On a serious note, I’m willing to bet that it is more or less a class thing. Upper middle class types identifiable as such are, I would guess, less likely to be on the receiving or giving end of wolf-whistles and the like, regardless of appearance.
Every woman gets catcalled, but whether or not it happens all the time like it does to hotties like MeanOldLady is what’s up for debate IMV.
I asked my wife. She said it’s horrible in France as people have corroborated here. She said she gets it about 1/5 of the time when she’s out alone. She doesn’t consider it harassment unless they follow her though.
She said it almost never happens to her downtown but happens to her more regularly in our Dominican neighborhood.
“Hey baby, nice tail!”
Man if I weren’t married I think I’d have to start cat-calling Freudian Slit, she seems mad cool. 
I don’t think having a couple of drinks with strange men results in death and rape as often as many would have you believe.
Yeah. After a few months of living in the neighborhood in Harlem, I was pretty sick of always getting stuff yelled at by the creepy old dudes who congregated outside my building. I never got followed, but now that I’m remembering, it was pretty obnoxious.
In my current neighborhood, it’s mostly older, more upper class types–most of them aren’t really the catcalling types.
Well, I mean, I didn’t really see it as all that different from just having some random guy come up to me in a bar or nightclub. These incidents just happened to be guys outside bars, not inside them. It wasn’t really all that smart but I hate to admit that I’ve probably done stupider things…
Channeling Foghorn Leghorn.
Thats a joke son.
I would like to think I look presentable on my way to work. Admittedly, I was a little more casual today since it’s Friday, but I thought I looked polished on Mondays. 
Ha!
Oh gods, don’t go abroad! It’s insanity.
I do wonder about the construction worker thing. I once worked a temp job that was primarily unloading a big truck and hauling hugely heavy items into an empty store. Definite blue collar kind of work. During the breaks we’d all stand outside. Just about everybody was ogling the women that passed by. Not just checking them out, but really learing at them. I was embarassed to be associated with them, but at the same time I felt immense peer pressure to join in. It was weird and uncomfortable.
It’s not necessarily simply a question of “presentable”; it may also be one of context. Someone who lives in a poor area and dresses extra carefully for work doesn’t necessarily appear upper middle class to the sidewalk-lounging loser who likes to harrass passing women, but rather as someone trying to be “uppity”. They may get harrassed even more.
Take the same loser, detach him from his gang of sychophants, and have him wander into a rich neighbourhood; he’s all the less likely to harrass a good-looking woman who is wearing business casual attire.
It sounds like there is a lot of defense coming in the form of “catcalls can escalate”.
It didn’t, if it had and the report had shown it had, these women could be purportedly in the right. However, it didn’t.
You can’t take “that one time at band camp I should have defended myself” and hit the next guy that cat calls you. Maybe you should have at band camp but in this case, it is/was illegal.
I say…I say…I say, I hear the whooshing sound, but I think it’s over your haid boy.
I think there is truth to this. I described the frequency which with those kind of lunacy happens in worse off areas as “mind-boggling” earlier in this thread. It does happen to me less in downtown Mpls than it did when I was in some of the more horrid sections of LA, but it still happens enough here that I don’t regard it as uncommon. It still have to deal with this crap right here in front of all the shiny, tall buildings, amid all the businessfolk and fancy attorneys, while I’m wearing a perfectly acceptable business casual ensemble from The Gap/Ann Taylor/Wherever. Not just to me, I’ve seen it happen to other women.
I really should be working, and not venting into the intertrons… but here we are.
This is part of the problem; I don’t think it’s going to help. I’ve been walking down the street several times when a random guy has come up to me and told me that I should smile, like it’s any of his goddamned business what look I have on my face. So, if it’s a busy street, I flip him off and go on my way. If it’s NOT a busy street however, and it’s just him and me, I smile, though, even though I want to knock his teeth down his fucking throat, because I have no way of defending myself if an angry reaction pisses him off. You’re asking her to change her behavior to prevent assholes from being assholes; it’s one step to “maybe if you didn’t dress so sexy.”
The threatening aspect of catcalling is the part that a lot of guys don’t seem to get. It’s not like a street full of aggressive panhandlers; it’s a street full of bullies where every one is WAY bigger and stronger than you, and also leering. It’s a very different feeling when you know you’ve got no shot at self-defense if something happens.
If I, a male, were to inappropriately proposition, harass, stalk and then, when rebuffed, insult a random man on the street the way MeanOldLady and others have described their experiences, I’d likely face better than a 50/50 chance of physical retaliation. I’d bet that large percentage of men would feel justified in assaulting a man who attempted to belittle and cow them as has been described.
“Man Talks Shit to Other Man, Gets Well-Deserved Ass-Kicking” is not a headline that we’ll likely see, no matter how frequent the actual occurrence.
“Man Talks Shit to Woman, Gets Well-Deserved* Ass-Kicking” merits a 5-page discussion.
[sub]* Yes, the recipient of this particular ass-kicking was apparently misidentified and undeserving, but that’s minor detail in the context of the broader discussion.[/sub]
I guess the tone and the intent makes a lot of sense. I think for most women who are describing anger, the intent or the meaning isn’t “You’re so sexy” but the way that a person of color would feel upon hearing a racial epithet. Obviously you shouldn’t beat someone up for anything but would we really feel all that bad for the bigot who gets beaten up?
I think most of the comments or catcalls I have gotten aren’t really that kind, though–generally I feel pretty comfortable engaging said guy in conversation. I know, kind of dumb…but I guess I just see it as kind of fun or a game.
Nope, not what I said. At all.
What I’m suggesting is that there may be some subtle body language she’s exhibiting to trigger those reactions in men. Maybe it’s in the facial expression, maybe the posture, maybe the gait… I don’t know. But since we’ve ruled out just about everything else, there must be some characteristics of some women that invite this bad behavior. The only idea I have left is body language.
They say that if you want to reduce your chances of getting mugged, don’t look like a mugging victim. Walk strong and be aware of your surroundings.
It may be that MOL feels victimized, which she carries in her body in some way, which invites cat calls, which makes her feel more victimized, which invites even more cat calls, which… and it spirals out of control. I don’t know if that’s the case, but let’s suppose that it is. It would seem then that the solution is for her to walk with more confidence, more power, more authority. Further, if the bad men’s behavior is truly bullying, then a “Don’t mess with me” attitude might just do the trick.
And all these guys are looking to fondle and bugger your chillins and household pets as well. :rolleyes:
But she’s right though. If I’m smiling, people take that as an invitation to conversation. If I’m scowling (which isn’t often), everyone tells me to smile. Just last week, a bus driver slowed down alongside me, opened the door, and said, “You’re too pretty to be looking so mean. Smile!” Wtf? Don’t you have a fucking bus to be driving? Yeah, I’m sure your paying customers really appreciated that, dipshit. Why should women have to adjust their facial expressions to please strangers on the street? Who walks around smiling, anyway, besides crazy people?
As for my body language, I’m fairly certain nothing about my body language shouts “victimized.” Apparently I’m doing something wrong, but I’d bet the ranch that that is not it.
For the record, the something I’m doing wrong, I believe, is being a woman… but I could be mistaken. I honestly think the idiots who bother me do this to many women, many times a day. In addition to it happening to me, I see it happen to other people fairly regularly.
I can tell you first hand that heckling and screaming at the girls at most classy strip clubs is generally not acceptable.
A year or so ago, my friends and I were in a club in Mindtown. One of our guys, this crazy little Lebonese dude with a penchant for prostitutes, well, I couldn’t hear what he said, but it took all of 4 seconds for the girl to slap him in the face and toss his drink in his lap.
That’s a little odd.
There is a whole Chris Rock sketch about White girls getting catcalled by Black dudes and think “I mut need to lose some weight”.
To the last question, me! I meet far more women that way, and they’re far more eager to talk to me. (It’s not a big learing evil grin.) It’s this 
, not this :D.
As to the first, no reason. But there is some reason you’re getting more unwanted attention than other women are. We’ve eliminated looks, clothing, smiling, and neighborhoods. Behavior seems to be the only thing left. No, it’s not fair that you should have to change your behavior. But if your behavior stays the same, you’ll keep getting the same results.
If there was some tiny little thing that you could change, such as maybe how you swing your arms or how you tilt your head, and you could use that to turn your amazing sex appeal on or off at will, wouldn’t it be worth knowing about?