Question: To everyone, as in other people in this thread? Or will a guy that bugs you go on to bug someone else more or less right in front of you?
People in this thread, people I know, people I’ve seen while walking down the street. Maybe two weeks ago I saw this guy outside talking to this girl (who was fat), and after apparent rejection he said, “You’re fat anyway!” really loudly and started laughing at her. She should have kicked him in the balls. So, should this girl have taken his initial advancement as confirmation of her hotness? After all, she was “fat” anyway. These guys are just jerks.
Thanks for answering.
I have no idea where I’m going with this line of questioning. Maybe I’m just curious.
Are there different guys doing this all the time, or do you tend to see the same guys doing this again and again.
But I don’t think that anyone has disputed that *some *of these guys are just jerks. I just think it’s silly to attribute the exact same motivation to every whistle or comment.
Yeah, that guy was a jerk. But by that rationale, every guy who goes up to you and hits on you is an asshole. Similarly, not every guy who whistles is a scoundrel. I’m sure a lot of them are kind of skeevey but I don’t really assume a guy is an ass just for a racy comment or a whistle.
I guess I’m just having a hard time believing there’s a significant number of nice, respectful men who hoot, whistle, catcall, etc women they’ve never met on the street. That’s kind of dick behavior if you ask me. And I tend to assume people who act dickishly are dicks. But if this is an acceptable, non-dickish way to carry on in your opinion, then that is where we disagree rather strongly.
I guess I see it as kind of boorish but nothing to get all that upset about. And I do acknowledge that catcalling and such can get out of hand and become skeevey. I’ve been in circumstances where it was creepy and I wished it would stop but in general it’s pretty low key and easy to deal with for me. Nowadays it’s at worst an annoyance and at best kind of nice–but again, I live in a nice area and it’s not really the kind of harassment/catcalling that you’re dealing with, which, I agree, seems really dickish.
The whole point of a whistle is to say that you find someone physically attractive. I didn’t say a whistle means “I want to rape you,” I said it means “I want to have sex with you.”
Exactly.
I don’t care what they think. I think people should be able to think anything they like, no matter how much I disagree with it. What concerns me is what they do.
Why do you assume that the woman cares to know that you think she’s attractive? “Attractive” is just that–sexually attractive, sexually arousing, at some level something that you’d like to have sex with. For every Freudian Slit who would appreciate it, there’s going to be someone else like me who considers it demeaning.
Exactly. You approach her. You converse with her. You treat her like a human being. You do not (I hope) simply holler or whistle, and then insult her or harass her if she turns you down or ignores you.
See above. “Can I buy you a drink?” is treating someone like a human being instead of an object.
1.) It may be well-intentioned, but it’s still treating the woman like a piece of meat. It’s still demanding that she be flattered by your being attracted to her.
2.) I guaran-fucking-tee, your father has no way to wolf-whistle at me that would “make me feel great.” And I bet that at least some of the women who he made “feel great” weren’t actually flattered, but played along anyway, because that’s how women are taught to react.
But it’s not confined to noticing here–it’s expanded to making that interest public and making the object of your intentions aware of it, and expecting/requiring them to be pleased, gratified, or at least polite in response. I might think a guy on the street is good looking, but I’m not going to whistle, holler, “Hey boy! Hey boy,” tell him I bet he has a thick cock, or describe my desire to get a firm handful of his ass. Because he’s a human being, and a stranger, and I have no illusions that he is necessarily going to enjoy knowing that I’d fuck him.
Only if I get a firm handful of your ass.
Ah. Well, no wonder my dog’s been avoiding eye contact lately.
Well, that does add insult to, well, insult. How often do you see someone whistle at anyone they see as their equal?
Every encounter, no. But I have had car-callers rev their engines and turn suddenly toward me TWICE in the past 5 months. Every encounter is not the problem. The problem is that once in every two excursions, I will get a cat caller. Of those, one in 6 or 7 will get upset if I ignore them or ask them to stop, and escalate to full on harassment, including name calling and possible following, so that’s what, once every 2-3 weeks. Maybe one in ten of THOSE move on to obstructing my path or some other threatening behavior. So that’s once every 6-10 months or so. I must admit I’ve only had my ass grabbed 3 times, and my chest grabbed twice, total, ever, and I’ve only pulled my weapon once, as the ahem gentleman ahem in question pulled a knife on me.
So no, it’s not dangerous every day. It’s not every excursion. It’s not even necessarily every week. But it’s there, it’s scary, and what the heck am I supposed to do when your “tell them to fuck off” advice ends with them calling me names and following me for a city block shouting what a random expletive I am? Some big unknown man is FOLLOWING ME. I don’t know what the big unknown man is capable of.
So to cap: Every two days or so, I experience behavior that has escalated to threatening of my person every 6-10 months. So According to you, I should just say “fuck off” and deal with that? How is this OK?
I’m still trying to think of an actual legitimate reason for someone (who was verbally “attacked”) to physically attack the verbalizing offender. The victim loses what recourse they have and gives the original offender a legitimate reason to be physical with them…and the outcome is usually far worse for both parties when it does gets physical. Not just when it’s cat-calling (or any other sexual innuendo), but in any setting where heated words are exchanged, and then someone decides it time to step it up a notch and gets physical.
For just that situation-- In women’s self-defense class we learned how to strike quickly and effectively to disable the creep (at least for a few moments) and then immediately get the fuck out of there while calling for help. When they’re not expecting you to resist, I’m told it’s pretty effective to gain the element of surprise as follows:
- smash his nose in with the heel of your palm
- strike the sides of his head (one of the lesser-known vulnerable spots) with your elbow going one-two right and left
- jab the tips of your rigid fingers right into his eyeballs, hard-- and this is the setup for the master stroke–
- knee into his testicles!
- possibly followed up, as he crumples, with a disabling blow to the back of his skull/neck
which should buy you at least some precious seconds to run like shit and escape while raising an alarm. Statistics show that two out of three rape attempts have been foiled by women putting up resistance. That probably refers to any resistance at all. Really stiff and violent resistance like this, I imagine, must be even more effective.
We also learned how to verbally tell guys to leave you alone, in a commanding tone of voice, before it escalates to physicality. That would be preferable. But once somebody puts his hands on me, I swear I’ll take no prisoners. :mad:
Well, perhaps I over-reacted. It’s more like, hey, you don’t know these dudes, just be cautious. I don’t think (like SOME here) that all men are pigs, and that cat-callers need to have the shit beaten out of them. HOWEVER, I don’t think guys who do that deserve the time of day, and like I said – I usually end up flipping them off.
It’s only IF someone follows me and starts harassing me (which has never happened), that I would seriously consider violence. (Or, since I usually have my cell phone, call the cops).
Guys who whistle are usually just annoying, and one is better off ignoring them. If I let every little comment get to me, I’d only give them MORE power over me.
I agree with you except for the last part: “I want to have sex with you.” Some whistlers may have that intention, but others are more likely whistling to acknowledge the attractiveness of the woman (or man). I’ve crossed some sort of threshhold a few years back where I just stare or admire at beauty in a woman and not think of having sex with them, but rather expose my senses to her feminine aspects; her face, her hair, her smile, her rear and bust and how she looks in her choice of clothes, how she carries herself, her walk/gait, her choice of words/grammar, all of this unconsciously registers delight in myself when I see a woman who marks high in all of these areas. The LAST thing I want to do is drive her away, and usually a whistle would do the job quickly. So, I just shut up and admire.
I wish I could express in words what that does for me, but a whistle would sum it all up quickly and succinctly, but then again, I don’t want to drive her off because she might feel threatened by it…so, I just shut up and admire.
Trust me, a guy is treating you like an object just as often buying a drink as whistling.
Have you ever considered that maybe the problem is yours? Some women enjoy the attention.
Actually, I was taught NOT to kick the testicles…until after I’d broken his pelvic girdle, and thus disabling him.
On two separate occasions I’ve had a guy try to rape me. Both times I was able to get away, because I had played tackle football when I was a little girl, and I was actually able to hit the guys hard enough to break ribs on one of them, and knock the other one dizzy. In both cases, the assault started with a compliment on how pretty I was (various compliments on my figure, tits, etc.), and how they’d like to talk to me privately (variations on a theme). When things went further than I was comfortable with, I was told that I was asking for it, and I had no right to refuse. I don’t think that I’m overreacting now if I’m wary about some guy telling me how pretty I am, and he wants me to go into this secluded spot with him. Experience has taught me that men who exhibit this sort of behavior can’t be trusted. I’m sure that if I hadn’t been a tomboy, and played tackle football, and wrestled with most of the boys my own age when I was a kid, I’d have been raped. Twice. Now, I occasionally got compliments on my looks, and asked for my phone number. Sometimes I complied, sometimes I didn’t. I had some positive experiences with guys giving me compliments in public. However, two close calls were two too many for me.
I do not and will not ever consider a wolf whistle a compliment. If a guy thinks that a woman is attractive, he doesn’t have to whistle at her. He only whistles to display his masculinity, it’s not a compliment, it’s a show of power. It’s a penis display, for primates who have to wear clothes most of the time. Same thing with yelling out “NICE TITS!” to a woman. If the intent is to compliment her, then it can be accomplished by a smile, without trying to draw everyone’s attention to her body, and the guy’s masculinity. Because only a really masculine guy would notice nice tits, right?
I’ve read this topic over one and a half times.
And so far I have not seen (at least not yet) an actual, striaght-forward answer to this question from the people who think the girls who beat the (wrong) boy up was a good thing (even if he had been the one to catcall):
Namely, if it’s okay to lash out physically against something you see as a possible threat or something that could lead to something else, then, by the same token, if I’m feeling threatened or scared because someone insults me on the street (be it a man, woman, child), it’s okay to knock the hell out of them while my buddies hold them?
I mean if it’s right for the girls to have done that (in some peoples’ minds in this thread) it should be okay for anyone to do that if someone says to them something they don’t like…right?
ETA: Example: A girl gives me a few catcalls. So it’s okay if I get two buddies to hold her by her arms while I beat her ass?
What I’m hearing by some in this thread is, yes, it’s okay…because it was okay when the girls did it to the guy.
I think the problem is mainly men who treat women as if they aren’t people.
No. It’s only okay when your tribe is getting to beat up someone from the other tribe.