Tube Crush is just a bit of fun — if you want to know about objectification, ask a woman

According to legend, the Tube turns Londoners into zombies: slack-jawed, glass-eyed, braindead. However, it seems a certain coterie has been paying keen attention to their surroundings: this weekend, the hottie-spotting website Tube Crush went viral again, after some of its stars complained that it compromised their privacy.

For the uninitiated, Tube Crush is a website which documents attractive men spotted on the London Underground. Photos are usually submitted by women, or gay men, and are typically captured unawares — hence the privacy concerns. Now a clamouring section of the internet is also protesting that the site objectifies men.

Certainly, taking a photo of someone from across the carriage is quite creepy. Moreover, the grainy shots on Tube Crush also suggest that Apple et al have a lot of work to do when it comes to making cameras that perform in the queasy half-light of a Tube carriage: frankly, some of the men might feel like Tube Crush hasn’t captured them at their best.

I’m less certain that Tube Crush peddles the objectification of men. Objectification is an expression of power: it enforces a hierarchy. Its purpose is to humiliate someone. Granted, if your boss spotted you on Tube Crush it might be faintly embarrassing — if your boss is really joyless — but it isn’t humiliating. Actually, many of the men who have appeared on the site have said that while it felt weird to be a semi-viral sensation, they were also quite flattered. Fundamentally, Tube Crush just feels a bit naff rather than dangerous. Those who want their photos removed can have them taken down.

And crucially, it doesn’t really feel anything like the objectification of women, which tends to take a darker, more pernicious form. Notably, Tube Crush has a neat recent social media analogy in upskirting, which is as simple and unpleasant as it sounds: taking a picture up a women’s skirt, and, often, sharing it. It’s directed exclusively at women, and became a talking point this summer after a victim, Gina Martin, harassed at a musical festival this summer, launched a campaign, #StopSkirtingTheIssue, to make it a sexual offence.

Upskirting does feel dangerous. It is humiliating. It has a horrible frisson: there’s a sense that upskirting could slide quite easily from taking a picture into something more tactile and unwanted. On the other hand, taking a picture of someone from across a Tube carriage feels more distant.

This does not mean it is not possible to objectify men, per se. And the defence that objectification has traditionally run only one way shouldn’t exonerate women for what is clearly bad behaviour. Take the example of the 27-year-old model Ali Michael, who was roundly censured earlier this month for inviting the 14-year-old Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard to “hit her up” in four years. Wolfhard spoke out, and said it made him uncomfortable — and were the situation reversed, he’d be more than censured.

Ultimately, though, it shouldn’t be a competition about which gender has it worse than the other. That misses the point. Really, the outcry over Tube Crush might say more about our contemporary concern about the vigilant eye of the internet: the site actually launched in 2011 — making it a veritable antique in the lifespan of the internet — and has become a flashpoint again because it touches on this very timely anxiety.

But when it comes to objectification, impure and simple, I side with the founder of Tube Crush, Steve Motion, who observes that “it is different in our society for a woman to have her picture taken compared to a man”.

Provocative Lena, an act too far?

Lena Dunham made her name as the provocateur behind Girls. As a strategy, refusing a filter made for agenda-setting television but IRL, Dunham’s knee-jerk reactions typically put her on the wrong side of the story.

She once said she “wished” she’d had an abortion; this week, she defended a writer for Girls against an allegation of rape, issuing a statement

that her “insider knowledge” of the situation made her confident that the accusation was “one of the three per cent of assault cases that are misreported each year”. Many called her hypocritical, pointing to a previous tweet in which she stated, “Things women do lie about: what they ate for lunch. Things women don’t lie about: rape.” She was also accused this week by a writer for her publication Lenny Letter of peddling a pernicious form of “hipster racism”. Dunham, left, has since said of the former that it was the “wrong time to come out with such a statement”. It’s an evasive excuse in which regret feels rather wanting.

She said women who speak out must be heard. Yes — and they should not to be drowned out by professional agitators.

* A study published today in the medical journal BMJ Open finds that different alcohols may produce different beasts. Allegedly, red wine is relaxing, while spirits make us feel sexy and confident, though also more aggressive.

It seems obvious — though there will always be anomalies. As a younger, more naive drinker, I found that red wine rarely relaxed me but instead made me prone to toppling down staircases, and on one notable occasion being sick on an ex-boyfriend’s wall.

As we get on our marks and set for the December drinking juggernaut, it might be worth working out our own rules.

I prefer to stick to a G&T right now — it helps me keep my wits about me (and, crucially, my dinner down).