My Letter to Harriet Harman

I'd like to thank all the people who have commented or emailed so far to support me in this cause. Cause a Stir -I've taken up your suggestion to try to get the support of female politicans and written to the Minister for Women herself. Deborah, I have quoted from your comment... I hope you don't mind.

Big kisses

The Bug

Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 5:32

Gender Inequality on Public Transport

harmanh@parliament.uk

Dear Harriet Harman

I would firstly like to thank you on your stance on tackling demand for prostitution as this has been a cornerstone for gender inequality. While men are free to buy the use of womens bodies for sexual gratification including womens intimate sexual and reproductive organs-, all the while knowing that they are not breaking any laws (as long as they do not curb-crawl), they can be left with the impression that the world is a sexual playground for men where women are their amusements. As you yourself have emphasised, in the case of buying sexual use of the bodies of trafficked women, this culture leads directly to rape. This is a profound expression of gender-inequality - to have a culture that allows one sex to pay money to rape and abuse the bodies of the other sex.

In order to bring about true gender equality, the 'boys-clubs' of power must be changed to firstly include women, then become more welcoming environments for women by changing their andro-centric cultures so as not to exclude women. Great strides have been made in this direction. The workplace is no longer seen a sexual playground for men. We now have sexual harassment and equal opportunity legislation. It is no longer acceptable to put up pornographic calenders or imagery in the workplace. Since men now know that they are not allowed to put up sexist imagery of women or sexually harass women at work, cultures of the workplace are becoming less andro-centric and women feel entitled to expect respectful treatment whilst at work.

However the world is very different when a woman leaves her place of work and takes public transport to get home.

Currently on public transport there are stickers up saying "please give up your seat", poster campaigns saying "do not play your music too loud" and laws that make it illegal to smoke or consume alcohol, yet strangely nothing to suggest that it is anti-social for men to arouse themselves in public by using porn, and nothing to suggest that men should be considerate about the images they are exposing other passengers to and nothing at all on sexual harassment. In other words there is no indication to suggest to men that public transport, like the workplace is not their sexual playground, it is in fact a place where women belong just as much as them, and where women should be respected and be free from sexual-harassment and intimidation. This suggests that TFL are doing nothing to challenge an andro-centric culture which humiliates and threatens women who must travel alongside their male passengers. Being a public service, public transport is an unacceptable arena for such gender inequality in 2008.

As The Star, The Sun, Nuts, Zoo, etc become more explicit and prolific in their images of women in states of undress and sexual invitation, female passengers have to increasingly face a daily offensive of pornographic imagery, while men can quite proudly look at these images, arousing themselves. As a result, public transport is turning into something similar to a 'boys-club' culture where women have to simply swallow their offence (otherwise they cannot get home or to work), just as she once had to do in the workplace. I have created a blog http://nomorepornonlondontransport.blogspot.com/ to raise awareness on this issue. One woman commented on the blog that "I've also been intimidated by men reading porn on the tube - in one case even being followed off the tube by one man who was looking at some pretty hardcore stuff while in the carriage with me".

It is considered indecent exposure for a person to expose their primary or secondary sexual organs on public transport, yet considered 'normal' to expose passengers to indecent images on the printed page - this is an unacceptable double-standard. Just yesterday morning I was standing on the Piccadilly Line and a man sat quite brazenly beneath me with the Page 3 spread, right under my gaze. I said "Excuse me, could you cover that up please" and he became quite flustered and immediately turned the page. His reaction was that he knew the image was offensive to women, but he was surprised that he was being challenged. This proves that there is a culture of sexual inequality on public transport otherwise he would not have been surprised by my challenge at all.

I am writing to you as The Minister for Women, because I hope that you might support me. I am campaigning for either an outright ban on viewing/exposing others to porn on London transport, or strong guidelines in the form of sticker/poster campaigns to expose this behaviour for what it is: anti-social. I have already written to TFL and Boris Johnson on the matter but am waiting for a reply.

Yours sincerely.....

If you feel similarly outraged that behaviour that is no longer acceptable in the workplace (ogling over porn or displaying it the the form of calenders, etc) yet women are expected to put up with this on public transport, please join me in writing to the Mayor, TFL, the London Assembly and/or your local MP to complain.

Together we can change things!!!