Will a new law really stop men taking pictures up women’s skirts?

Upskirting is not trivial or fun. It is degrading – an invasion of privacy

In June 2003, a newspaper article pondered the future of camera phones. “It’s not immediately clear what they’re for, and that mystery is not sufficiently seductive to make many of us shell out,” it read.

Oh, how we laugh at such naivety now, 16 years down the line, atop our pedestal built of selfie sticks.

Camera phones have changed the way we live, allowing us to create records of our lives. Estimates suggest that a trillion pictures were taken in 2018, and babies born today will go on to be the most photographed generation in history. But, as with so much technology, there is a darker side – which has been brought to light this week.

It was two years ago that Gina Martin, 27, started a campaign to get upskirting banned, after she caught a man taking a picture up her skirt at a music festival. At the time, the police told her there was “nothing they could do”, but after posting an account on Facebook she was flooded with similar tales from women.

Now the practice has become so endemic it has been made a criminal act. As of this week it is illegal to take an image or video under someone’s clothing without permission. Doing so is punishable by up to two years in prison and a potential spot on the sex offenders register.

I know what you’re thinking: do we really need a law to help men understand that taking a photograph of a woman’s crotch, without her consent, is bad?

Well, a Yougov survey in October last year found that 15 per cent of men aged 25 to 34 (and 10 per cent of men of all ages) did not think that upskirting in the workplace counted as sexual harassment. So it can’t hurt.

Seriously. What were they thinking? If photographing a female colleague’s underwear counts as “office banter”, then the upskirting law hasn’t come a moment too soon.

There have been plenty of men on social media pointing out that they hadn’t even heard of upskirting until Martin mentioned it – but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been happening. I expect it wasn’t long after camera phones flooded the market that someone had the idea of becoming a pixel peeping Tom. Indeed, when I do a quick Google search for “upskirting porn”, it turns up 138 million results (and has likely flagged me to The Telegraph’s HR team – hi there!). Sure, much of it is likely consensual – but some won’t be.

Upskirting is not trivial or fun. It is degrading – an invasion of privacy for the purposes of sexual gratification. “Knowing that someone had their hands between my legs taking pictures of my crotch without me knowing is a horrible feeling,” Martin said. “So humiliating, so intrusive, it makes you shiver.”

Her law is good news and a rare example of politics actually working in the current climate. But part of me can’t help but wonder how effective it will be.

New figures published this week show that the number of upskirting incidents has doubled in a year, with police in England and Wales recording 120 in 2018, compared to 56 in 2017. One involved a girl of seven, another a woman of 70.

Only 120? That’s surely a woeful understatement.

We already know that women don’t come forward about serious sexual assaults – the 2017 UK Crime Survey found that five in six victims didn’t report their experiences to the police. Little wonder, when many of our forces are still getting it so wrong when it comes to protecting women – often with tragic consequences.

Take stalking, which was criminalised in 2012. Seven years on, the police are still failing to apply their new powers properly. In the last three weeks, they have been criticised for serious failures in the handling of two separate cases – both involving young women murdered by former partners, despite having reported their behaviour to the police.

It’s why Katy Bourne, the Crime Commissioner for Sussex, this week accused police of failing to protect stalking victims. She raised concerns that forces are not always identifying stalking in the first place. Hardly inspires confidence, does it?

Like upskirting, stalking has flourished thanks new technologies, though there are no official figures for how many people are being harassed via text and social media. I have written in this column before about how I was stalked over the phone – months of sinister calls that left me looking over my shoulder. Back then, it wasn’t a crime, but I’m not certain I would bother reporting it now.

As ever, the law has been slow to catch up with the reality of women’s lives. Upskirting law is a great start – but it is just that.