Commodity is perhaps the better word.
Cool. I taught my daughter to throw overhand, and also how to throw a spiral. Much more important than being pretty. She got along better with the boys, than the girls — too much drama there.
She ended up playing baseball, hardball, into high school.
When I was young, one of the aims of the ‘Women’s Liberation’ movement was to give women a voice, rather than to have men just tell them what they were thinking.
Still is. Now (and often then, also) we called it feminism.
The fact that men are still trying to tell us how to behave doesn’t mean that we’re letting them. Or, for that matter, that we used to let them ‘tell [us] what [we’re] thinking’; even when we sometimes kept our thoughts to ourselves, or within groups of women.
What did they think a 13-year-old was “pretty enough” for? And did you agree with them? And is that how you wanted your daughter to see herself - as “pretty enough for college age men to _______”?
I’m now in my 50s, and within the past five years I’ve been catcalled - but I don’t spend time in the places where its likely any longer (I’m almost totally suburban, shop at strip malls, I’m not walking down populated streets) When I was younger, and lived and worked downtown it happened at least once a week. Living in the 'burbs, working in a office building in the 'burbs - where everyone in the parking lot is a coworker, shopping at places like Target - those places I’ve had very little of it. When I go places with my female shaped twenty year old youngest, they get catcalled fairly consistently if they are expressing femininity in a “high risk of catcall” area (urban, outside) - which is one of the reasons they’ve gone for “reject gender, embrace androgyny”
For reference - I’m defining catcalling as a stranger who sees you in a public place and yells something. “Hey baby, you’re hot” “Can I get a smile, honey” “Can I get your number” “I want some of that.” Or whistles or hoots. Or honks. It isn’t a guy in the elevator who says “cute shoes” - that guy isn’t catcalling, he’s probably gay. It isn’t a coworker who has awkwardly and unwantedly flirted with me - that’s a different issue. It almost always happens on a street or other outdoors public place - sometimes in an indoor public place like a bar.
We raised our female children very differently. I have a strong suspicion that if her father would have asked ours at thirteen why they were getting catcalled the answer would have been “because they are assholes, Dad…duh.” Its a coin toss whether we would have then gotten a lecture on the sexual objectification of women throughout history.
The point of mentioning the encounter was that it was not creepy or sexual objectification. But I guess you had to be there? I’m a large man who used to have a terrible temper. They would have been very brave indeed to creep on my daughter with me right there (and I would have responded in kind) but it simply wasn’t that way. It was a complement and I responded the same way I would have if someone told her she was pretty.
My daughter has always been extremely confident but was perhaps a bit naive at 13. She’s now 17 and getting ready to leave for college. She and her mother and I still joke about the encounter and her response.
Two grownish men were telling your middle-school child she was sexually desirable.
This and that they were on the hunt.
Just based on the details you gave, I can think of many different possible interpretations and connotations behind what was going on in your anecdote. Some of them are definitely creepy and inappropriately sexual. Others are more innocent, though they still have some things to unpack and leave me uneasy. But, as you said, I wasn’t there.
A compliment can be creepy. It can be sexual objectification. It can be inappropriate.
You’re giving me a flashback to this old guy who refuses to retire in my workplace. He’ll come up to one of his woman coworkers and say something, “You’re the most beautiful, delicate creature my eyes have ever seen.” And when that coworker rolls her eyes or ignores him, his response is always, “Sheesh, I was just being nice!”
His “niceness” would be appropriate in a different context. Like a pick-up bar for 70-year-olds. But it is not appropriate for the workplace. The women he works with shouldn’t have to indulge him politely just because he is stupid and can’t get with the times.
Whistling at a kid is on the lower end of the transgressive scale. But it is still not cool. It’s OK for your daughter to not be bothered by it. But if one day someone whistles at her and she has a negative reaction to it, don’t be That Guy. That Guy always say something belittling like “That guy was just paying you a compliment. What’s the big deal?” Your response as a loving father should be, “Fuck that guy!”
Sure it was.
How on earth is it not sexual objectification for a couple of strangers on the street to whistle at her?
How on earth is it not creepy for them to be whistling at a 13 year old?
The fact that they were almost certainly not intending to attack her, which may well have been true even if you hadn’t been there, has nothing to do with it. Most catcallers aren’t intending to proceed with sex right then and there.
And note: if you think it’s your presence that makes it all right, she’s presumably out on the street without you sometimes.
– It’s not entirely the whistle. If, say, she’d gotten all dressed up for a party and her teen brother or a good friend had whistled at her, presuming their relationship is generally OK, that’s not necessarily creepy. It’s the whistle in the context of strangers on the street (though a whistle from a known person in other locations and contexts might also be creepy and objectifying.)
Kind of off-topic but was he always this way or is it recent?
From here.
‘My husband, who has dementia, is making inappropriate sexual comments to care home staff, and I’m worried it may get worse. How do I balance his needs with other people’s?’
The diseases that cause dementia can damage parts of the brain that usually stop us behaving in inappropriate ways. Remarks or actions of a sexual nature can cause problems, particularly if directed at a friend or family member. However, it is important to realise that they are usually a symptom of the person’s dementia. Care home staff should know this and be trained in how to respond.
I remember one day my parents, my twin, and I were walking through a crowded park. I was 13 or 14.
We walked through a throng of young men and they were hooting at my twin and me. My father was clearly uncomfortable but said nothing as he ushered us through. We were almost through the thicket when one of the guys got up his courage and groped my butt. I don’t know for sure whether my parents noticed, but I think they did. They had to know something had gone down because the hoots got so loud and obnoxious. Once we got away from them, my parents really should have assessed the situation and asked if we were OK. But they didn’t. We didn’t say a single word about what had gone down. It’s like it didn’t happen.
I wish my father had stood up for me and my sister. I know there would have been some risk involved if he had said something, but at least I would have come away from the experience knowing what a “good man” looks like. Instead, I was left with the impression that “boys will be boys” and it’s my job to deal with that. My father is damn lucky that this impression didn’t stay with me. I had to learn the truth on my own, though.
I’m sure he has lost his marbles in recent years, but he was like this 15 years ago. And all the coworkers I’ve talked to about him say he has always been like this. Why he hasn’t been fired yet is at the top of the universe’s unsolved mysteries.
Thanks, that settles that one.
This also goes to show how pervasive sexual objectification is - here two people are going to a third and saying “You’re a sex object” (and, also, I want to make sure that you know that I think of you as a sex object) and an observer completely missed that it’s pretty much the definition of sexual objectification.
It’s kind of like the “what’s water” joke. It’s so thoroughly enmeshed that we don’t even notice it.
Now, was it a threat at that moment? Probably not. But yes, they sexually objectified her while you watched. And they were very clear to both of you that that’s what they were doing.
Again, I’d like you to answer the question “pretty enough for what?”
I agree a complement can be creepy, as can a whistle. I’d even agree whistles are creepy most of the time. But none of the eyewitnesses to what happened thought it was creepy. It seems clear the majority of dopers in this discussion believe it is impossible for a whistle to not be sexual objectification. I disagree with the majority.
Getting hit on is not the same thing as getting catcalled. Sometimes getting hit on is inappropriate and annoying, depending on the circumstances, and exactly what the guy (or women, for that matter), says. But there are times and places where getting hit on is OK.
Some people are very bad at hitting on other people, and when they try, it always comes off as creepy, and some people (IME, it happens always to be men) cannot seem to hit on other people, or even flirt, without a predatory edge, but those activities do not need to be that way.
Catcalling is axiomatically inappropriate. There is never a time nor place for it, and no acceptable way to do it. …Well, I guess that actually depends on your ultimate goal. If you are trying to be gross and offensive, and intimidate woman, mazel tov, you nailed it. But in my opinion, polite society should not have a place for those activities. I wish, I wish men who catcalled were called out by other men-- or shunned, and would learn not to do these things.