It’s really pretty fucking simple. If this were your wife/girlfriend/sister/daughter/mother, what would you think of this sort of thing regularly happening to her?
I guess I’ll just put my hand on my hip, and screech “Oh my god I love your purse girlfriend, is it a Coach?” Surely they won’t mind that.
ETA.
if it was my wife, daughter girlfriend, I’d take it as a complement if someone said she had beautiful eyes. That’s far from harassment.
That wasn’t directed at your post (or even the OP, since he’s obviously just trolling), it was more directed at the thread and subject in general.
The idea that you must accommodate even the unreasonable people is not one everyone shares. You aren’t a special snowflake who gets to preemptively end all social interactions with everyone else because something makes you feel bad.
The compliment thing is reasonable, because it is indeed not something people generally do. Expecting people not to be generally friendly and greet you in passing? I’m sorry, but that’s about as ridiculous as ZPG thinking men shouldn’t offer their hands for a handshake.
A greeting is an offering. You can respond to it or not. If it makes you feel harassed, your sensitivity level is set too high. It is unreasonable for everyone else to try to predict who is unreasonably sensitive.
A greeting to a stranger is not rude. It doesn’t become rude because a lot of people do it. Yes, it may annoy you if you get it a lot and are in an asocial mood. The world doesn’t revolve around your moods though.
At least, that’s my opinion. I know that New York City is pretty much a whole other nation. But my understanding is that you are more tolerant of rudeness, not less tolerant towards politeness.
Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t propose ending all social interaction.
Blah, blah, blah. I didn’t say I expected people to not be generally friendly.
Hey, people are telling you they feel harassed. And lots of people are telling you that. But because you are a special snowflake, you feel free to ignore what a lot of people are telling you, just so you can blunder through life.
Yet, you seem to think the world revolves around you.
And my understanding is that you are a narcissistic tool who is incapable of putting themselves in someone else’s shoes. Or reading what I post accurately.
This isn’t hard. Catcalls are obnoxious and sometimes scary. Don’t do them. If your friends or family do them, call them out. Thad really as complex as it needs to be.
“Completely rapey”? What the heck does that mean? :eek:
Thank heavens you’re here to mansplain this to all us snowflake ladies.
Is “Good morning” a catcall? How about “Have a nice day!” Or, “Wow, you have pretty eyes!”
If a 80-year-old woman said I had the most beautiful eyes, I would smile and say thank you and quickly forget about the incident.
But if a 40-something guy paid me this compliment, hell fucking yeah I would be creeped out.
Now if the guy complimented me on my shoes or my bag or my haircut, I’d feel flattered. But once he starts talking about actual body parts, it’s moved from “isn’t he sweet” to “he’s trying to jump my bones”.
For some reason, lots of guys feel compelled to tell women how beautiful they are. It’s almost as if they feel that every woman they see has low self-esteem and so it’s their job to boost it. But a compliment isn’t just a compliment, because nothing is free in this world. A random guy who says “You’re looking good today” wants something from you. Even if he’s fine with just a smile, he still wants something from you that you may not want to give him.
I had to remind my father of this one day when he expressed to me how angry he gets when he tries to do something nice for women (like take their shopping cart to the corral for them) and they reject him. I asked him if he would like it if I said “yes” to every strange guy who pulled a nice guy act on me. Of course he said no. Not father wants his daughter to be the type who says “yes” easily. And a woman who smiles at every guy who smiles or catcalls or compliments is in effect saying that she wants more.
Well, sure. But feelings do not always coincide with reality. How often have we seen people who felt insulted on this board when no one was insulting them?
The question is whether she is really being harassed. My proposal is that, if the people are doing something rude, then, sure, they may be contributing to harassment. If they are doing something genuinely polite, with no ulterior motive, then, no matter how many there are, it isn’t harassment. No matter how many times you add 0 to 0, you still get 0. Something needs to be at least rude to add up to harassment.
Of course, I’d argue that there were not only rude people in the clip, people who were actually being harassing. In fact, I saw maybe a couple regular greetings. But that’s still more than should be in a video that’s supposed to be highlighting the harassment. They should not be lumped in with the rest.
(Do note my other comments were not about the video, but general statements about what is and isn’t acceptable. Most greetings in the video clearly have a slight catcall quality to them, which makes them different from the friendly greetings I said should be acceptable.)
If, over the course of 10 hours, you got 100 telemarketing calls, with a range in tone from outright scams, calls from businesses you deal with legitimately, to entirely worthy charities, I would be willing to bet that by the end of the day, even the muscular dystrophy guys are getting told to fuck off. Now imagine if they’re right in front of you, and some percentage of them might want to physically harm you.
When I lived in China, I could not walk down the street without some dude calling out “Hello!”
Sometimes it was a nice, friendly hello. Or it could be just to make me look. Or a mocking hello, like “Hellllllllloooooooooooooooooo?!” Or just a shout at the foreigner. There were a thousand ways to say hello, and it was kind of amusing for a little while.
After a short while, all these fucking idiots saying hello at least 40 times a day - I’m not exaggerating in the least - was like Chinese water torture. Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!
And then when you’ve had enough, you would hear: Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!
So you can’t help but feeling that you can’t go outside without hearing the same damn thing, every damned day. Over and over and over.
So, men, just because three or five friendly people may say hello to you each day as you walk to work doesn’t mean that you know what it’s like to be the object of annoying behavior. You have no fucking clue, and you ought to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.
Wow. He never had a single date in high school did he?
That must have been grating.
There’s a clear and obvious difference between, say, giving a short, friendly hello to a person with whom you make eye contact on a mostly empty sidewalk, and a hello given to someone with whom you haven’t engaged on a crowded street.
It may be hard to describe how the context is different, but I think it’s pretty clear.
The lesson is not “never say hello to women,” but rather “don’t single out women for interaction because of their gender/age.”
Depends on a lot. There’s so much undefined about that situation. Tone of voice, inflection, word choice, body language . . . these are all things that are of vital importance. Making equivalences like this is not possible, and willfully ignores what is the actual issue at hand.
On the surface, though, I’d say no. Hypothetical woman is having intentional communication with the cashier. A short, “hey, I like your belt; cool buckle,” or something is probably fine, regardless of gender.
Too bad New York City doesn’t allow this woman to carry a gun, so she has to feel threatened by all those lowlives and thugs harassing her. I bet that guy walking next to her would have backed off in a hurry if he saw the imprint of a Glock under her skintight jeans.
All this really proves is that New York City is a cesspool that’s full of these people. I’m a 6’2" 200 lb guy and I get people harassing me like that when I walk through certain parts of New York. Not sexually, but just bored, obnoxious jackasses with nothing better to do than fuck with and intimidate passerby. It is definitely fucking obnoxious, but I would interpret it primarily as an indication of how big, liberal cities are unpleasant shitholes.
I note that most of the harassers are, shall we say, likely Democrat voters?
When I was 16, I worked at Six Flags. One day while I was sweeping up funnel cake crumbs, I bumped into a guest who must have been 7 feet tall. He was the tallest guy I’d ever seen before. I exclaimed, “Have you ever played basketball before? You’re SO TALL!”
The guy didn’t miss a beat. “Like no one has ever told me that before! How original!”
I was instantly embarrassed.
If I had been the only person who had ever asked about him playing basketball, it would have been unreasonable for him to get so irritated with me. But I was no doubt the eleventy-billionth person. The eleventy-billionth anything is always annoying.
So now when I see a very tall person, I control myself. I don’t make “tall” jokes or ask stupid questions about the air up there. I try to treat tall people just like I would anyone else. Because that’s how I want to be treated.
I’m a guy and I wouldn’t have made such a comment and would have found it rude if I saw it being done.
NOr did anyone say anything down right degrading such as "Show us your T##S, nor even “GIve me a kiss.”