Catcalls and Things People Shout at You from Cars

In My Humble Opinion
41

I had no idea how common this was. So what I’m getting is that having alcohol, a car, and a penis all at once leads people to shout gibberish that essentially means “I have a car and a penis” at anyone who doesn’t appear to have both. Threat of using penis to dominate implied, terrifying escalation to stalking, assault, and / or rape optional.

I know people say cars are phallic symbols, but I never took that seriously before. I’m starting to think women should carry mace and darts dipped in curare.

42

One Friday night walking down the stretch of repulsive frat-boy bars in Pittsburgh, on the South Side, I had some idiot drunk fratboy type lean out of the window of a passing car to yell that I was a cow. Apparently I offended their sensibilities by walking while female and fat. I flipped them off and kept going to meet my mother.

While she and I waited to cross the street at the next corner, there’s the car again and this time they yelled “Cow and old lady!” So I picked up a chunk of concrete and heaved it at the car as it took off from the light. Insult me all you want, but don’t talk about my mama.

43

Once I was walking home, and a guy in a car parked on the side of the street rolled down his window. As pungent white smoke rolled out of the open window, he offered an exchange of weed for pussy (his weed, my pussy). I declined and kept walking. In a voice that was at the same time both hurt and shocked, he shouted after me, “But this is the good stuff!” He seemed genuinely surprised by the fact that I was not interested in prostituting myself out for weed.

44

Yeah, weed ho just doesn’t quite the same ring to it as crack ho.

45

Mostly this and sometimes “queer”, which I don’t get it; a bald guy wearing a tank top and shorts while riding a bicycle sets off some douchebag’s gaydar? Maybe it’s that I’m clean and in good shape. It’s funny when they have to stop at a red light and I catch up with them, spit on them through the open passenger window, then brandish a U-lock threateningly.

I’ve had cars full of young girls howl at me as I ride my bike along the street too, which is good for my ego. Too bad they never slow down to chat me up.

46

I was in my early twenties and I was with my boyfriend and his father at the commercial building they owned in a not so great part of town. For some reason that I don’t remember, they dropped me off in the front of the building which was right on busy Michigan Avenue. They pulled the car around the back and entered through the rear door of the building while I waited for them to unlock and let me in the front door. This was no big deal at the time because it was daytime and I was very familiar and fairly comfortable being in this part of town.
Within a matter of seconds, a middle aged, balding, chubby guy pulls up in his car, rolls down the window and says, “How much?” At first it didn’t register what he said and I said, “Pardon me?” He says again, “How much?” My stupid, naive self is thinking, “How much what?”
Then my brain kicks in and I get red faced and flustered when I realize what the hell he’s saying to me. I spun around and nervously began knocking on the front door to get BF and dad to hurry up.
I was dressed in an over sized T- shirt and ratty jeans with no make-up and hair in a pony tail. I guess it doesn’t take much if a guy is horny enough.

47

Once, while walking home from high school, someone threw an open can of tuna at my from the window of their car. I’m assuming they knew me from school, but I didn’t see who it was, so who knows? Could have been a random tunaing.

Around that same period of time, there used to be this pair of ten year old girls who rode their bikes home along the same path I would walk. Every time they passed me, they’d call me fat. Man, I hated those little girls. Really, what do you do in a situation like that? They’re adorable little girls. Anything you do to them is going to end up making you feel like an asshole, no matter how much they deserve it.

I confess that, to this day, I harbor the secret hope that they grew up to be the sort of person that would jump at the offer Arglefraster got.

48

Since I was 12, I have had various things shouted at me from cars, perhaps because that was the age at which my breasts decided to start growing. I still get catcalls, mostly on account of having the nerve to own D-cups and walk around in regular clothing like a non-freakishly-endowed female, apparently. I’ve even had drivers slow down and offer me rides while sitting at my usual bus stop waiting for the bus home from work. FTR, I usually wear black, non-form-fitting T-shirts and long skirts or “mom” jeans, not particularly provocative IMO.

The weirdest thing anyone yelled at me was when I was 14 and walking to the library one day. A bunch of guys in a car slowed down and one guy held a baby out the window while shouting “This baby wants a mommy!” in Spanish. :confused:

49

It’s pretty disgusting hearing about how so many people have gotten “nice tits!” or “nice ass!” yelled at them. No one has ever shouted those phrases at me from the safety of their cars, but two people actually went up to me and FELT my ass. Gross! When I was 15, I visited NYC with a couple of friends. We were walking down the street, and I was walking a bit ahead of everyone. I passed two guys, and the first guy slapped my butt. As I turned my head towards him in shock, the second guy proceeded to do the same thing in a very conspicuous manner, as he brought his arm high up and down on my bottom. I was absolutely mortified.

50

I get a similar comment almost every single time I walk somewhere around here. If I’m walking to work or the gym, invariably someone will drive by and shout something like “Go back to Mexico!” or the ever-eloquent “Goddamn beaner!” I’m as pale white as a goth kid.

When I was younger, I got the usual “Queer!” or “Fag!” screams. If I was walking somewhere with a friend with a skateboard, the skateboard would be incorporated into the yell. “Skater fags!” Hell, I also got guys just plain screaming at me, which is always weird with the Doppler effect. “aaA[SIZE=“2”]RRR[SIZE=“5”]GGGH[SIZE=“3”]hhhhh[SIZE=“1”]hhhhhh…[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]”

Last winter, walking downtown, dressed to the nines for a date, a pick-up truck slowed and someone inside yelled “Metrosexual!,” which simply confirmed for me that I was looking pretty spiffy.

51

Yes, I did. I do know what Google Image Search is, but I have never seen it abbreviated. So to me, it’s an obscure one.

52

Except for the solicitation stuff, these guys aren’t really trying to get ass. It’s about keeping women in their place, and that women’s appearance is a perfectly legitimate topic for public discourse in a way that men’s are not. Of course, if they got some ass out of it, they probably wouldn’t complain. It’s also often about seeming “cool” or “manly” in front of their guy friends.

I get catcalled all the time, not because I’m super hot but because I walk through Manhattan a lot. Mostly it falls into a few basic categories:

Being told to smile (because women should never look serious!)
Marriage proposals
“Positive” comments on my fatness (ie, “I love big/thick women!”)
Compliments on my hair
Incomprehensible gibberish from speeding cars and/or honking

A few stand out, however.

When I was in college outside LA, I was walking home from the Greyhound station. A guy came up to me on a bike and asked what homeless shelter I lived in (?!), and didn’t believe me when I said went to college there. Then he starts asking me questions about if I drink or do drugs or “party” or “date.” I answer in the negative to all of them, trying to walk faster, but this is a big, kinda scary guy on a bike. Finally, he offers me $45 for a “date,” at which point I tell him to fuck off. Luckily, he just laughs and rides away. I was really fucking shaken, doubly so because he thought I was homeless and therefore even more defenseless than I was. Asshole.

Slightly less unsettling, but still fucked up, I was walking to my office in Manhattan, on a side street. Another guy on a bike decided I looked good or something and decides to YELL at me, repeatedly, as I walked down the street with a bunch of other pedestrians. He just rode his bike back and forth down the street, yelling at me. I don’t think he was even yelling words, just sounds akin to “hubbahubba.” I didn’t think he was going to stop.

And the last story is not technically a catcall, but it made me feel very similarly. I was driving up I-95 in Florida, a very busy stretch of it. Now, I know I kind of stand out. I’m fat, I have a large and visible tattoo, and at the time I was driving a beater and, as I am wont to do when on road trips, probably singing along loudly to some music with the windows down because I didn’t have AC. I notice, out of the corner of my eye, that the car next to me was maintaining speed with me, and when I look over, I see a woman taking pictures of me with her cellphone while the male driver points and laughs at me. This is not an ambiguous “Maybe they like my car, or maybe they’re laughing at a humorous bumper sticker.” This is clearly a “Look, that fatty thought it was acceptable to be in public!” kind of pointing and laughing. I do the only thing that makes sense, and flip them off. This is somehow even more hilarious but also insulting, so I guess they decide that they can’t let me get away. I try switching lanes, driving faster, driving slower, but they keep hounding me. At this point, I’m crying and I really want to just ram their car, the only thing stopping me, really, is that a bunch of innocent bystanders would also get hurt. I’m finally able to get off at an exit where they can’t follow. I sat on the side of the road for a long time, crying and pounding the steering wheel, sure that they were going to hunt me down some more.

So, yeah, not catcalling, but it gave me that same sense of insecurity (this guy could hurt me if I say/do the wrong thing!) and objectification (all I am is tits and ass (or fat) to you!). It can really fuck with your psyche, even if it is just the crazy homeless guy who sits outside the McDonalds next to your office and tells you your a fat bitch one day and asks you to marry him the next. If a random guy says hi to me on the street, do I say hi back? Because some guys see that as an invitation to try and sex me up. But if I ignore it, I can get called nasty names. It’s really a horrible situation to be in, and I know a lot of women who always have headphones on in public so they can’t hear it. And it’s not about the way we dress or the neighborhoods we’re in or the time of night (and, frankly, even if it were, it wouldn’t excuse it). I know women who have gotten catcalled on their way to church Sunday morning wearing conservative clothes; 8 months pregnant women in sweatpants taking a walk on a weekday afternoon. I’ve gotten propositioned walking along a subway platform with my husband in such a way that my husband couldn’t hear it. It really is just constant.

53

I get this one a lot, once or twice a week for a good couple of decades, and I’m a guy.

54

Yeah, I get told to smile all the time. I’m a guy.

The things that have been shouted at me from cars are the usual - “faggot”, etc.

Also, when I was car-less and walking to and from work, people would often honk at me. I have no idea why. One person swerved towards me. Another threw a plastic cup out his window in my general direction, but I’m not sure if his intent was to hit me or if he just felt like littering and didn’t care if it hit me.

It’s basically cowardly assholishness used to enforce social norms. “People don’t WALK, they DRIVE CARS, freak!” “You have long hair?! FAG!”

55

Once I was hanging out on Christopher Street, in the Village (New York City, two block from the Stonewall Inn, The Stroll).

A group of white guys drove by and yelled out the window, “NIGGGGGEEEEERRRRRR!”

I couldn’t even react because I had to stand there a minute, wondering why they hadn’t yelled out “FAGGGGGOOOOOTTTTT!”

56

Last night we went to the fair with my 2 1/2 year old niece. We took her to the swings near the fair. I was pushing her and a girl around 18 sat in the other swing and was talking away and swinging. I would have preferred she hadn’t rattled on about kids and whatever personal crap she had to rattle on about. A car with some other teen girls drive by and the girl on the swing starts screaming “Bitch! Bitch! Ya you Bitch!”. I’d preferred she hadn’t started that crap with the neice next to her. Stupid girl you come around a small kid and start trying to chat with her, and then you start yelling bitch over and over at a car of girls.

57

I don’t know if this counts because it’s not screaming and the person had to slow down to do it, but someone I didn’t know at all and looked kinda creepy asked, want a ride?

Another time, a guy was mocking me as I passed in front of his car at a crosswalk. I flipped him the bird after I passed and he squawked like a bird. That was weird.

58

Cross-posted from the other thread:

The Saturday before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, we were coming out of New Orleans. My daughter had been supposed to move into the dorm at Tulane that day, but the university told all the students to go back home. She was driving her car a few car lengths in front of my hubby and I. There was a truck with some young bucks in it which was in the lane next to her. The traffic was moving in a jerky manner, kind of speed up - slow down - speed up - slow down. As these guys passed her one dude yells out the window “HEY BAY-BEEEEE!!”. She ignored him. This pissed off hubby so he worked his way up into traffic to catch up to these guys. We pulled up next to them and hubby bellows out the window “HEY BAY-BEEEEE !!!” with a very menacing expression.

The guys were so shaken they pulled off at the next exit.

Heh.

59

Like others have mentioned, I’ve been shouted at from cars since before I hit puberty, a very long time now. But two incidents stand out and still make me go :dubious:.

The first was when I was pregnant. I was VERY pregnant at the time but you couldn’t tell that by looking at me from the back. I just stuck way out in front, but looked like a regular-sized 16 year old girl from behind. One day I was walking to school and some guys came up in a car from behind me. They shouted and howled and stuff until they came up even with me and saw the Stomach. The catcalls turned into “Dayum! You should have danced all night!”

Another time, many years later, I was riding my bike and some guy came by and said “I wish my face was your bicycle seat!”.

Oh and there was also a carload of guys who cruised up while I was riding my bike at about 18 - 20mph and actually grabbed my ass. Scared the holy crap out of me.

60

Maybe that was just Yoda bragging?