In the streets, trains and stations of London, women often feel a glaring lack of protection. With few police visible, it is quite clear that anything could happen, especially at night, and there’d be no one to hear you scream.

Which is why Transport for London’s new anti-harassment campaign is as bizarre as it is controlling. We are used to reminders in Tube stations about the criminality of swearing at staff and upskirting, but last week I gawped to see a poster with the word “STARING” emblazoned on it, under which the text ran: “Intrusive staring of a sexual nature is sexual harassment and is not tolerated”, followed by a hotline number.

Women are being groped, beaten up, raped and murdered – many of their attackers escaping justice – and TfL thinks staring is the problem? If it really viewed women as too weak to withstand some intently beady eyes (which most of us have dealt with since puberty) it might lay on a few more police. Something else is at play here too, and it’s typical of our times: the idea that pernickety sloganeering is enough to show you’re the good guy. A better way for TfL officials to prove their commitment to protecting passengers would be persuading the power-mad RMT union to end its five-
month shutdown of the night Tube.

But it doesn’t. Instead the warning not to stare seems more redolent of dreams of Nineteen Eighty-Four-style total control for its own sake. Well before it hopped on the #MeToo horse, TfL was already weighing in on the most minor eventualities of passengership, from how to behave if someone needs a seat to the importance of carrying water.

More than anything, the staring poster begs the question: what planet are they on? Look at the prosecution record of rape: only one in 20 allegations leads to a suspect being charged. If the police can scarcely be bothered to investigate proper sexual assault, what does TfL think will happen to someone reported for eyeing someone up the wrong way? Does it imagine the prisons will oust murderers to make room for starers?

Probably not: like all curtain-twitching virtue signallers, it just prefers words to action.