To think that wolf whistling wasn't such a bad thing?

Right. In the context of this thread we are specifically talking only about street harassment, we haven't even touched on the sexual abuse that sometimes follows street harassment, or the fact that street harassment makes predatory men braver about other types of harassment and abuse.

If no man ever - like literally never ever again - whistled at or called at or made weird noises to a woman or girl they don't know nothing whatsoever would be lost.

Tolerating street harassment has no positives for the women and children who want to escape it, and women who crave male attention can get it elsewhere. So if it dies completely (which seems sadly unlikely) it's still a win/win.

Don’t be ridiculous, they only whistled at girls 18+, did they ask for ID.

You”re talking nonsense and just trying to make the men right….. just why?

And they shouldn’t have been doing it to any age woman!

The racism thing was akin to the sexism thing, where it’s acceptable as everyday or “that’s how it is/was”

I don’t think it’s swung too far, no man has the right to sexualise women by cat calling someone they don’t even know, like it’s an affirmation that she’s got it “right”, in terms of looks/dress.

Totally different to a housemate speaking to someone they know, not sure why that particular student was so concerned. But that’s his issue, I don’t believe that saying someone you know looked nice in their prom outfit would lead to any issues.

I found it so distressing when they started on my daughter, in her school uniform aged 12 or 13, and she told me about it and all I could offer her were my commiserations and reminders about her personal safety, could not protect her from this grim shit and these predatory shitheads without keeping her inside forever.

It may not be as widely accepted now in many places, but it still happens regulary and to little girls and teens just as much if not more than grown women.

I'd muzzle men who catcall children, make them wear a scold's bridle out in public for a month.

Mine arrived aged 10 and I have the same memories. Also that winking with a clicking of the tongue.

@Rewindpresse Ah, sorry for being a cow about it then, I am feeling a bit prickly at the moment, reading through this thread.

I actually enjoyed you handling yourself with elegant wit throwing the snide accusation back as nothing you said was snide. I wasn’t laughing at you!

I thought your original post was excellent.

What's snide is appearing to care more about the feelings of catcalling male strangers than the feelings of young girls and women experiencing harassment

Thank you for the laugh react @Rewindpresse - although I don't really find it all that amusing that a commenter was snide because they were upset by facts, but each to their own as I always say.

Sorry my facts upset you.

Yes, your comment is very snide, and you did indeed prove your point about snide commenters.

Finished with another snide comment, thanks for proving my point.😏

Why not call women hysterics? Because of the history behind the word. Woman as hysteric has a long misogynist history resulting in women being institutionalised and dismissed.

Hysteric is 'wandering womb', it's a word specifically about women rendered irrational because of their biology.

Even now women find getting treatment much more difficult than men because they're treated as irrational.

It's absolutely normal for predatory men to target children and teenagers. Everyone knows this, not sure why anyone on this thread is pretending not to know this.

2015 USA study showed 85% of girls experience street harassment before age 17 https://www.ilr.cornell.edu/news/faculty/street-harassment-statistics

Research shows that 35% of girls wearing school uniforms have been sexually harassed in public spaces in the United Kingdom

https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/news/63332-'i-started-walking-the-long-way'many-young-women-first-experience-street-harassment-in-their-school-uniforms

Some UK school girls hated it so much and were so distressed by it they wanted it to be made illegal

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/street-harassment-girls-crime-debate-parliament-house-of-lords-plan-international-uk-a8664381.html

According to this source 97 percent of women have experienced street harassment.

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/misogyny-research-pioneers-hail-new-police-action-to-record-harassment-of-women

So, back to the original question.

If you enjoyed street harassment, I think you are extremely weird, since having strange creepy men making noises at you is at best very unsettling to me. I always loathed it, found it embarrassing, disgusting and distressing.

However, you can continue to enjoy having creepy, weird men making noises at you if you wish.

What you cannot do is pretend that all women agree with you that it's a bit of a larf when strange predatory men make noises at women as they try to simply exist and go about their lives.

And you cannot pretend that this was ever the case at any time in history as comon sense as well as documented history proves that women always loathed street harassment.

Sadly, for as long as women have been begging for men to simply leave them alone and stop harrassing them, let them exist and go about their day in safety and peace, there have been people trying to pretend it's normal and stick up for these men.

"In 1887, after covering the issue of harassment for some time, the Pall Mall Gazette ran a column of responses entitled “What the ‘Male Pests’ Have to Say for Themselves.” Some insisted on their freedom to follow and speak to women. As one wrote, unless England were to follow the practice of “locking up women as they do in the East, there is nothing [left] but to leave men perfectly free to gaze at and even follow women as they please.” Others criticized the “respectable” women who wrote in for assuming that no morally upright woman would want to be “spoken to”—with at least one suggesting that they were misunderstanding courtship practices among working-class men and women who hold their “evening parties in the street.”

https://daily.jstor.org/street-harassment-in-victorian-london/

All this information is widely available, but more than that we all know it anyway, even the ones pretending not to.

In conclusion, perhaps "you" enjoy street harassment.

Many, clearly, do not.

Why not?
This thread has been filled with name calling, read back.
I haven't seen anyone denying anyone else's trauma. I have seen a lot of snide comments aimed at women who have an opinion different to some though.

double post

Please don't call women hysterics. Part and parcel of misogyny and rape culture is denying women's experiences. I was sexually harassed by men as a child and know of many instances of girls being harassed in their school uniforms or after developing.

Street harassment belies a deep disrespect for women and girls and objectifies them. It makes life difficult for women who would rather go about their day without whistles and comments.

I wonder how flattered these men would be if other men were making sexual comments about them.

Hysteria alert.
I am reading men who wolf whistled at women also whistled at children, and any woman who was not traumatised by a wolf whistle supports the rape culture.

Bloody ridiculous.

I'm sorry that you lived in an area where men apparently whistled at kids.

Your mask slipped. I was one of those girls, harassed from 11. And I KNOW that because I moved aged 11. It's not misremembered and it wasn't uncommon.

I also remember going to my friend's house to dye my hair brown early teens, under 16, and being whistled at on the way there (blonde) and not on the way back. I didn't have blonde hair again for YEARS having worked out that I didn't care what colour my hair was but weirdos and perverts did.

Apparently? What does that mean?

I haven't implied your lived experience isn't valid. And I haven't said that ALL men that wolf whistle are paedophiles.
But all men that catcall children definitely are.
There will be men that only whistle at adults.
But the ones who are whistling at children will also be whistling at adults too.

I wasn't referring to me telling you ten times etc, multiple other pp's have said the same thing. .I'm sorry that you lived in an area where men apparently whistled at kids. have I don't need women like you implying that my lived experience isn't valid just because I'm not not supporting your idea that all men who wolf whistle are predators and pedophiles.

I can remember being in school uniform and being wolf whistled (late 80s)

I haven't said others experiences aren't valid. But when I'm sharing disturbing experiences of being harassed and worse, as a child, what is the the point of stating 'well I've never seen men doing that', it doesn't happen where I live etc...
It seems to suggest that it's not that big an issue because it doesn't happen everywhere
Really what is the point?

But just as your experience is valid, so are others' experiences of only being wolf whistled as an adult by young adult males.

Both experiences are equally valid and equally true

I have also NEVER seen men wolf whistling children and if I had done, I would have reported the behaviour to the site manager.

I don't care if you've said 10 times or 100 times that you've never experienced men catcalling children! I did as a child along with many other women who have posted here.
Stop trying to minimise it just because it never happened to you due to living in such a wonderful area that had lovely 'appropriate' wolf whistlers
I don't need women like you saying Not all areas/Not all men.

@Bbq1

In my neck of the woods men only whistled at WOMEN, that's 18 plus.

Impressive they could tell for sure if a girl / woman was 16, 17 or 18.