The No Trousers Tube Ride is one of London’s most problematic traditions

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Picture the scene: you’re waiting at the tube station, about to start a long day of work. You’re tired, you’re cold, you’re annoyed because it’s the first week of January and you’ve picked up the weekend shift. All you want to do is find a seat and listen to your podcast when the doors open and… what’s this? Why can I see that man’s underwear? Why can I see everyone’s underwear?

Don’t worry, your brain hasn’t been irreparably broken by the holiday season. It’s just London’s weirdest annual tradition: the No Trousers Tube Ride. No, I’m not joking.

Taking inspiration from a similar phenomenon which takes place every year on the New York subway, the No Trousers Tube Ride is an annual event that began in 2009 and is exactly what it sounds like. Every year, on a day in early January, groups of Londoners collectively agree to ride the Underground sans trousers. They don’t do anything special – the goal is to act as normal as possible, with the only difference being that their legs (and underwear) are on full display for all the world to see.

Just to be clear, this isn’t a charity event. These people aren’t doing this for some noble purpose. It’s more akin to a late-2000s flash mob, where the goal is to be part of a spectacle rather than to make some kind of point. I want to say that’s just a bit of harmless fun, and I’m sure for most people it is… but it’s also wildly problematic.

I sort of understand the impulse to go out in public without trousers. When I was in university, me and my friends went through a phase of dropping trou’ every time we got drunk together, no matter where we were or whose company we were in (although maybe not in the dead of winter, like these guys). Talking to other people, I discovered this is actually a fairly common phenomenon for men in their late teens and early 20s. Apparently there’s some primal part of our brains that is hardwired to free our legs from their denim prisons at the slightest provocation. Attica! Attica!

Looking back, it was a crazy thing to do, not just because it was so obviously inappropriate, but because watching a group of men slowly take their pants off in public implies an element of threat that we didn’t really take into consideration at the time. That probably sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Men in don’t really take into account how their boisterous actions can be interpreted as aggressive by the people around them.

At its heart, it’s an issue of consent. When me and my friends thought we were being funny or spontaneous, we didn’t really think about how we were bringing other people into our game without asking them. The No Trousers Tube Ride is the same, only on a much larger scale.

It turns a normal commute into an anxiety-ridden ordeal, not least because the Tube is often packed tight with people, meaning your chances of accidentally making physical contact with a pantsless stranger absolutely skyrocket. Looking at pictures of previous years, there are sat in seats trying desperately to avoid looking at eye-level tighty whities. Women do take part, but the vast majority of participants appear to be male, which is a huge problem for any women who might feel understandably vulnerable when confronted by a semi-nude horde on their way to the shops.

The Tube can be scary place at the best of times, especially for women. In 2022 there were nearly 800 reports of sexual offences on the Underground, with the vast majority being perpetrated against women. There were reports of groping when the lights went down on the Elizabeth Line in December. Less than a month ago, a man was jailed for raping a sleeping woman on the Piccadilly Line, while bystanders turned a blind eye. It seems irresponsible for legions of men to impose themselves on unsuspecting bystanders in that kind of environment.

I’m sure this article will receive the usual cries of “you’re just being overly sensitive” or “you can’t do anything these days without somebody acting offended”, and I understand that too. It’s frustrating to be told that an action you thought was harmless may actually have upset somebody, and nobody likes to apologise for things that they didn’t do on purpose.

But it doesn’t take much to consider the feelings of other people and adjust one’s actions accordingly – especially when it’s an event like this, where nothing is lost by no taking part. No orphanages will go unfunded, no cancers unresearched.

This year’s event is already well underway, and I wish those involved all the best. But maybe next year it would be a good idea for us all to stay buckled up.