Nah, we’re just playin’. We looove getting catcalled and cornered in parking lots. Why, I’m still fantasizing about the 45 year old brick layer who exposed himself to my girlfriends and me on the playground in '83. When he gets out of prison, Ima call him up. And the guy who followed me from Banner Elk to Asheville in '89? I’m still posting Missed Connections ads for him. The three guys who followed me for two miles while yelling propositions and laughing at Hilton Head in '04? I still regret declining their proposal for a gang bang. I love it when strange men make sexual come ons when I’m far from home. I despise safety and security, and every single time a strange man comments on my body or looks, I take him home and have sex with him. In fact, I’m going to PM you my home address.
For some reason I’m tempted to get a recording of my cat yowling in the morning, put it on my phone, and play it every time I see a guy catcalling.
Won’t do a bit of good, Jragon. Guys that do this believe they are taking the piss out of girls who think they are too good for them. Once herd behavior kicks in, they forget all about their mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, and daughters in the pursuit of some shitty street cred from their bros.
Oh, I doubt it would do good, but kitties.
I have to make sure you know I was being sarcastic, because I would be mortified to the bottom of my soul if someone thought I was being serious. Like Dinsdale was being serious.
Here’s another tiresome story for you lucky, lucky men who have never had to deal with any of this shit (hey, what is that word…begins with a “p”?)): I’m sitting here counting the number of tiresome stories I have and I feel lucky that I only have seven. And I’m practically a recluse. I know four women who were raped, one of whom was critically injured during the attack and is lucky to be alive. Every woman I know has experience with harassment if not assault. Which do you think is more tiresome: reading the stories or dealing with this reality?
Thanks for the post, Jimmy. A lot of food for thought there.
Made me think of another facet. No one of us can really say whether another’s reaction is an over-reaction. Or put another way, each of us is entitled to over-react to the stimuli of our choice. Some folk have experiences which would cause most folk to feel threatened/insulted. Others seem to go out of their way to perceive insults/threats where it seems none was intended. But what’s the difference? They both are entitled to feel and respond in the manner they wish (subject to broad societal constraints.)
What sets me off, you might not notice. And whether I’m reacting as I do with the hopes of correcting and influencing another’s behavior, venting, redressing historical evils, doesn’t really matter.
I am well aware of the benefits that go with having been born white and male in 20th century America. I also tend to think most people tend towards ignorance and self centeredness. I expect very little of strangers, and am rarely disappointed.
The only things I CAN reasonably expect to have much of any control over, are my own actions/reactions. Yeah, I have all manner of faults. Whether certain thoughts pop into my mind or not, the one thing I CAN do is be discrete about how I act upon them. So by all means, teach your children it is not appropriate to objectify or stereotype others. But also teach them that if they are unable or unwilling to do so, at least be discrete about what they say and do where. Or to be prepared for unpleasant reactions should they choose not to be discrete.
As a man, I appreciate knowing about these stories and realizing what kind of effect my rude behavior could have. There must be recent victims of rape or stalking scattered throughout the people I see on the street. I don’t mind at all trying to behave so that I do not frighten them. I actually *like *to grow more aware of these things.
Dinsdale, there was some back and forth about what was meant to be taken literally and what was sarcastic, and I’m afraid I lost score - I’m not sure whether you were saying what you think or the opposite so I’m not sure if I’m really contradicting your view.
Still, I feel compelled to say this. It really isn’t that hard to try to avoid hurting people who have already been hurt plenty.
Thank you. I’ve lost track of how many war stories I have. It’s kind of exhausting to think about how many of them there are.
For those who don’t understand why any of this is relevant, or why being told we’re over-reacting when our reaction is, all things considered, pretty damn mild, I came across this today which explains some things pretty well, including some historical context and the present-day consequences thereof.
This point keeps coming up, and in a variety of different ways. In fact in the recent case of a dentist who fired an assistant for being pretty, it’s your responsibility to cloister it in a way that takes care of controlling men’s behavior, while men get to control pretty much everything else. It’s kind of the ultimate privilege to be in charge but pretend not to be when it suits some aggressive agenda.
Strangely enough, a little over 30 years ago I was crossing the parking lot of a Dallas grocery store (Tom Thumb Pepper Square!) with a friend, when we passed a convertible idling in the parking lot, in whose passenger seat a remarkable hottie in a tube top was seated.
When we were at a safe distance from the car, I said to my friend, “holy Christ, what a fox!” and my friend remarked back something about wanting a piece of that (we were 18…retrospective apologies to the young lady).
Unfortunately, while we were a safe distance from the car, we were very close to the gargantuan, muscle-bound boyfriend who had just passed us coming out of the store, and he took offense and began screaming at us: “Come over here! Am I a fox too? Fuck you two! COME OVER HERE NOW!” Happily we did not go over to him, and instead we broke into a run to the store and he didn’t follow us.
But my point is: getting a lecture on being a role model ain’t all that bad, given the possibilities.
You weren’t speaking to the ladies, you weren’t speaking too loudly. The lady was a self-important jerk, you were a wimp to apologize.
Some good stuff; some silly stuff. And I waded through the whole thing out of curiosity about what would be the straw that broke the camel’s back and got colander banned.
I feel so cheated.
“Am I a fox too?” Hahaa! That kills me.
I suggest you read the thread (and in particular the ‘war stories’) to learn why this is wrong.
This is why my standard catcall is “Hellooooooo Ladies”. With maybe a little bit of eyebrow wiggle. 
It can mean many things, and at the same time, nothing at all.
I’ve seen this idea expressed a few times in this thread and I just want to say, a lot of women have those experiences (probably most of us) but not all of us live our lives constantly paranoid about having them repeated. The statistical odds of me meeting a rapist in an elevator are pretty low.
As I young girl, I’ve been street harassed, cat called, had creepy guys follow me, and I was sexually abused for years, but it never occurred to me that this meant I was supposed to be afraid of every man I ever meet for the rest of my life. Until now I’ve generally had a :rolleyes: response to men who take this kind of talk personally, but this ‘‘all men are potential predators’’ attitude just seems so over the top and discriminatory to me that I felt the need to personally express that not all women think about men this way.
In fact, I think that thinking about men this way is kind of sexist. In no other situation, with no other social class would this kind of paranoid talk be acceptable. Try it out. ‘‘Swearing to not be so trusting, more leery of black people.’’ Since when does a person’s life experience give them a free pass to stereotype?
We aren’t little girls any more, we’re grown women. We have way more power than we did then.
I get that. I was raised the same way. But I think it’s an assumption not very well grounded in reality. The number of male predators is vanishingly small compared to the number of decent men. Can we stop cowering in the shadows?
This is not feminism to me. It feels wrong. It feels weak.
Ibanez, even though you are currently on my radar for ‘‘someone who obviously really hates women,’’ I actually agree with you.
As for Shakes’ situation, it was a little rude and a little funny too. Rude in the sense that it’s generally not polite to publicly catcall women. Funny in the sense that he got his ass handed to him in front of his son. Hopefully that’ll be a good lesson for the boy. But threatening? Not in a grocery store parking lot, not such a relatively mild/cheesy comment. If we were walking alone on a dark street it might be a different story, but this stuff is all about context.
Me too! What’s the story?
If it makes anybody feel better, my son shares in your humor at my expense. He more or less told me “I have a way with the ladies.” And by that, he really meant, I don’t.