Then, here as in other threads, we can agree to disagree.
~Max
That does not mean ‘we are both equally right.’
It means I think I’m right and you are wrong, while you think you are right and I am wrong, and between us two we drop the issue.
~Max
Anyone who thinks it is ok to wolf whistle a 13-year old girl is sick, imo. If I had a daughter and they did that to her, I would certainly have words with them at the very least!
I mean, I suppose whistling can communicate some form of appreciation other than sexual appeal, but a wolf whistle specifically is almost always meant to communicate appreciation of sexual appeal from what I’ve seen. Do people wolf whistle to communicate that they think a sunset, a bunch of flowers, a car, a dog, a horse, or their grandma are pretty? Do straight men use it to communicate that they think a boy or man are handsome? It’s specifically attractive women that the wolf whistle is used for (or more generally, attractive people of the gender that the whistler is attracted to).
If used on a young girl, I think it is likely that the whistler is not communicating that they think the girl is sexually attractive right now, but rather that they look like they would grow up to be sexually attractive. I concede that it is possible, but unlikely, that a whistle would just be to communicate a general admiration of aesthetics, but I would say a wolf whistle specifically has a far less likely chance.
I never had a single cat-call, ever.
My god, yes!
Definitely with the cars and horses, and even really elegant clothes that aren’t on a person yet, IME. And in that train of thought, plus the father and daughter saying there was nothing creepy about it, my humble opinion is that it is more likely that the stranger had an unusual sense of social norms than that he was literally being a pedophile.
~Max
No, it’s not a catcall if a woman does it. Yes, it’s a catcall if a man does it.
Now that I’ve teed up the hypocrisy that you want to bash, let’s talk about why it isn’t hypocrisy. Compliments, or really any utterance at all, take on a different character depending on the speaker and the situation. It’s scary to be told you’re really pretty when you’re alone with someone who has the power to rape you or stalk you. It’s scary to be called a n*gger by somebody who looks like they might be able to pull off a vigilante beating or shooting.
In general, it’s a vanishingly small fraction of the general public who really wants to hear a stranger’s opinion of how they look. In fact many people don’t like to talk to strangers at all. Why start that conversation? Why do you think you met the one person on earth who wants a 1-10 rating from a chatty stranger?
I don’t want to post a pic, but I do want to say that as disgusting as wolf-whistling is, it is possible the whistlers did not know they were catcalling a Bat Mitzvah girl. I know from experience.
I was a 13-yr-old who looked older, and in fact, looked older when I was 11 & 12-- I had braces on my teeth which was probably the only thing that saved me from being mistaken for much older, but when I was 11, I frequently had ticket-takers at the movies not want to believe I should have a child’s ticket, and when I was 14 & 15, I’d go onto the local college campus, and sometimes get hit on, or at any rate, flirted with, by college students who probably would have been horrified to learn I was underage.
But by the time I was 13, I was already 5’3, and a 34B. And I wore clothes that fit, so they weren’t little girl clothes. I also didn’t tend to dress much like the really trendy kids in intermediate school, so I dressed more like a high school or college student having an “I don’t give a fuck” day, than what people expected of a 13-yr-old.
Now, you don’t get catcalled much in patched jeans and a Moody Blues T-shirt in 1980, this is true, but the braces were off by then, and sometimes people would ask if I needed help carrying something, and where was I parked? Well, my Schwinn is locked to the fence.
Again, it still makes wolf-whistlers assholes, but it doesn’t make them pedophiles. There’s a big event horizon between the two.
I teach at an all-girl school and when talking about the issue in class, almost without exception, all of them tell me they experience, sometimes from the age of 10. And they live in the poshest part of my city.
Ditto my teenage daughter.
You’ve heard people wolf whistle cars and horses?
Huh. Absolutely not in my experience. But even if some people do: when it’s applied to a person, that changes the context. And when it’s done on the street to a stranger, that changes the context. If men are wolf whistling strange women on the street: that’s sexual.
That one I agree with. By the time I was 13, I was pretty much at my adult height and figure, and a 34C. Some 13 year olds look a lot older at first glance.
Which is one of many reasons not to catcall or in any way comment on the physical appearance of random people on the street. You don’t know how old they are. You also don’t know a whole lot of other things about them, such as whether they were raped last week, or their spouse died that morning, or they just had an inspiration that might let them finish that poem or that mathematical theory if they’re not distracted.
Having said that: I’m sure some people do knowingly catcall 13 year olds, and younger children, for that matter. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re pedophiles. It may just mean they think it’s fun to harass girls; or even that they think it’s fun to harass people in general, and figure that’s a way to do it.
(Plus which: we don’t know they weren’t pedophiles, now do we? Or, at least, ephebophiles, which isn’t quite the same thing.)
Wolf whistling and ‘complimenting’ random strangers is a way of reminding females, if you’re sexually attractive and visible, to those men, you’re public property.
There is a difference between a catcall and a compliment. I have a hard time believing that you are not being disingenuous by saying you do not know the difference between the two.
No, that’s not what they’re doing. Would it be okay if a fully-grown man whistled at a pretty 8-year-old? I would hope you think that’s not acceptable. They’re whistling at 13-year-olds because they think they look old enough to be sexually attractive. Do you really want 13 year old girls to be harassed? Do you know any girls who are or were 13 years old? How do you feel about men harassing them?
I absolutely think it’s NOT ok for a fully grown man to be whistling at either an 8-year-old or a 13-year-old. I have no idea how you would read that post as somehow condoning harassment of any sort - I’m just agreeing with Max_S that the whistler is not necessarily a pedophile. I agree that it is possible that the whistler could also find the 13-year-old sexually attractive, particularly if they are mature for their age but I don’t think it’s a given.
I don’t think anybody’s claiming that the whistler is necessarily a pedophile.
What multiple people are saying is that even presuming the whistler’s not a pedophile, wolfwhistling strangers on the street is still sexual harassment.
Full agreement with that.
This.
When my coworker comments on my physical beauty, I cannot tell whether he is just being the clueless Boomer male who has never learned the art of workplace-appropriate banter with female coworkers or whether he’s being a leacherous old man who wants to jump my bones. Sometimes he acts like the latter. Sometimes he acts like the former. Neither of these are good looks. Regardless of his intention, his gives me a headache.
I’ll even go so far as to say “Cool skirt, I really like it,” is very, very different from “You have nice eyes.”
I can change my skirt, and I probably picked this one out because I like it; it is even possible I made it, and I like someone appreciating my taste (and efforts).
I have 0 control over what my eyes look like.
Another thing I hated was when I was losing weight after having a baby.
I gained a lot of weight when I had my son, and was pretty chubby for about a year. I didn’t do anything in particular to lose the weight. Just got to the point where I could be more active, and I think I was eating less when he wasn’t nursing for the majority of his food.
EVERYONE felt the need to comment on my weight loss. All I ever heard, of course, was “You looked pretty awful last year.” I has no control over it, and couldn’t really take any credit for it. I also had to worry that if something happened and I gained weight again, I’d be disappointing all these people.