British police urge women to report men for staring

The British Transport Police (BTP) is urging women who take public transportation to report men for even “minor sexual harassment offenses.”

In a statement last Saturday the BTP cited a recent study which found that over a third of women have been sexually harassed on the commute to work, though only one in five people reported the offense. Those “offenses” include actions such as “unwanted comments” or “staring.”

The BTP is therefore urging women to “lower their tolerance” for sexual harassment and is asking people to report “unacceptable behaviour such as leering, catcalling, touching, pressing, upskirting or indecent exposure.”

BTP Detective Chief Superintendent Paul Furnell said police “will always believe” bystanders who report others for exhibiting such behavior.

“I would urge everyone to download the Railway Guardian app and let us know if you witness or experience this sort of offending. We will always believe you and take you seriously,” he said.

Furnell also made it clear that police are targeting men, and women are at no fault.

“I absolutely say women should not be changing their behaviours, not in any way,” Furnell said, according to the Daily Mail. “It is about tackling the behaviour of men and boys and the source of behaviour that is causing harassment, alarm and stress.”

“[F]or us, no incident is too small and if there is an element of harassment we want to know about it – it might be that the same guy has been targeting women again and again, we won't know unless we have help building that intelligence,” he added.

“Looking” or “staring” is one of the most common sexual “offenses” in the UK, according to government data. In a 2020 study the Office of National Statistics (ONS) found that the “three most commonly experienced sexual harassment behaviours both within individuals’ lifetimes and within the last 12 months were: unwelcome sexual jokes, staring or looks, and sexual comments.”

According to the UK government, sexual harassment is defined as “unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature which has the purpose or effect of violating the recipient’s dignity, or of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the recipient.” But the government has also noted that sexual harassment should not be constrained by legal definitions. Instead, it should be defined by whether the “victim” objectively considers it welcome or unwelcome. 

“[T]he focus on whether incidents meet the requirements for legal charges has been detrimental to effective action on sexual harassment,” said the ONS, adding that “a victim does not personally need to label their experience as ‘sexual harassment’ for it to be both harmful and illegal.”

“This would suggest that our understanding of sexual harassment and how to measure its incidence should go beyond legal cases and traditional definitions to understand incidence and experience of sexual harassment based on personal perceptions of behaviours being unwanted, impacting dignity and/or creating a negative environment.”

Based on this, the ONS says that 72% of the British population has experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime.

It is also based on this that women, who more often than men report behavior as “unwanted,” are considered the victims in 85% of sexual harassment “offenses.” 

In a 2021 survey of sexual harassment in the military, for example, the British Army noted that “more Servicewomen and Officers consistently regarded the sexualised behaviours as sexual harassment than Servicemen and [other ranks].” Here, too, the army notes that behavior such as looks and comments are “reported as unwelcome and therefore a form of harassment.”

When it comes to sexual harassment “offenses” such as comments or looks, therefore, men are overwhelmingly found to be the perpetrators as women can be three times as likely to consider the behavior “offensive.” Other military surveys have found that women are more than twice as likely as men to send sexually explicit material, though men do not often report it as offensive.

Similarly, women in the military have also been found to be just as likely as men to use sexually explicit language, to make gestures or use body language of a sexual nature, and to tell sexual jokes and stories. They have also been found to be just as responsible as men for targeted sexual harassment. But women are significantly more likely to report these behaviors as “offensive,” making men the perpetrators.