THERE’s been a dusty response so far to “Say Maate!”, the Mayor’s exciting new initiative to stamp out sexism in public spaces. The gist is that when a bloke catches his friend saying something off-colour to a woman, he reprimands him with a reproachful “Maate!”. The friend, abashed, sinks into his corner and mutters something apologetic. And he won’t be in a hurry to do it again, will he? I’m not sure how the woman is meant to react here; I find it useful on the Tube to have a book to bury myself in for occasions like this.
It’s a genius idea when you think about it: using male peer pressure to curb the kind of behaviour we want to see off. It’s a catchy slogan, from that advertising firm, Ogilvy and Mather, which includes a behavioural science practice “whose goal is develop marketing techniques inspired by the fields of psychology and economics, rather than shape customer desires through conventional advertising”.
