
Transport for London launch a campaign to combat inappropriate staring with posters highlighting the issue and the person in charge of the BTP sexual offences team states her team have already started receiving several reports of people who have been caught staring inappropriately after the launch of the campaign.
Honestly just sounds like people are looking around now after having read the posters and deciding people are staring at them. They might of course be staring at them but I think it’s very difficult to know for certain. I know I have been sat on public transport plenty of times and been totally zoned out and for some reason or other someone suddenly locks eyes with you and it seems like they think you were starting at them where you were really just staring into space. I have also had similar things happen when I am actually just trying to look at the tube line map that happens to be behind someone.
Of course if you get the impression you think someone else thinks you are starting at them you could be totally mistaken and its just a random eye lock. This is the difficulty in not actually knowing peoples internal thought processes but thinking you can make judgments about such things.
I agree that pervy leering is out of order but how in all honesty do you police this?
For people who don’t travel on the tube, this is because there have been posters put up encouraging people to report this behaviour and providing instructions on how to report this behaviour. So clearly there is a purposeful attempt to stop creepy people being creepy and it appears to be working. (Edit: gender neutral language is used on the signs btw. There is nothing targeting men in particular and nothing stopping men from using this service.)
Which is great news, because while underground rail is a fantastic mode of transport it is also unfortunately seen as an easy place for creeps to target women and get away with it. Travelled round London with my gf and her 16 year old sister on Easter weekend, and got cat called more than once by drunk men. Not exactly a great experience for them, and I hate to think of how uncomfortable they would have been if I was not there to get between them and the creeps.
But this being reddit this thread will probably devolve into a space for men to cry about being “discriminated against” because they now have to be mindful of other peoples personal space and feelings. Y’all make me embarrassed of my own gender at times.
Might be an unpopular opinion but “intrusive staring” isn’t a thing & people shouldn’t be punished for it, you would only know if they were staring at you if you too were looking back at them, at which point you are also “intrusively staring”…
If someone is acting inappropriately then yes, throw the book at them but looking at someone isn’t a crime & shouldn’t be punishable.
e: people leaping to some funny conclusions below lol, I am pretty uninteresting to look at i’ll give you that, but I also don’t think it’s worth wasting police time to arrest people for **looking** at someone…
If they were making sexual comments/gestures or doing anything further than just looking then yeah that’s a problem & they need to be dealt with accordingly, but it 100% should not be a crime to look at someone, it’s a scary precedent to set.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Hey, why are you staring at me?”
“What a minute, you were staring at me!”
“I’m looking because you’re looking!”
….
So the police will not attend or make any effort to investigate a burglary – a tangible crime that has actually occurred. Yet they will investigate staring just in case this is indicative of a potential crime?!
The Prime Minister is someone who does this. Look at any interview with Laura Kuennsberg, he stares at her tits. Then look at the Chancellor who talks to her face, and see the difference.
Ah yes, I’m sure this system won’t be abused at all.
I’m reading this on the Tube right now with my one good eye, fuck knows what my glass eye is currently doing.
This is one of those things that’s nigh on impossible to define on paper but you can identify it when you see it.
The problem is, the police don’t see it, some other people see it. And, for every creepy guy who stares at people intentionally, there are going to be an equal number of people who do it without any intent, and an equal number of people who interpret any one looking at them as being intrusive.
The entire thing is a mess, and people are piss poor at writing rules.
I was sat on my morning train, half asleep and daydreaming away when a woman starts shouting obscenities at me to stop staring at her.
I had no idea I was staring at her, was just in my own little bubble.
If you’re staring at someone’s tits then it’s probably intrusive staring.
This is what happens when you give these poundshop fascists an inch.
Not trivialising the discomfort being stared at causes it hapoens to men too when nutters are looking for a fight. This law is an unenforceable massive grey area though.
My elderly neighbour spends a good portion of her day staring out through her net curtains. She knows everything going on on our street (sweet old fashioned lady). She knows what all the kids are upto on a daily basis. Does this make her a sex pest.
Great, now I have to be worried about looking at people.
I’ve been stared at in public and I never considered calling the police *just* for staring. If I get stared at and then get followed for a bit? Sure I’m thinking about my own safety. But the staring alone could be any kind of staring, I don’t know whether it’s the dangerous kind or not.
I understand how awful it must be to be leered at and I trust a woman’s instincts to be right the vast majority of the time but proving beyond a reasonable doubt that someone wasn’t just daydreaming seems impossible. Won’t this always just be a case of he said she said with regards to the perpetrators intent?
There are adverts all over the Tube network about intrusive staring, so a rise in reported cases is not remotely surprising.
I think all the men in this thread struggling to understand the concept of intrusive staring need to do an experiment with your friends. Sit opposite them somewhere. Get one to just stare off into the distance in your general direction while listening to music or something. Or just to glance around occasionally looking at you briefly. Then get them to look directly at you for minutes, never moving their gaze.
Maybe you then try moving seat and the person continues staring intently at you.
I bet you will see the difference
To people saying it’s just staring. If another bloke is looking at me intently, consistently, he’s making me as another bloke feel threatened. Plenty of men I know would give a quick “what the fuck you looking at” and get ready for a ruck. You’re full of shit if you think staring at another person isn’t threatening
thousands raped in north england – nobody cares
staring on a train – OMFG THIS MUST END
Right. So men in the UK are now being arrested for looking in the direction of women. Seems perfectly reasonable. God forbid the UK have a single possible action that isn’t punishable by law. This is absolutely ridiculous.
Experienced it at 15 years old while on the tube. It was horrible tried to continuously look elsewhere the whole journey & didnt mention it to my mum so as not to draw attention.
Once we got off my mum commented on how she had looked at him & made a face to let him know she knew what he was doing & he just smirked at her. My dad had been standing along from where we were sitting & had been keeping an eye on him the whole journey aswell but he hadn’t noticed that.
What if you have an empty look? I mean when you look at something but your mind is somewhere far away and you don’t even realize that you are looking at a same spot/person for a very long time…. And how do you prove that your staring has no meaning?
Prolonged eye-contact is aggressive, no matter the sex.
Absolutely stupid. It’s such obvious over-compensating bullshit! Trying to cover their own arse after the country being made acutely aware of the fact that police don’t even bother when it comes to serious sexual crimes and rape. “Quick! Let’s look like we’re doing something!”
The difference between male and female reactions to this post is astounding.
For all those claiming that women don’t stare at men in a sexual manner on the tube, you’re right, they covertly take photos of them and create a website on which to post them.
I’m not saying this makes it ok for the small minority of men who do these sorts of things. Just that there are clear double standards here.
How do you prosecute something like this and win? The staring party would have to confess that is what they did to show corroborating evidence. Otherwise it’s literally a she-said-he-said scenario.
38 comments
> The detective said: “It’s human nature to stare at things. However, it’s very different when someone is staring, leering, or there’s a sexual motivation. We want to know about that staring because that is the behaviour that suggests to me that someone is thinking about a sexual behaviour that supports that staring.
Surely it’s got to be pretty clear it’s of sexual motivation, or Dave with the creepy resting face and the lazy eye is fucked.
How exactly do you differentiate staring of a sexual nature from just staring or just looking at someone because they’re doing something weird. Seems very subjective and open to abuse, racial profiling etc. You’d hope the police would be sensible and prosecute the actual cases but I don’t think you can reasonably have any faith that they will do that nowadays.
This happened to a friend in Manchester, woman reported a man for staring at her the whole trip…. yep 4 big police officers got on the train to arrest him one took a good look at him and said sir are you sight impaired……. yep my friend is blind lol he is very good at staring at space
> The detective said: “It’s human nature to stare at things. However, it’s very different when someone is staring, leering, or there’s a sexual motivation. We want to know about that staring because that is the behaviour that suggests to me that someone is thinking about a sexual behaviour that supports that staring.
Jesus, full on thought policing. Have to question the people who called the police for this, they clearly have some issues.
Since the police response towards actual physical assaults on the tube is ….mixed, at best (often because they don’t have the personnel) and since every new week brings a fresh allegation against yet another Met officer of some horrible sexual crime or another, I can’t help thinking this is a bit of desperate window-dressing on the police’s behalf.
I’m beginning to think those people that yelled defund the police had a point.
‘intrusive staring’ isn’t something that the police should ever look into.
What’s next? People being reporting to police for breathing on the Tube?
“Officer, arrest this man, he blinked”
don’t these arseholes know you only stare at tits or cleavage when wearing sunglasses ?
Transport for London launch a campaign to combat inappropriate staring with posters highlighting the issue and the person in charge of the BTP sexual offences team states her team have already started receiving several reports of people who have been caught staring inappropriately after the launch of the campaign.
Honestly just sounds like people are looking around now after having read the posters and deciding people are staring at them. They might of course be staring at them but I think it’s very difficult to know for certain. I know I have been sat on public transport plenty of times and been totally zoned out and for some reason or other someone suddenly locks eyes with you and it seems like they think you were starting at them where you were really just staring into space. I have also had similar things happen when I am actually just trying to look at the tube line map that happens to be behind someone.
Of course if you get the impression you think someone else thinks you are starting at them you could be totally mistaken and its just a random eye lock. This is the difficulty in not actually knowing peoples internal thought processes but thinking you can make judgments about such things.
I agree that pervy leering is out of order but how in all honesty do you police this?
For people who don’t travel on the tube, this is because there have been posters put up encouraging people to report this behaviour and providing instructions on how to report this behaviour. So clearly there is a purposeful attempt to stop creepy people being creepy and it appears to be working. (Edit: gender neutral language is used on the signs btw. There is nothing targeting men in particular and nothing stopping men from using this service.)
Which is great news, because while underground rail is a fantastic mode of transport it is also unfortunately seen as an easy place for creeps to target women and get away with it. Travelled round London with my gf and her 16 year old sister on Easter weekend, and got cat called more than once by drunk men. Not exactly a great experience for them, and I hate to think of how uncomfortable they would have been if I was not there to get between them and the creeps.
But this being reddit this thread will probably devolve into a space for men to cry about being “discriminated against” because they now have to be mindful of other peoples personal space and feelings. Y’all make me embarrassed of my own gender at times.
Might be an unpopular opinion but “intrusive staring” isn’t a thing & people shouldn’t be punished for it, you would only know if they were staring at you if you too were looking back at them, at which point you are also “intrusively staring”…
If someone is acting inappropriately then yes, throw the book at them but looking at someone isn’t a crime & shouldn’t be punishable.
e: people leaping to some funny conclusions below lol, I am pretty uninteresting to look at i’ll give you that, but I also don’t think it’s worth wasting police time to arrest people for **looking** at someone…
If they were making sexual comments/gestures or doing anything further than just looking then yeah that’s a problem & they need to be dealt with accordingly, but it 100% should not be a crime to look at someone, it’s a scary precedent to set.
What could possibly go wrong?
“Hey, why are you staring at me?”
“What a minute, you were staring at me!”
“I’m looking because you’re looking!”
….
So the police will not attend or make any effort to investigate a burglary – a tangible crime that has actually occurred. Yet they will investigate staring just in case this is indicative of a potential crime?!
The Prime Minister is someone who does this. Look at any interview with Laura Kuennsberg, he stares at her tits. Then look at the Chancellor who talks to her face, and see the difference.
Ah yes, I’m sure this system won’t be abused at all.
I’m reading this on the Tube right now with my one good eye, fuck knows what my glass eye is currently doing.
This is one of those things that’s nigh on impossible to define on paper but you can identify it when you see it.
The problem is, the police don’t see it, some other people see it. And, for every creepy guy who stares at people intentionally, there are going to be an equal number of people who do it without any intent, and an equal number of people who interpret any one looking at them as being intrusive.
The entire thing is a mess, and people are piss poor at writing rules.
I was sat on my morning train, half asleep and daydreaming away when a woman starts shouting obscenities at me to stop staring at her.
I had no idea I was staring at her, was just in my own little bubble.
If you’re staring at someone’s tits then it’s probably intrusive staring.
This is what happens when you give these poundshop fascists an inch.
Not trivialising the discomfort being stared at causes it hapoens to men too when nutters are looking for a fight. This law is an unenforceable massive grey area though.
My elderly neighbour spends a good portion of her day staring out through her net curtains. She knows everything going on on our street (sweet old fashioned lady). She knows what all the kids are upto on a daily basis. Does this make her a sex pest.
Great, now I have to be worried about looking at people.
Causing someone fear of violence by staring [can already be assault](https://e-lawresources.co.uk/Smith-v-Chief-Constable-of-Woking.php).
I’ve been stared at in public and I never considered calling the police *just* for staring. If I get stared at and then get followed for a bit? Sure I’m thinking about my own safety. But the staring alone could be any kind of staring, I don’t know whether it’s the dangerous kind or not.
I understand how awful it must be to be leered at and I trust a woman’s instincts to be right the vast majority of the time but proving beyond a reasonable doubt that someone wasn’t just daydreaming seems impossible. Won’t this always just be a case of he said she said with regards to the perpetrators intent?
There are adverts all over the Tube network about intrusive staring, so a rise in reported cases is not remotely surprising.
I think all the men in this thread struggling to understand the concept of intrusive staring need to do an experiment with your friends. Sit opposite them somewhere. Get one to just stare off into the distance in your general direction while listening to music or something. Or just to glance around occasionally looking at you briefly. Then get them to look directly at you for minutes, never moving their gaze.
Maybe you then try moving seat and the person continues staring intently at you.
I bet you will see the difference
To people saying it’s just staring. If another bloke is looking at me intently, consistently, he’s making me as another bloke feel threatened. Plenty of men I know would give a quick “what the fuck you looking at” and get ready for a ruck. You’re full of shit if you think staring at another person isn’t threatening
thousands raped in north england – nobody cares
staring on a train – OMFG THIS MUST END
Right. So men in the UK are now being arrested for looking in the direction of women. Seems perfectly reasonable. God forbid the UK have a single possible action that isn’t punishable by law. This is absolutely ridiculous.
Experienced it at 15 years old while on the tube. It was horrible tried to continuously look elsewhere the whole journey & didnt mention it to my mum so as not to draw attention.
Once we got off my mum commented on how she had looked at him & made a face to let him know she knew what he was doing & he just smirked at her. My dad had been standing along from where we were sitting & had been keeping an eye on him the whole journey aswell but he hadn’t noticed that.
What if you have an empty look? I mean when you look at something but your mind is somewhere far away and you don’t even realize that you are looking at a same spot/person for a very long time…. And how do you prove that your staring has no meaning?
Prolonged eye-contact is aggressive, no matter the sex.
Absolutely stupid. It’s such obvious over-compensating bullshit! Trying to cover their own arse after the country being made acutely aware of the fact that police don’t even bother when it comes to serious sexual crimes and rape. “Quick! Let’s look like we’re doing something!”
The difference between male and female reactions to this post is astounding.
For all those claiming that women don’t stare at men in a sexual manner on the tube, you’re right, they covertly take photos of them and create a website on which to post them.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/tube-crush-website-featuring-photos-of-attractive-men-on-london-underground-sparks-privacy-row-a3694031.html
I’m not saying this makes it ok for the small minority of men who do these sorts of things. Just that there are clear double standards here.
How do you prosecute something like this and win? The staring party would have to confess that is what they did to show corroborating evidence. Otherwise it’s literally a she-said-he-said scenario.