I’m not for a second going to say how any specific person ought to react in certain situations, but my understanding and experience is that most people of any gender appreciate a certain type of innocuous compliment, and have little difficulty discerning whether it is an innocuous pleasantry or presages something more ominous.
“What is this guy wanting from me?” How about sharing this earth in a reasonably pleasant manner? I apologize if I am misinterpreting something, but your comment suggests to me someone who is hyper sensitive, or is looking to be offended. There are clear threats out there. But the ability to discern between threats and non-threats is something most people who venture out in public ought to seek to develop.
If you are wearing some funky boots, and someone happens to notice and says, “nice boots” - whether that is a friend or a passerby, I think MOST people would get a mildly positive reaction to their boots having been noticed. Or at the very most, a mild annoyance over having been disturbed. Same w/ tattoos, or interesting hair style/color. That is far different from something along the lines of, “Damn, you look fine!”
And - of course - context is key. You don’t interrupt someone who is deep in conversation - or even a book. You don’t make a big deal out of it. You don’t intrude on their personal space. You don’t persist. But I think is somewhat sad if even this sort of innocuous pleasantry is deemed universally inappropriate. If a man offers such a compliment, and then moves along or otherwise does not follow it up in any way that a reasonable person would interpret as untoward, I think it unfortunate that a minority would seek to quell such intercourse.
It would would have been even more educational if the construction workers were typical male construction workers. Just flipping the tables doesn’t necessarily drive the point home since some guys would be okay with women catcalling them. But if male construction workers were catcalling the men walking by, everything wrong with catcalling would be immediately understood by those men.
I will confess I once had a builder yell: ‘Good afternoon madam, how are you today? We’re not all crude you know!’ at me across the street and I did find that pretty funny. I think that’s the only time it ever didn’t feel like a threat, because it just came across as a silly joke, and I wasn’t the punchline.
I don’t know. If I was frequently catcalled by women everywhere I went, I can see how I’d get tired of that. I would probably become hypersensitive about it. I was with a friend who received a salacious remark from a guy on the street once, and he laughed about after the fact. It’ll probably be the only time in his life this happens. If it happened multiple times a week, it’d probably start to wear him down.
I wonder if most women who smile or nod at such remarks aren’t just practicing the concept of “going along to get along,” where this response is the path of least resistance because ignoring the catcaller might invite nasty epithets. I don’t know.
I don’t catcall people and it puzzles me that anyone would think women like being catcalled or approached by strangers commenting on their appearance.
It’s a good point, but as for it being accurate: Wouldn’t a biologist say that, in at least some members of the animal kingdom, bodies are for (among other things) attracting mates? And thus they are indeed for looking at?
Bodies are for lots of things. A person is perfectly entitled not to want their body objectified. But despite being asexual, I want people to look at me and be pleased by what they see. I don’t dress to impress all the time, but it would hurt me if I could read people’s minds and heard people thinking to themselves, “Ew, what a hideous creature!” So I think it’s overstating things a lot to say “bodies aren’t for looking at.” I exist only because my parents liked what their eyes were looking at when they first met. For most people, this is true. For most people, physical appearance is very important.
My problem with catcalling isn’t that it feels weird/creepy to have people looking at my body. It’s simply embarrassing to have some guy shouting at you in a crude way when you least expect it, while him and everyone else in the scene is watching and waiting for your response. If you respond, you feel like you’re giving them what they’re seeking. So you pretend to not hear them, despite everyone and their mama knowing you heard them, and you risk coming across some kind of way. I remember the catcalls only getting louder when I would do the ignore thing, and there would be a part of me that would second-guess myself…like maybe I was being rude or something. Like maybe I was supposed to find it funny and just laugh it off and not be a snob or whatever.
So your stance is that you are entitled to force your unwanted attentions on another human being? In spite of many of us saying unequivocally that your attentions in those formats are beyond unwanted, into assault?
I doubt you can find a reputable biologist to defend that thesis.
It’s not universally inappropriate, of course, but men need to be aware of the experiences that women are bringing to the exchange. Your co-worker is bringing all her years of being a cashier or waitress where, when she was professionally nice to a man, he took it to mean that he should hit on her relentlessly and wait for her after work. It sucks that men can’t just tell a female co-worker that they like her outfit, but all her years of being objectified come into play as soon as you make a personal comment.
And yes, women do become hyper-sensitive. There is a very good reason for that (self-preservation).
Your stated claim in the OP of this thread was to learn something outside of your experience. I’m telling you things outside of your experience.
I think you may have misinterpreted Thudlow_Boink. A biologist might argue that, for example, that men have more hair on average than women because of thousands of years of sexual selection; that the reason we don’t have fur is because naked skin was, on the whole, more sexually attractive.
The problem isn’t that people see bodies, or even that they think things about other people’s bodies. The problem is when people feel entitled to lay claim to other people by publicly commenting on other bodies, as if the worth of the bodies of others depended in any way on what they think of them; and feel entitled to lay claim to the attention of the people they’re commenting on, who very likely have or at least would like to have other things on their minds.
And I certainly wouldn’t have said that the problem is primarily embarrassment, though it’s certainly possible that’s some people’s primary emotion about it. The problem for me, and I believe for a lot of women, is that it’s infuriating, precisely because of that unwarranted claim being made on attention and because of the claim being made that the person catcalling has any right in that context to publicly judge anybody’s body other than their own.
Although my primary reaction isn’t generally fear, it can also be quite justifiably frightening. As Cat_Whisperer said, women have a lifetime of experience with this behavior, and that may well include experience with men for whom it’s only the starting point. Nobody being catcalled, or even being inappropriately “complimented”, has any way of knowing what’s in the mind of the person doing it. The person doing the commenting doesn’t know whether the person they’re commenting on has had an apparently friendly co-worker turn out to be a rapist one late-working night, or for that matter in the middle of the afternoon in a stairwell or the middle of an office; or whether that person’s been pursued down the street by a man and his friends who started with ‘hi, honey, nice dress’ and moved on to yelling ‘hey! stuck-up! you come talk to me! you come kiss me!’ or considerably worse.
Even aside from fear: you don’t know whether this is just the thirtieth person trying to claim their attention when they’re just trying to get home from the hospital where someone just died before they fall apart. Or when they’re trying to finish working out the rest of that symphony composition, or to remember that sudden insight into how the bridge design on that tricky hillside ought to work.
But that’s exactly what they’re doing.
“Attentions” aren’t only physical assault. Forcing someone to pay attention to you in a fashion that they don’t want is indeed forcing one’s attentions on them.
And, as monstro said, if the victim doesn’t reply but attempts to ignore it, that doesn’t change the claim on one’s attention.
First, what many of us have tried to tell you is what you deem is innocuous pleasantry is always not received or intended to be either innocuous nor pleasantry. It is far too often a means to demean, diminish or exert power over, to dominate. To objectify. Racism 101 is identical to sexism 101.
Don’t be so positive that it is only a minority of women who object to catcalling. Many may feel powerless to object. Look, even you and I believe you see yourself as an enlightened person, yet you insist on reframing our objection as ‘unreasonable’ or merely outlying.
It is being done to women, we get to decide if it is pleasant, innocuous, appropriate or reasonable. It is not even your call to make the call that it is unfortunate that It needs to end.
I have never felt fear with catcalling. I feel fear when sexual harassers are up close and personal, like the guy who starts following me when I make the mistake of meeting his gaze. But I usually don’t feel fearful to shouting coming from a distance as long as it stays that way.
I will never forget the time I was walking down the street on my way to the grocery and a guy pulled up alongside me and asked if I was working. I’m kinda dim about stuff, but I knew exactly what he meant by that. And I was super embarrassed. I can’t explain why I felt that way…other than I’ve been conditioned to think that prostituting yourself is bad, so being asked if you’re a prostitute means you’re doing something bad. Questions were swirling in my head after he drove away. Did I look like a prostitute? Did other people think I was a prostitute? Were people seeing me walking to around all the time and judging me? Should I stop walking so much? Looking back on it, I should have been angry and I think if it happened today, that’s how I would feel. But in the moment, I just felt like I was the one who did something wrong. Embarrassment is the primary emotion I experience whenever I am sexually harassed, even when I’m also afraid.
