Eyes on the prize of equality

THE new five-second rule is here and it doesn’t involve food, ground contact, or how long bugs take to attach themselves to pieces of buttered toast. This one is all about eye contact and, according to news reports last week, it is one of the guidelines issued in the anti-harassment training Netflix is conducting with its staff. The Sun reported that an on-set runner who had experienced the training had said: “Looking at anyone longer than five seconds is considered creepy.”

Now I’m not fond of the word creepy. It’s the kind of word that gets used not just for those who might harass but for people whose behaviour we don’t really understand, or for outsiders we just don’t like. Nor do I think that we should be counting the seconds on a gaze, or using such measurements of normal human contact as if there were a pseudoscience around how long it takes for a glance to become predatory. In any case, those who harass will always find another way.

But at the same time I want to applaud Netflix – because in the post #MeToo moment it is training like this and debate around conduct that is needed. The fact that eye contact is mentioned is a reminder that it’s not only a grope that we’re talking about. Yet, of course, the five-second rule lends itself to ridicule. And that worries me. For there are too many people out there keen to make out that this is what feminists are asking for – a sexless, joyless world in which human eyes can barely even meet.