By Asif Kalam
How long can you stare at a woman for before it’s deemed creepy? 5 seconds? A minute? Last week, Kerala top cop Rishiraj Singh said that the time is set at *cue drumroll*14 seconds — a man can be booked for sexual harassment for anything longer.
So are you expected to turn on the timer on your phone, or keep glancing at your watch? And what if someone stares for 10 seconds and looks away for two, and then starts staring again? Would you begin timing him from scratch?
Who knows.
The law of course says nothing about this scientific sounding number, but Singh is not alone in trying to measure sexual harassment in seconds. A 2013 WSJ survey of Delhi cops had three people, including a woman investigator, responding with the same curious 14-second measure. Author and personal development consultant Mark Manson, who has a guide to what eye contact down to even 1/4th of a second can mean, believes that if undesired, anything longer than 3 seconds is a “creep stare”.
To be sure, we asked Bangalore-based lawyer Byatha N Jagadeesha about the legal provisions regarding staring. He said that while sections 345C and 345D cover voyeurism and stalking, this 14 second criterion is absolutely baseless.
It is difficult not to respond to this 14 second rule — it sounds like the infamous 5 second rule (according to which food dropped on the ground for less than 5 seconds will not be contaminated) — without incredulous laughter. Since staring seems to be a national pastime in India, we asked people what they thought of this number.
It’s not surprising that everyone’s response was that the intent of the stare mattered more than the duration — someone could have stared at you for less than 14 seconds but still made you super uncomfortable, or one could even be lost in thought and inadvertently staring at someone without realising it. Bangalore-based ecologist Tarang S says, “I’ve found myself staring blankly at people’s crotches when I’ve been absorbed by some pressing thought, say while I’m in the metro. When I’ve realised that I’ve been staring at someone, I’ve checked to make sure that I didn’t make them uncomfortable. I’d say instead of the duration it’s the intent which is writ large on people’s faces that gives them away.”
When does a stare become hostile? Tarang thinks the fictitious 14-second limit is way too generous, especially when you’ve made your displeasure clear. For her, a few seconds with a blank expression is excusable. Anything longer, “that lingers both in terms of duration and eye movement across the body, especially after I’ve made hostile eye contact with the person makes me uncomfortable,” says Tarang. Measuring sexual harassment with a stopwatch is getting the matter backwards. Sharanya M, a UK-based researcher says that numbers are arbitrary and dangerous, “If a woman is creeped out by a staring man, whether he stared every other second or for 2 minutes, her word should be enough,” she says.
How do people respond to staring? Maybe it depends on your mood and environment, like the people we spoke to pointed out. Perhaps sometimes you stare back, expressing displeasure with your eyes. You might even laugh it off, or ask the person why they’re staring. People also said that there’s a lot of looking away, just because you can’t be expected to deal with all of the several people who do this to you every day.
So considering that everyone believes it’s the intent of the stare that matters more than the duration, where did this incredibly smart 14 second idea come from? Nobody has any clue. It’s a lot like this study, according to which if you ask someone these 36 questions, and then look into each other’s eyes for 4 minutes, you’ll fall in love. So basically it takes 14 seconds of staring to make someone uncomfortable, and 4 minutes to fall in love.
You can watch the final from the Staring world championships from the Big Train sketch show here: