Making upskirting illegal will make a difference from womb to tomb – here’s why

As far back as I can remember, men and boys have made lewd comments about my body – grabbed at it as if it were a piece of dough that would prove if kneaded and pinched, shouted at me through car windows, muttered grubby things as I walked past. I was stalked for weeks as a schoolgirl. And I am absolutely not alone.

Women are weaned on sexual harassment and assault. It is as much a part of our stories as the threads running through our clothes: woven so tightly into our being that to separate it out feels nigh on impossible sometimes. I’ve seen friends continue conversations while shaking off unwanted touching as if they were picking a stray hair off a jumper – so commonplace, it isn’t even always worthy of sentence-ending.

Today upskirting – the act of shoving a camera between someone’s legs without their knowledge or consent to snap a picture of their underwear or genitals for one’s own fleeting sexual gratification – finally becomes illegal in the UK, entering the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and punishable by up to two years’ custodial sentence, putting perpetrators on the sexual offenders’ register. It’s a landmark moment for women, who are the primary victims of such violations, and a remarkable achievement by activist Gina Martin, whose own upskirting experience at a festival in 2017 led her to lobby and campaign for the vile act to be criminalised. Despite the inexplicable initial objection of Tory MP Christopher Chope, parliament has finally vindicated our right to bodily autonomy.

Ms Martin’s campaigning has shed a light on something women have been enduring for decades. Paparazzi have long lain in gutters and crouched by the doors of limousines, going to extreme lengths to capture a splash-worthy snap of a celebrity crotch. I’ve seen the gussets of most of the celebrities of my youth – not by searching for them on grotty websites but at the corner shop while reaching for the latest issue of J17.

Recalling reaching the age of 18, Emma Watson once said that from the moment the clocks stuck midnight on her birthday, creeps would be crawling all over pavements trying to capture a snap between her barely-legal legs.

Such images became so normalised they were commonplace on newsstands, out for the world to see. Some sections of the media have a lot to answer for when it comes to objectifying female bodies and normalising their exploitation. Despite years of campaigning against it, national newspapers continue to publish photos of topless women for the express purpose of titillation. Today, the Daily Star has announced it will “trial” (presumably to see if sales drop) no longer featuring naked women – but instead having them pose in underwear instead. And this is being hailed as “progress”.

New data released this week reveals that recorded allegations of upskirting were up by as much as 20 per cent in 2018, compared with the preceding two years. Whether this means people are getting sneakier with their depraved camera angles or if we can thank Ms Martin’s campaign for allowing women to come forward with the confidence they will be taken seriously after such incidents is not yet clear. The new law will ensure victims of upskirting are afforded the anonymity of sexual assault survivors: vital for so many reasons, not least that they will be liberated from the onslaught of trolling to which victims, like Ms Martin, are often subject.

But more shocking even than the 94 cases of upskirting recorded by police last year (not including the Metropolitan and West Midlands forces which failed to provide their figures) is the age range of the complainants: women and girls from the age of seven to 70 were among them. Women have been saying this for years: we are the subject of sexual objectification and harassment from the womb to the tomb.

So why do misogynists still feel able to peddle the line that the reason for such attacks are the dolled-up, svelte twenty-somethings in miniskirts spreadeagled on the Tube making it impossible for perverts to resist slipping an iPhone between their pins?

Today’s news finally protects victims of such attacks. May it be the broken dam that enables further change protecting women to flow through, namely classing revenge porn under the Sexual Offences Act, classing misogyny as a hate crime, along with racism, homophobia and ageism, and punishing online trolls. Because if we don’t, if we continue to allow things like slut-shaming, catcalling and trolling to be quotidian – as we did, for so long, with upskirting – we vindicate perpetrators. Women are subject to this sort of humiliating objectification and denigration for their entire lives. Thank goodness the law is finally catching up with the digital age – hopefully society will soon follow.