Which is what catcalling is (attempts to get laid)… Just because your friend doesn’t mind doesn’t negate the views of thousands of other women who do. We have the right to walk down the street and be left alone. To not be told to smile, or that we have nice tits, or can some guy get our number or what a stuck up bitch we are because we don’t respond when told we are beautiful, etc and so on.
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I think men have a hard time putting themselves in her shoes.
If he’s walking on the street and a woman tells him he looks good, even in a condescending way, he won’t be offended. He’ll glow all day. He probably doesn’t realize that her reality doesn’t work the same way.
EDIT Which of course does not justify!
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I thought I had spelled it out pretty clearly that I thought that men shouldn’t be doing this. But apparently I have to:
Men should not be catcalling.
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Sorry, your point about your friend confused… my apologies if I misinterpreted what you said.
I really don’t think they’re trying to get laid, they’re demonstrating their power in a public space.
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There might be one case where it is acceptable…
C’mon baby smile. Baby, just a little smile?
(from the stories I heard told, I probably would have tried to take a chunk out of a finger)
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A culture that prioritizes all conflict avoidance (as opposed to the laudable virtue of restraint) above all else enables predatory behavior. To paraphrase John Stuart Mill, bad manners need nothing more to compass their ends, than that gentlemen should look on and do nothing.
And to quote one of my favorite song lyrics, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. When you don’t act, you are doing something. So the question I would ask yourself (if I were you, and I’m not) is whether the highly hypothetical offense you might cause a woman by calling some rando dude on his classlessness is more important to you than the manifest systemic harassment which women (including, presumably, the women in your life) experience from just such strangers. Worst case scenario, the woman who’s catcaller you call out tells you to mind your own business, which seems like a small burden compared to that of putting up with strangers following one’s self down the street for 3 minutes when every signal they’re getting back is one of obvious discomfort.
I also think some men (not saying you, I don’t know you) use those arguments you highlighted in order to rationalize avoiding involving themselves in awkward situations. At least I know there was a time in my youth when I used uncertainties to bolster inaction.
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That could be an aspect to it, sure.
But how on earth you could you come to that conclusion? Are we watching the same videos?
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Best bass player ever!
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Because I’ve been on the receiving end of so many?
I honestly don’t think its about getting laid. I don’t think any of them think it’ll work as a method for achieving sex.
I think its more like the guy in the video I posted, “you just gotta let 'em know they did a good thing” - he needs to let them know he finds them good looking.
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I went to NYC couple weeks back with my 3 daughters. I told the oldest (14) to tell me if anyone says “hey baby” or anything. I just wanted to know - wasn’t going to pick fights. I saw a couple guys look at her creepily but she said nobody said anything to her. The guys that looked at her probably would have been surprised that she was only 14, but it’s not like it’s cool to do an obvious scan over on an 18yo either.
if your fucks continue to be undistributed:
[/quote]
Thank you, this line won the internet for me today, and this is forever more how I will describe my fucks not given! Hooray, I learned something from the internet today!
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Yeah, it’s on everyone’s shoulders to step up when someone is getting harassed and say it’s not cool. I remember when I was heavily pregnant on the subway and some guy was endlessly hassling a young woman, who clearly was not digging it. I called him out on it, and he started hassling me about my “weight problem” – it was absolutely hilarious to see what a pathetic fool he was when someone actually stood up to him. It’s hard to be that person when it is you getting hassled, but usually relatively easy when you’re not (and in my case was with other people, in broad daylight)
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Not all women in NYC see it as problematic either.
A brave point. Although I don’t 100% agree with it I do think that not all verbal interactions on the street involving looks are necessarily intended by the speaker to harass (or, as Missy_Pants accurately points out, demonstrate their power in a public place). There are some cultural differences that complicate matters. Someone can call another beautiful in a public place, and not mean to intimidate the person – but if that makes the auditor feel uncomfortable (as obviously it does for many) then it becomes harassment. There’s a guy on my block who’s been calling me beautiful for these past 20 years, and I don’t mind it one bit (and he can tell) – I honestly do not believe that he’s trying to intimidate me (or get laid), that’s just the way we interact.
I grew up in NYC, and I got a lot of attention as a teen-ager, and subsequently. And some of that was harassment, and some of it wasn’t. And it was pretty clear to me who was trying to intimidate me, and who was being social. My impression is that nowadays there are a lot of people who did not grow up “on the streets” in the same way, and are a lot less comfortable with any interaction with strangers in public. For example, I’ve seen asking for the time construed as harassment. It’s hard because people should be able to walk down the streets without feeling threatened, but, at the same time, it makes me sad to see almost all of the social back-and-forth of the street, that used to be normal, labeled as harassment.
That said, it was always clear to me that there was one very firm boundary on the street – physical contact. People could say whatever, but no one could touch you. When I was a kid some man tried to touch me (not sexually, just put his hand on my shoulder) and my dad slugged him. No one else on the street batted an eye. (Worth noting that in the video the last dad only gets upset about the way his daughter is being treated by the guy after he puts his hand on her).
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This is so important!
So often this conversation gets derailed into “what you can’t pay someone a compliment anymore?” - and its simply not true. Compliments are lovely. Yelling “NICE TITS” is not. It should be pretty easy to tell the difference no? LOL
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One interesting aspect is that this seems to be largely a cultural thing. My wife, who is very cute if I do say so myself, hardly ever gets catcalled on the streets here in Vienna. Personally, I would never even think about doing something like that. It would feel extremely awkward to me, like what the hell would I expect? It´s not that I´ve never seen it happen, but it´s not commonplace as far as I can tell.
Second, I would say there is a difference in quality. In Paris, my wife has been politely complimented on her outfit on the street, in Croatia an older gentleman came over to us and said that he was sorry but he just had to say how pretty she was. She didn´t feel harrassed, because they were friendly and polite. Complimenting someone on the street can be charming, but not if the vibe is creepy and desperately horny. Unfortunately, some men either don´t seem to know the difference or care.
Anything other than utmost politeness isn´t going to get you anywhere anyway in an impersonal setting like on the streets, where people have somewhere to go and women are in a defensive mindset anyway because of those pathetic creeps.
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I totally agree that culture makes a big difference. On the south side of Chicago, it’s polite to acknowledge someone as you pass each other on the street, but it’s done with a nod, “good morning”, a joke about the weather, etc. and everyone keeps doing what they were doing. It’s the stopping what you’re doing, or worse, approaching the person (closing the distance) and trying to get them to stop that divides being civil in public to being rude and/or creepy. As for comments about body parts: that’s never polite, period.
I think it might be interesting to have boyfriends and husbands in the 15-30 year old range watch when it happens to their girlfriend/wife. That’s really the right target audience to make them rethink their own public behavior toward women.
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On the other hand, my sister is the sort that would turn the tables on cat callers in the UK. She could mock them back in a way that had their friends laughing at them for being foolish enough to open their mouths. But she was left scared to leave her apartment when working in Italy and came home with bruises from the constant grabbing and pinching there … 
At the other end of the scale is the PRC. Street behaviour there is crass in an inconsiderately pushy, barging, spitting, shouting, no queuing kind of way. But very little or no sexual harassment.
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That’s a really good point and one I should be considering in my mental calculations. And while asking, “Is that bothering you?” is also invasive it seems a lot less likely to be annoying, or at least like it would be less annoying.
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“Is that bothering you” is a good one. On numerous occasions (I live at night, so I get to see it more often), I have yelled across the street “Do you need me to call the cops?” I do it whenever I smelly anything slightly fishy when I see people interacting at 2AM. I leave the obvious drug deals alone, but if someone seems even slightly distressed, I’ll holler to wake up the neighbors “I can call the cops! Do you need that?”
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