FWIW I live in Trinidad in a majority black area, and I hear a lot of “sooting” or catcalling. Sooting is a person making a loud kiss noise at someone they find attractive.
Almost all is done by blue collar or casually dressed men, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man dressed in office clothes or a suit and tie do it. As almost everyone is the same race, it does seem to be a class thing.
Surely you can see why it might be a mistake to draw a direct equivalence here. I, too, have taken it as a compliment on those rare occasions when gay men have catcalled or done something similar. But that happens “once in a blue moon” instead of “every damn day,” and the number of straight men who are victims of sexual violence at the hands of gay men is vanishingly small.
Honestly try to put yourself in this woman’s shoes. What if you were subject to dozens of catcalls, come-ons, whistles, etc. nearly every single day? What if the men doing this were almost uniformly larger, stronger, and more aggressive than you, such that you’d have almost no chance of defending yourself without a weapon? What if a sizable minority of these men became angry or verbally abusive towards you if failed to give an acceptably chipper response? What if some of these men – a small percentage, but enough that there are a few of them every month – did something horribly creepy after catcalling, like the guy who followed the girl in the video for 5 minutes? And what if 1 in 5 straight men, including in all likelihood some of your friends, had reported being the victim of a rape of attempted rape at the hands of a gay man, in addition to countless instances of stalking and domestic violence?
Do you really think if you lived in that world you’d just take it as a compliment when some stranger on the street – bigger, stronger, totally unknown to you – says out of the blue “Hey, how you doin’?” Because I think that would make me either nervous or pissed off almost every damn time. And I think you’re not being honest with yourself if you figure you’d be fine with it.
I’ll probably be bitched out for posting this but…
Once I was walking behind a woman who was young and attractive, she had been sooted by at least five guys and she did the expected thing to all of them avert gaze and do not acknowledge. Then an obviously homeless man sooted her just as all the others did, she EXPLODED with angry cursing, telling him how dare he soot her and don’t even think about it and ranting.
It was obvious the sooting itself did not bother her, but someone so beneath her as a homeless man well that was another story. I found it kind of funny(and no I am not defending anyone who did it).
No; you don’t see it because by their own admission the creators of the video edited white men out.
Was it? Or was the tension in her building and building with each one, until finally she let it out against the sixth man? Who she felt safer expressing her anger at, either because she’d yelled at him before and he took it okay, or because he was smaller and weaker looking than the other men, or because she knew he wouldn’t follow her and leave all his personal belongings behind on the street unattended?
I’m not saying any of these are true or are what really happened. But they are reasons I’ve yelled back at homeless guys, but not the others, and I think they’re the kind of motivations you’re unlikely to accurately guess while watching it happen to someone else, rather than having it happen to you.
I don’t get “sooted” by throngs of males. There may have been a time when this would have happened, but not anymore. But everyday at least one male will shout at me, “Hey, beautiful!”
This doesn’t bother me. Because almost always, these people are winos. Often elderly. A drunk old man perched on a stoop just isn’t that threatening. Also, since I pass by these people on a twice-a-day basis and none of them have tried to escalate their greetings to something more aggressive, I am not afraid to smile and wave at them. I guess I kind of see the winos as potential body guards, since they are ubiquitous and have a certain awareness of the street. I need every extra eye on my back that I can get. So in exchange for my friendliness, I’m hoping they will look out for me in case an unsavory character tries something with me.
But I avoid the park where the young ruffians hang out. They are much more aggressive with their “friendliness”. Once of those guys galloped next to me for a good five minutes, trying to get me to invite him home even though I was practically yelling at him to leave me the fuck alone. I stopped taking that particular route after that. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
In the 19th century, it was considered highly disrespectful and boorish if a gentleman passed a lady in the street and did not acknowledge her with some kind of greeting, at least touching the brim of his hat. There are some civilized countries where people stilll do.
I was reading a thread on reddit and some of the comments mentioned how she walked through the worst parts of NYC in that video. So there is that factor in the video, that they picked areas they knew this would happen.
Also some of those same NYC locals said a white guy walking through that area would get commented on by the locals, because that is what they do. Attractive women get commented on, ugly women do, anyone who stands out gets called out for walking around there because people have nothing else to do.
Also I heard some people on another board say that in black culture cat calling sometimes works. I don’t think it ever works in white culture, but in latino or black culture does it ever work or result in positive responses? If so, maybe that is why people do it.
When I was in college I could walk up to a strange woman and talk to her. Chances were about 50%+ she enjoyed the attention (if not I picked up on that and walked away). Outside of college those ratios would not be nearly as favorable. Maybe it is a cultural thing and it actually works in some places. I don’t know.
To Der Trihs, the fact that the wind blows is an affirmation of American racism and desire to kill brown people.
Yeah, that part sort of backfired and lent itself to calling attention to the “wrong issue”.
And BTW in some of our cultures guys ***are ***expected to do this sort of stuff loudly enough for the rest of the posse and sundry bystanders to hear it, so they DO make better video.
Similar in the Puerto Rican community. And for that matter, similar in the white anglo community. Dudes at the construction site will catcall, the investment bankers will not.
“Good morning, ma’am” is a very different thing from “Hey, hot-lookin’!” or “Dayum, dat ass!”
She’s absolutely not walking through the worst parts of the city. A lot of it does take place in Harlem, which is a working/middle-class black neighborhood, but quite far from a slum. A lot of it is also in midtown (the tourist district, basically), and there’s some around SoHo, which is fairly upper-class.
I’ll grant that she’s not walking down Park Avenue, but nor is she hanging out in the projects in Brownsville or the South Bronx.
I don’t know what video people are watching, but there are multiple white guys that I saw making comments towards her.
How was it obvious that the “sooting” did not bother her? Do YOU ignore and avert your gaze from things that don’t bother you?
Why are some people still denying the fact that they edited out the white men, Der Thris did not make that up in his screwed up head. That video was made to scare, not to inform or teach, and colored men are scarier than white men.
Ok, let’s assume all that is true. Women who walk many hours a day through distinct neighborhoods in NYC get cat-called. That is only somewhat interesting knowledge in its own right and only applies to rather unique and intentionally engineered situations. New York is one of the ‘world cities’ rather than a typical U.S. city. You are going to get people from lots of different cultures mixing on the streets there and some of them are going to do some things that they see as innocent or complimentary but others see as threatening.
I don’t like those types of public interactions either and that is why I don’t live in NYC or even visit there despite it being not very far away. However, I believe the implication is that this a universal phenomenon and that is not true. You can find it in Latino culture, black culture and some blue collar white cultures but not in middle class or suburban white culture. If anyone wants to be politely ignored, they can come live or visit where I live, 'The safest city in America", outside of Boston. There is no cat-calling from anybody. The only time strangers will yell out anything thing at all is when they want to see raffle tickets or Girl Scout cookies as a fundraiser.
If it bothers her that much, maybe she should find a place that suits her personality better. It isn’t like those particular neighborhoods are typical of the U.S. and the only ones available. I could find examples of neighborhoods all over the U.S. that would piss me off daily or make me feel unsafe and that is why I don’t live in them.
Watched the video two times more – three of the guys were almost certainly white, plus another four to six that may or may not have been white (faces were always blurred).
Anyone who thinks that upper- or middle-class white dudes don’t catcall is kidding themselves. I’ve walked through financial districts in a sea of wealthy white suit-wearing men and had one of them tell me in my ear “Damn, I could eat that ass.” My friend was walking on the Upper East Side of New York and had a white suit-wearing guy snap a picture of her just walking down the street, then make a kissing face at her. As a teenager growing up in whitebread Midwestern suburbs I had grown-ass white men hanging out of cars and hollering at me.
White dudes and wealthy dudes of every race absolutely cat-call women. And they can be even creepier–who’s more likely to be in an office building and ready to press up close to you in an elevator and try to whisper in your ear, a homeless-looking scraggly bum, or an anonymous guy in a suit?
You think NYC is bad?
I’ve read this thread and the one in the BBQ Pit. I think it’s very telling of America culture that so any people are latching on to the race thing. I watched the video and quite honestly didn’t even really register the race of any of the men. It wasn’t until it was pointed out here that I payed attention.
So, maybe a little bit of self reflection on that is warranted. Do you all really pay that much attention to race? Maybe it’s you who are a little bit racist, and not necessarily the creator of the video. It feels like a red herring, tbh.
They literally admit to removing the white men, what part of this are you missing?
how many white men were removed? i think before we declare the video a massive fraud we should determine the answer to that question.