Nope. I’m just pointing out how stupid a “sticks and stones may break my bones / but words will never hurt me” attitude is. And I’ve said repeatedly in this thread that the big problem is that there is no reasonable, middle-ground reaction: you are stuck either taking the abuse or coming back with a massive overreaction.
I’ve been lurking for a few months, but I just had to register to post in this thread. More than 260 people are raped in the US each day. Just because something is normal doesn’t make it acceptable, or mean it isn’t cause for alarm, or that we shouldn’t work to change it.
Fair enough. The point being that all this talk of women’s oppression is just an attempt to justify this horrible crime by obfuscating that the real victim in this story was a man.
I’ll be a dorkus malorkus here and quote myself. I want to add that if people nearly hitting me with their cars as frequently as I, and people I have witnessed, are lightly stalked by men on the street, it would probably join the short list of things that piss me off to no end.
To me, ignoring assholes is not the same as “taking abuse”. Clearly, our mileage varies here, but I think that the key is, again, I’m not ignoring them because I figure the alternative is to escalate the situation. I’m dismissing them because they simply do not matter.
Comparing having “nice tits” yelled at you to rape is not helpful.
Ad comparing being whistled at to having someone yelling ‘nice tits’ at you isn’t helpful either.
What do you think a whistle means?
This conversation isn’t going to go anywhere because we’ve (admittedly) derailed and this thread into a complaint about street harassment as a whole. Now whenever someone brings up the degrading and infuriating behavior women have to put up with daily from complete strangers while attempting to do no more than go to work, someone will say, “But they beat him up for whistling. And it was the wrong guy!” Fiiiine, but now we’re talking about the general catcalling/harassment bit as a whole. We’re having six different conversations.
Sorry, I do think they are analogous, because of the reasons stated here:
And I do think that’s exactly the sort of hysterical bullshit that makes it easy for some people to write off our reaction to either behavior as disproportionate.
Fair enough. I liked the part about the whiskey tumbler the best.
The middle ground is clearly finding a way for the “victims” in any of these scenarios to feel ‘safe’.
Whether that entails carrying a concealed gun, mace, or karate classes. The fact that you may have to put up with asshole people who happen to holler shit at you from the car, construction site or on the bus is inconsequential.
The people espousing no change are the same people who happened to berate the guy at the town hall meeting for carrying a gun. The gun was clearly not the issue (even though the media painted it that way) If the president doesn’t feel safe with all of the equipment/personnel on his side then he might need to cancel his speaking engagement. Don’t make changing the world a centric point and go about changing yourself in a way that provides you with a means to feel safe.
Yer pretty
Well I tried to make a poll asking how often this happens but no women answered. shrugs I believe it happens, and that it happens regularly, but what I am curious about is the severity. Obviously we are getting conflicting reports from women. You claim it’s a horrible nuisance that happens to you all the time, my wife tells me that she gets catcalls a few times a week but that threatening catcalls are pretty rare. So the people (not you) who are complaining that the mean old men won’t believe them are blowing this out of proportion, because we men are getting conflicting reports from women.
I’ve definitely seen women getting catcalled, and I know it’s not uncommon. When I was younger I was a very pretty boy, skinny with a long very healthy thick but fine head of hair. Girls have since I grew my hair long expressed how they wish they had my hair. This is a turn on for men, particularly middle-eastern men, and I got hit on A LOT in the street, and sometimes it made me quite uncomfortable. So I definitely know it exists, I am just trying to figure out the prevalence.
They’re only conflicting if you assume all women have the same experience to which they react identically. Not all of my black friends have had the same experiences with racism. Some grew up in Haiti, some in North Africa, some in London, some in the American midwest. But just because of this, or because I don’t regularly hear people yelling ‘Nigger’ on the street, doesn’t mean those of them who complain about racism are either lying or overreacting (or bringing it upon themselves). I’ve witnessed it enough – occasionally when the person clearly didn’t know I was with my friend – to realize I’m lucky to live without it and to be ashamed that it’s par for the course for some people.
ETA I’m not entirely sure what you were trying to glean from the poll. Catcalls that include profanity aren’t, to me, always more insulting, degrading or threatening than those who don’t. And whether a call results in confrontation is often due to luck. I don’t always know what would have happened if I hadn’t been pretending to listen to my iPod or if I hadn’t crossed the street, or if I’d yelled back.
Umm no. They are conflicting BECAUSE women have different experiences to which they do not react identically. That’s the definition of conflicting reports. That’s why I asked for a poll, but no one responded.
Ok. I’m not accusing the women in this thread of lying.
I was trying to figure out how different women perceived it the catcalls. Unscientifically of course.
I’ll field this one.
Whistling at random females on the street is a symbolic gesture, as much as the middle finger or any number of other quick, thoughtless communications. The middle finger is one you usually see in flashes of anger, often between two specific people. It usually only lets fly when someone feels safe, either from their own size or because they’re separated by the walls of a car. It’s just a gesture, but the rudeness and suddenness can mean it can turn physical easily if either party is a bit off-the-hook.
Whistling at strangers has exactly the same effect, except that it’s a) nearly always men whistling at women, and b) it’s often in situations where the woman has no recourse, is in physical proximity to the person giving the gesture, and many times is by herself or has fewer people nearby supporting her than the whistler has on his side.
There is a type of fear that no one past a certain point in the gender spectrum has to deal with or even think about, so many of them assume it can’t exist. Being alone in a parking lot at night incites this fear. Being leered at by a group of larger people in a narrow hallway incites this fear. And yes–depending on how many crazy people you’ve had whistle at you and then react aggressively because you didn’t immediately throw them down and shag them right there on the street–being catcalled can incite this fear as well.
Whistling is a symbol - it’s a shorthand, polite/degrading way of saying “I’d have sex with you.” By itself this is not necessarily a horrible sentiment, cuz sex is awesome. It’s the context and history of the symbol that matters most: getting a sexually-charged advance from a stranger, especially a stranger who’s larger in size and muscle mass, who isn’t hobbled by high heels or a restrictive skirt, who feels comfortable making these blind advances toward a stranger whose name and occupation they don’t even know - already implies a certain level of unhinging from reality. Either that or a huge, heaping dose of disrespect for women in general. Or both.
Any of these can be a dangerous combination, which is why it’s enough to make any catcall scary, depending on where you live and how often you get them.
I’m not an advocate for violence, because it only begets more violence. If groups of gorgeous females go around beating the hell out of anyone who catcalls them, it would be a great step forward in terms of getting random bums to stop catcalling. They would finally have respect! But it would create many, many more instances of violence against women, especially the ones caught without a posse. One of the main problems with our society is ego: no man likes to feel emasculated, and a society-wide emasculation would just become more aggression, in the streets as well as in homes. Attractive as it would be to smash in the face of someone who feels entitled via gender to treat you as a sex object, it would create many more problems if it became a systemic thing. Catcalling has at least this in common with rape: it’s about sex and power. The line is blurrier in some cases than in others.
(I realize this is a bit overthought and overcivil for the Pit, but I started getting my thoughts out and didn’t bother to stop. Take it for what it’s worth. Full disclosure: I’m a boy who gets confused for a girl very often in places like dim restaurants or dark parking lots.)
So what did you think of my response to that post?