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 Big brother's not enough. Now its TubeCrushing. If opened up to both sexes would the ‘fairer’ sex find it so amusing?
Just yesterday I tweeted about this new craze of TubeCrushing i.e. women taking pictures of great looking men on their phones whilst travelling on the London Underground, then posting them to a website where they can be rated by women. Only men scoring at least 6 out of 10 are allowed to feature on the website.
The website launched in February is now getting 22,000 hits a month.
As those of you who know me will be aware, I am absolutely not a kill joy and love to laugh as much as the next person, but if we were to take a guess, how many of these women taking photos actually work in environments with strict equality policies, where sexual harassment is taken seriously and where most will know of their rights to bring a claim at tribunal for sex discrimination?
So if you can take a picture of a great looking guy on your way into work, what is your frame of mind as you walk through that door at work? I am no psychologist, but is it possible for women (or men, for that matter) to have two completely different mind sets - one where we follow our natural instincts and do as we like, the other where we have to curb our instincts and ensure we treat everyone around us in a completely non discriminatory way? Or is it more realistic that our natural behaviours will at some point, always be evident at work?
The article about TubeCrushing also asks whether if this website were to be expanded out to include the 'fairer' sex, would women take a similarly relaxed view of what is happening when their pictures are posted online and opened up for comments by the men.
Somehow, I don't suppose they would! In fact if the uproar over the recent New Zealand radio show that offered a 'wife' as a prize to their phone in competition is anything to go by (and yes, it was supposed to be a joke...), there would be outrage!
When we deliver equality training at work, we talk about minority groups at work, about ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, religions, political beliefs, age etc. We try to educate about the different needs and sensitivities of each group. We often operate on the basis that more understanding and awareness often generates greater tolerance.
Its considered a bit taboo though in many organisations to talk about discriminatory practices that occur between two minority groups, or discrimination that occurs between one minority group and the majority group - often UK white/Caucasian males - as with this TubeCrushing phenomenon. But why is it so taboo? Have our laws hypnotised us into thinking that only minority groups can be victimised and discriminated against? Or perhaps its just a lazy way of viewing the world where we assume no discrimination occurs, unless we see there is a law to prohibit it?
I am sure that many of those guys featured on the Tube crush website will be well chuffed with their newfound hunk status. But there may also be one or two there who are not so keen. But if they stand up and complain, do you think anyone will actually be listening?
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