A sick reminder that you’re never safe from public judgment.

You were probably photographed without knowing it today.

In fact, you’re photographed without noticing it every time you leave the house. Whether it’s by a CCTV camera or in the background of someone else’s selfie, we no longer have control of who is capturing our image and when.

For the sake of safety and convenience, we’ve accepted this new reality. But there are people who are pushing way, way beyond the limits when it comes to photography without consent.

Enter Women Who Eat On The Tube – a Facebook group dedicated to taking photographs of women without their knowing, as they eat on public transport.

This group has taken women’s private moments, albeit ones that occur in public, and are using them to embarrass and shame their subjects. You can see the sort of photos they post on the left (we’ve blurred the subject’s face, although the group don’t generally take the time or care to do so).

The group has over 21,000 members. After extensive media coverage in the UK, the group closed its membership and posted the following message:

“WWEOT is observational not judgemental. It doesn’t intimidate nor bully.

Women are embraced and cherished. We celebrate and encourage women eating food on tubes.

We do not marginalise them. We always look for the story in the picture.”

Pardon my French, but Bull-Fucking-Shit.

Taking photographs of women eating on public transport – women who are probably so run-off-their-feet-busy that their tube ride is the only time they get to eat is the definition of judgemental intimidating bullying.

It’s a sick reminder that you’re never safe from public judgment, that an activity as intimate as eating, is open slather for the world to laugh at. Because you’re a woman, and therefore you do not own your own body.

While Women Who Eat On Tubes is not as explicitly sexual as say, the Creepshots sub-forum of Reddit, where men take photographs of attractive women without their knowing (and then sometimes go as far as trying to find out who they are), it’s still totally creepy and unacceptable.

This rule doesn’t just apply to women though. There are plenty of sites where ladies take photographs of cute guys without their permission too, and that’s also not okay.

The day when you can drop a photograph of someone into a search engine and find dozens of other photos of that person is not far away.

Photographing someone without their permission, especially if they’re doing something compromising or embarrassing could end up costing them work, or dates, or goodness knows what in the future.

Even in public, we should be entitled to a little privacy.

What do you think about websites that encourage people to take photos of others in public places?