Is catcalling actually awesome?

[Borachio]

Here's a video of "catcalling", according to people who are against "catcalling":

No shouting from across the street, or from a car, or being excessively lewd. All of that seems pretty acceptable to me.

That's acceptable to you?

Wow!

To me, that's a steady stream of sexual harassment.

 

[civver_764]

That's acceptable to you?

Wow!

To me, that's a steady stream of sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment?! That seems extreme. At best those are unwanted compliments. The guy who said "so you don't want to talk to me?" might be pushing the harassment barrier, but honestly it was easy enough for her to say "no." It would be different if they were in a secluded area, I guess. Some of that was extremely mild though, like "have a good evening" and "god bless you mami".

In your mind, is it ever acceptable for a man to hit on a woman?

 

[Borachio]

I think your use of the idiom "to hit on a woman" is rather telling.

But that aside, I can only tell you how that video came across to me.

And if a woman was subjected to that sort of thing in the work place, I believe she'd have a good basis for a sexual harassment case (though I'm no expert on the matter).

And I don't see why a woman should have to put up with behaviour in a public place that she wouldn't have to at work.

 

[REDY]

I believe that it depends on the amount. I mean it is cool hear a compliment sometimes but when its every day you get tired and annoyed. But the age can fix it I guess.

 

[Borachio]

Right.

In case you missed it, this is what it says at the end of the video:

100 + instances of verbal street harassment took place within 10 hours involving people of all backgrounds. This doesn't include the countless winks, whistles, etc.

Now, it could be that I and the video makers are hypersensitive to this sort of thing. (I honestly don't believe I am.)

Or it could equally just be that you are desensitized to it.

But I believe there's a problem here.

 

[Borachio]

I didn't miss it, I think it's a blatant lie. Again, why would they not show more of the actual footage if they had it instead of making a 2-minute-video with 50% filler content?.

I do know that women are subject to a lot of unwanted attention.

I don't know the answer to your question.

But without evidence to the contrary I'm disinclined to believe it's a blatant lie. I tend to take things at face value unless I have very good reason to believe otherwise.

This isn't a new video, btw. I remember seeing it - what? - two years ago? Possibly a lot more.

 

[Hygro]

How about we read women's reaction when "catcalled" and just stop doing it when their body language and overall reaction (like, ignoring you) clearly implies that she is not flattered / interested at all

I cold approached a gal a few weeks ago in the middle of the day in a public place. It's been years since I did that in part because of the vocal few women who were immensely negatively triggered by catcalling and public interaction.

Now this woman had been looking my general way for about ten minutes, sitting bored on a bench before I walked over.

When I started walking over she turned away and put her hand to shield her face.

Bad sign. By your rules and the rules of the blogs I must immediately abort. So I asked if she minded I sit there. She said I'm go ahead and turned further away from me and had her hand up blocking her face harder.

Really bad sign. I sat down, waited a bit, with no plan of what to say and wondered if I had gotten all the info I needed to leave her alone.

I knew all of that was potentially a red herring, a preemptive defense mechanism in case I sucked multiplied by her anxiety that Mr. Sexy Hygro and his wispy Beard of Power was about to take her for an awesome ride above her undergraduate pay grade.

So I recognized that the real tell would be if I started talking to her and she was silent and/or fetal'd even more away from me.

I defaulted to my freshman year script, are you a student what do you study where are you from, but at 30 I'm a lot better at this than when I was younger. Started off by receiving soft um plus one word answers, a good sign that the anxiety/defensive mode was the primary mode. Over the course of the conversation she opened up more and more, spoke more, offering details of herself, and asked her own questions, gained confidence and when her sister showed up and she had to go her parting lingering words were "see you around."

 

[civver_764]

Damn @Hygro didn't know you were such a player.

 

[Hygro]

Thanks

 

[civver_764]

See if I was that guy I'd be STOKED.

 

[Hygro]

I've had my ass grabbed, hair grabbed, been called out from cars of girls... it's not common, it's mostly bewildering, makes me feel slightly more good. But my experience is as a thirsty man so I understand if you're drowning in sexual attention, out of energy and bad at swimming, it could suck major.

There are no rules. But when times and things shift, sometimes a lot of people get really energized to speak as if there were, or should be, and that means something, but not everything.

 

[warpus]

Even if it's just happening a couple times an hour, that's a couple times an hour every day, every week, every year... Do you know how often this happens to me? Never. If it happened to me all the time too, I might think it's normal I guess, but since it doesn't happen to me and I've never seen it happen to anyone else, it comes off as rude and inappropriate. I think if I talked to any of the Canadians I know most would agree with me, but I admit that this is a guess on my part

 

[Zack]

In my mind, there's a difference between catcalling and giving a compliment. One is sexual harassment, the other is being nice.

 

[Crezth]

That's nonsense. Nobody has an obligation to acknowledge her at all. That some people acknowledge her attractiveness doesn't take anything away. It's a bonus, it's giving her something she didn't have. They could have said nothing at all.

Indeed. Now you understand why several women have the position of, "I'd rather you didn't bother me with it."

 

[hobbsyoyo]

In my mind, there's a difference between catcalling and giving a compliment. One is sexual harassment, the other is being nice.

Yup, it's just a very fine difference and one that's easily crossed. Then you also have to account for the other person - something which is clearly a benign compliment to 99% of the population could still be taken the wrong way by the recipient or even a bystander.

 

[Perfection]

I'm getting pissed at my cat, she used to come when called but she's been rather obstinate as of late.

 

[JollyRoger]

Catcalling is the traditional way of an inferior male to attempt to initiate a mating ritual.

 

[emzie]

You wanna pay me a compliment that shows you took note of something about me as a person, that's awesome. Example: great outfit today, your makeup is fantastic, I love what you've done with your hair, you really carry yourself with confidence. If you wanna pay me a compliment that reduces me to a warm receptacle, I wonder how many such men would feel comfortable getting the same treatment from gay men.

 

[Borachio]

I don't want to be dismissive, but to me this reads like: "I am willing to believe anything without evidence as long as it fits my world view."

Equally, I could read you as: "I'm willing to be dismissive of anything without evidence if it doesn't fit in with my world view."

But I'm really very puzzled by your world-view.

It seems to me that you are all in favour of men treating women as purely sexual objects. (Correct me if I'm wrong, and I certainly do hope that I am.)

And that treating people with respect is somehow... how shall I put it?...not the "cool" thing.

I don't know about you, of course, but I rather like to try and treat people fairly equally. And I don't think it's "cool" to randomly accost people I've never met before on the street as if they're potential sexual partners. (I wonder how many genuine long-term relationships are the end result of this kind of behaviour. It probably can't be zero, but I doubt that the success rate is high. Or maybe genuine long-term relationship are "uncool" these days?)

I suspect this is just the thin edge of the wedge though. And is in large part responsible for why women aren't safe alone on city streets at night.

But, I'm curious, how do you square this with you being female?

 

[Borachio]

Dismissing something for which there is no evidence, is generally a good thing - that doesn't automatically tell us that the opposite is true (as in, the fact that we only see <2 minutes of footage doesn't mean that there haven't been the hundreds of incidents that they claim they have experienced), but a claim should most certainly not be a replacement for evidence, especially when, like in this case, evidence could be supplied if what they claim is true, but is simply not.

There could be many reasons for showing only 2 minutes of footage. One which springs to mind is that people are unlikely to watch 10 hours of anything. But I don't know. I haven't researched into the matter of a quite old video and I'm not likely to. I watched the video and it chimes with my own observations and experience, and what women have told me is their daily experience.

Oh, am I'll for equality, catcalling men should be fine as well!

Fine. We're all just objects in each others' worlds then. Makes some kind of grim sense, I suppose.

Not sure why you bring in long-term relationships though, the desired result is neither a long-term relationship, nor a short-term relationship, nor any type of prolonged interaction at all.

It baffles me why people do it then.

Yeaaah... no. Statistically speaking, men are more likely to be attacked on the streets. The nightly city streets aren't anymore "safe" for the average man than for the average woman. This is again your warped world view kicking in, it is not built on an accurate picture.

My warped world view!

No... yeah. Statistically speaking, men are more likely to be attacked on the streets....because men are more likely to be on the streets. Geddit?

Of course the idea of people "not being safe alone on the streets" in itself is silly, especially when you phrase it like that. The chance of being attacked is minimal for anybody, unless you live in a really bad neighborhood, in which case again, both genders aren't safe and probably shouldn't be out at night at all.

How this even relates to catcalling is beyond me though, seems like you're making up connections in your head to me.

I'll spell it out: catcalling is symptomatic of treating people merely as potential sexual objects. And it's a short step from that to thinking that you're entitled to treat someone as a sexual object. And from that to actually treating someone as a sexual object. "This woman is out on the streets at night. She's obviously on the prowl for my sexual attentions. I think it's my duty to let her have them."

Still, you obviously don't understand anything I'm saying. Whether this is because you're willfully choosing not to understand (which I suspect, because I'm not saying anything particularly "out there" or radical, or unusual) or simply because I'm not making any sense. (Which is always possible. And a popular option.)

But I think I'll abandon the issue for the time being, if you don't mind. I've a feeling we're getting nowhere.

If you re-read this thread, you'll find plenty of posts saying much the same thing as I am. In roundabout ways, maybe.