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

Yay let’s make it acceptable for men to objectify women and make us feel awkward and embarrassed when we’re walking along minding our own business.

Let’s bring back Benny Hill and Love Thy Neighbour while we’re at it.

To be fair, if you get off on being objectified by some hairy arsed hod carrier then crack on. What I find really distasteful is your obvious amusement that it also happens to children.

100%.

'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them'.

If it is really true that some men suffer agonies of fear that prevent them from looking at women when out & about, I'm afraid my heart doesn't bleed. I had far too much harassment from men over the years to ever consider it harmless or a 'compliment'.

I am old enough to remember the time back in the '70s when it was considered to be 'harmless fun' but it never was either for me. The first time I was groped when we were at a young people's party, I was 11 and still at primary school. No I didn't take it as a compliment.

JL reveals herself as an idiot whenever she utters her own words instead of someone else's. She should just stick to acting.

This thread reads like all those old threads journalists used to make here, where they purposely made comments to cause upset just so they can use quotes from sexually harassed/assaulted women to pad out a badly written article tbh. Was weird then, is weird now.
But anyway, sexual harassment is wrong, pretending it's flattering is dumb, and tricking women in to talking about being sexually harassed is disgusting.

@NovemberMorn

And do you think women/girls are viewed differently today. Thousands can be groomed and raped and disbelieved when they have the courage to speak out....we have come so far in the last 30 years.🙄

So you think that people shouldn't consider wolf whistling sexual harassment because women suffer far worse sexual harassment?

Quite some time prior, surely.

I thought I must have been doing something ‘wrong’, that I was asking for it. I had no choice but to walk that way to school and back, and I was petrified but didn’t dare tell anyone.

And still some people want to take us back to an era when sexual harrassment, assault etc was seen as acceptable

@PigInAHouse

I don’t think I ever told anyone at the time to be fair, I was embarrassed and ashamed.

Awful isn't it.

I was really upset once and wouldn't tell my mum why and when she finally got me to speak to her about it, I was mortified and so upset because a man in a car had pulled over next to me walking home from football practice in my kit and just said 'slag' at me then driven off.

I remember being so incredibly upset and confused because on one level I knew he must just have been an awful predatory person but on another level it was so bizarre that I thought surely I did something to make him say that.

Needless to say, I didn't. And I was probably 12 or 13.

My friend and I used to get wolf whistles we we waiting for the bus. (Think there was an army base nearby).
we were ELEVEN and TWELVE, waiting for out school bus how. It scared us, we were the only girls at quite a remote bus top, minding minding your own business while waiting for the school bus.
it’s only now I can really see how flipping innapriate it was!

It isn't perfect but it's better. Laws have changed, attitudes have changed.

I certainly wouldn't want to go back to a time where it was legal for a man to rape his wife.

I don’t think I ever told anyone at the time to be fair, I was embarrassed and ashamed.

The builders who whistled from the scaffolding were different, obviously a nuisance to many, but hardly dangerous.

How would you know?

What if it was a large group of builders whistling and leering at 10-12 year old schoolboys because they were bored?

Maybe shouting "sexy" at them when they come out of football club, after all, they are wearing shorts.

Is that OK too?

You are missing my point.

I slapped the guy, which caused it to escalate and I came off worse.

I don't need to divulge what happened next or whether I reported, it is not relevant to either yours and J L assumptions that women should be able to handle themselves. She and you proudly say that women should be able to handle themselves by slapping pesky men. In reality that is terrible advice. As I have said, I can only assume both you and J L get your ideas from 1950's or 70's movies. Like when James Bond comes on to the female leads, even though they are saying no. The women slap Bond and he backs down.
In he real world advising women to slap a guy for assaulting you (or putting his unwanted hand on you leg (knee)) could be the worst advice anyone could give. My experience backs that up.

Wolf whistling isn't a compliment. It amounts to expressing the sentiment that "you are sexually attractive to me". I am not interested in pandering to the sexual appetites of men with my appearance, and so being informed that I am sexually attractive to a strange man is not a positive experience for me.

Moreover, the normalising of wolf whistling serves to remind both men and women that male sexual preferences set the standards for beauty and desirability for women in our society. This reminder doesn't make me feel flattered, it makes me feel rage. How dare these men presume that I myself judge my own appearance by their sexual appetites? How dare they inflict their sexuality and their sex drive onto me, a person going about my life, just because I happen to be a woman and they happen to be a man? It's fucking bullshit. I want to exist in the world without men feeling entitled to declare that I am "fuckable" to them. I don't care if I am, I am affronted at the idea that I would care, and the entire premise is but another form of female oppression. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.

@aliceinawonderland

But that's not the definition of wolf whistling...it was usually builders on a building site up high.

Here's the definition of wolf whistling.

If you'd been in your late teens / early 20s and the wolf whistle was from a group of men in their 30s / 40s you were walking past in the street (on the same level as you, not on a roof etc) would you have felt flattered or intimidated?

No, but at least now a woman has the legal right to go and report it and he can be prosecuted. Back in those good old days society didn’t give a shit.

You can't see where a culture of acceptance, and "it's just what men do, we need to learn to tolerate them" gets you.
Wolf whistling at young women - acceptable because the intention is complimentary (affording to you, apparently)
A stranger putting his hand on your leg - bothersome but still not a man's fault, you just need to hone your slapping
Cat calling/ leering at children - wrong, but surely doesn't happen often
Sexual assault - generally wrong, but some women provoke it

All of these acts arise from the same root belief - that men are entitled to say and do what they want to a woman's body. You can protest and say, "but it made me feel pretty" all you like - it is a spectrum of male entitlement to women's bodies. Whether or not you think that should continue is up to you, but you are in a minority

Women aren't there to be men's entertainment because they are ''bored''.

Are you actually that dense that you believe this? Horrendous violence towards women has been happening for centuries. The difference these days is that, in the UK at least, women have the ability to speak up and be heard and are legally protected from abuse and harassment by men. In the 70s that didn’t exist, women were still raped and abused back then, they were magically able to defend themselves, they just suffered in silence. Women aren’t incapable of defending themselves these days, but why deal with someone sexually harassing or assaulting you by brushing it off or having them thrown out of somewhere when they can, and should, be prosecuted.

I know the legal system still isn’t perfect and doesn’t always lead to a conviction but the point is women can go and report an assault these days without being basically cheer up love, at least he fancied you.