Catcalling is NOT a Compliment

Posted by Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon at 5:02 AM on May 16, 2008.

Wow, this headline reads like something in the Reader’s Digest circa 1970, wedged between articles on why kids don’t appreciate waltzing anymore and how smoking marijuana cigarettes will cause your daughter to become a streetwalker: “Catcalling: creepy or a compliment?” (Via.) The article isn’t nearly so bad, and gives full voice to women who grasp that a man yelling sexual (and insulting or threatening) things at you on the sidewalk is insulting you for being a woman, not complimenting you.

But just like those articles of old from Schlaflyites (”I love getting hooted at on the street, and husbands have a right to rape wives!”), this one is full of women the reader is supposed to take cues from on how to be less of a grumpus pain in the ass who thinks she has dignity worth defending.

On the other hand, some women appreciate the attention in certain cases, like Jessica, a 31-year-old health-care educator in Los Angeles who declined to use her last name to protect her privacy.

“Yeah, it’s objectifying and all, but you know, if I walked down the street and didn’t have men looking me up and down and catcalling, I’d think, ‘Boy, I must really be getting old and dumpy,’ ” she said.

She’s gotten catcalls just walking her parents’ dog in baggy sweats. “I thought it was hysterical, like, ‘Boy, doesn’t take much to impress you, does it?’ “

It’s true that they’ll do it to you no matter what you’re wearing, because it’s not a compliment. I can understand why this woman is deluding herself—it’s both flattering to imagine you’re so hot men are inspired to passion by the mere site of you and it also helps protect the brain from realizing how many men out there just really hate you—but I’m sure she’s not unaware of those times when the cat-calling occurs when there are no other people around and you find yourself grabbing for a weapon or your cell phone. Because it’s a threat in many cases, or at bare minimum a reminder to random women that the cat-caller feels entitled to control their experience of being outside the house.

The thing about conflating cat-calling or other forms of domination with male sexual desire is that this is a gross insult to men who can tell the difference between “I’d like to see her smiling at me with pleasure” and “I’d like to see her crying in fear of my mighty manhood that needs constant reinforcing”.

The article notes that 98% of the women surveyed had been cat-called at some point, and 30% report that it’s a common thing. (It is for me, because I spend a lot of time out and about.) Since we know that 99.99% of women bitching about being sexually harassed or assaulted is bitches just trying to get at men with their lies, we can conclude from this survey that 98% of women are man-hating liars.

Or that’s what I learned from this thread at Huffington Post about this incident involving a 16-year-old who put together an only half-intelligible video about being raped and not having the prosecutor press charges for the rape, a perfectly plausible scenario, especially considering the girl’s very real distress on the video. Of course, second comment in people are griping about how it’s all lies and an act—seriously, the way some men act in the comments on stories like this, you’d think they collectively raped the various victims who are being accused of lying. Some hide behind a concern for the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty (in court, you morons—private citizens are allowed their opinions), but interestingly they have no problem judging a woman guilty of false accusations. Accusing someone of lying about being the victim of a crime is a serious accusation, and by their own measure they shouldn’t be making it.

I wonder if these same people, if there was a post on Huffington Post about someone getting mugged, would hotly be saying, “Well, if it’s true,” and “Shouldn’t that be alleged mugging victim?”

Tagged as: women, harassment