Stand up to yob rule on the top deck of buses

12 April 2012

London is fast gaining a no-go zone. It's a place where the hoodies we were once told to hug feel so at home that they can launch into misogynistic and homophobic tirades without fear of reproach.

There, they are never told to turn down their music however much it offends others' ears. Best of all, the under-16s among them enter for free. This only-for-the-brave hang-out is the top deck of our buses after dark.

On Saturday, in the early evening, I boarded a packed 185 to Lewisham. Upstairs, a group of boys were slouched in their seats, hogging the three back rows, shouting obscenities and stinking the floor out with their flatulence. With an estimated average age of 12 (hence farting was hysterical), their linguistic skills were stunted in all but one respect: their vocabularies boasted a plethora of unpleasant synonyms for female genitalia and oral sex.

Boyish insults haven't moved on much in recent years, retaining an Oedipal obsession. In the "your mum" vein, these yobs spent half-an-hour mocking the mother of one of them and discussing the sexploits they had planned for her. It was like an X-rated version of The Inbetweeners, only with any humour or charm squeezed out.

The boys even advertised her "services" to other passengers. When the ringleader started describing gang-raping her and his pre-pubescent minions laughed, I confronted them. Because I must have missed the memo about forced sex being funny.

Not wanting to emulate their expletive-frenzy, I instead feebly demanded that the boys "learn some respect for women". A brief silence descended, perhaps out of shock that anyone dared challenge their rule. When their puerile attempts at humour started up again — some now being fired in my direction — a man eventually tried to engage with them. For his efforts, the boys attacked him as a "gay" paedophile; misogyny and homophobia so often being bedfellows.

None of our fellow travellers offered us any support. Perhaps they thought that the small chance that these pathetic, pint-sized oiks would attack them was not worth the risk. Or maybe they excused this behaviour as simply the bravado of boys whose only relationship is with their right hand. But this "boys will be boys" mentality is patronising to the majority of young males who do not act like this, and it gives legitimacy to the disturbing notion that insulting women is a show of masculinity.

I fear that the total indifference of other passengers stemmed from something much more worrying, though: a surprisingly widespread tolerance of threats of violence against women and gay-bashing language. For I suspect that even the 185's wimps would have rightly protested — perhaps even calling the police — had the boys started hurling racist abuse.

I'm no have-a-go-hero but I will not pretend to be engrossed in a book or my BlackBerry while prejudices and obscenities are aired. Nor do I want to live in a city where women feel, as I did on Saturday, incredibly uncomfortable using public transport. Given other passengers' refusal to intervene, perhaps the only solution is the return of conductors, bringing real authority to the bus as opposed to the self-claimed control of yobs.

I used to take a child-like delight in riding on the top deck. Now, thanks to a gang of juveniles, I will be wary of climbing those stairs again after dark.

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