How do you feel about being whistled at on the street?

I know my DH used to work in a bar when he was a young single man, and often had quite drunk women coming onto him, grabbing his bum, etc - especially if there was a hen do. He found it deeply uncomfortable, partly because it seemed inappropriate to respond positively even if they were attractive, as they were too drunk, and partly because he just didn't like being treated like meat while being expected to be flattered by it.

I think a lot of men think they'd appreciate it, but when they're actually in a situation where someone they're not attracted to/can't encourage is making advances, they'd likely find it unpleasant and awkward.

Telling the average guy to imagine a 6'6 burly fellow doing it to them is probably the best way to get them to understand, though.

Do we know how men respond if they are the object of unwanted sexual attention from women?
Or would it need to be unwanted sexual attention from other men in order to have some equivalence?

Does this still happen, I thought they were not allowed to whistle/catcall whatever anymore, that it is harassment.

When younger I absolutely hated it and got embarrassed. From builders to firefighters doing it (yes, and sounding their klaxon from the fire engine)

Used to make me smile tbh, never looked at who was whistling or gave them any attention back but it was a bit of a boost.
Sexist comments on the other hand are very different, they are intimidating and offensive .
Just a quick whistle is a sign of appreciation though, it’s harmless in my opinion.

I find this so sad . Is your self worth really validated by strangers loudly commenting on your physical appearance? If so then that’s incredibly demoralising.
You are worth more than your looks. I hope you can see that one day.

I've never received much in the way of wolf whistles, and haven't received any at all in the past 15 years or so (I'm 47). I've never had leery men yell at me either. I've had attention from males (much more when I was younger), but it's tended to be fairly polite and chatty rather than brief comments or noises. I don't mind that so much tbh, it's how some relationships start after all.

Yes, because valuing indiscriminate male sexual attention is what makes a woman 'fun'.

Oh wait. No it doesn't.

When I was a teenager it used to happen while I was waiting for the bus. We lived on a fairly busy long straight road and there were only a few houses, so noone else was out there with me and they would beep exactly as they were coming up level with where I was waiting. It happened a lot when there were no other cars too.

The most recent one I had at the beginning of summer, the man driving along the residential street I was walking beeped from his van and slowed down to shout something from his window at me... it was something like 'beautiful lady' but I am a married quite plain Mum of two, so it didn't even make sense to me- I just said thank you and tried to walk on fast.

I think you just know it's aimed at you really. Usually there is noone else around which feels intentional. I am a quiet, introverted sort of person, it feels like they get some kind of thrill out of it.

When I was about 18, I waked past a group of boys around 12 years old.

One of them shouted out, "My mate wants you to suck his cock."

I shouted back something like, "Tell him to come back in a few years when he's got something worth bothering with," because I was young and brave.

I'm 52 now and within the last two years I've had, "Fucking Hell, you're gorgeous!" shouted at me across the street; a car window wound down and something unintelligible shouted at me; been propositioned for sex; and been told I have great tits. All by men I don't know in their 20s. And they're just the ones I've remembered at the moment.

So I'm taking from this that they start young and it doesn't matter how old women get, we're always going to be fair game as far as the men who do this are concerned.

It happens less nowadays but anytime men want to decide I'm completely invisible, i'm all for it.

I'm not sure how anyone could consider any of that a compliment.

Yes, I’m sure that’s what you ‘guess’ 🙄

Back in the 60s my friend and I walked a couple of miles.into work every day. If we got less than half a dozen wolf whistles on the way we thought we were losing it. We considered it a compliment. How times have changed.

Maybe it’s me but I probably wouldn’t notice, but if I did, I wouldn’t assume it was directed at me in that situation. How do you know it is aimed at you?

It started when I was 13! I was tall for my age but god it was mortifying. I never worked out how I am supposed to respond other than hide. I am glad its mainly stopped in my 40s but there is still the occasional beep from a van or something that means the same thing. I still feel just as mortified.

I don’t believe anyone should bother anyone else while out and about.

I have known shouting a comment to a random woman work for at least one man though.

It wouldn't bother me but I respect other women's different views. It's our individual body and mind and therefore ours to decide.

Dunno, it’s literally never happened to me.

I never found it degrading, I liked it. But back in the day it was never followed with horrible comments, so maybe that’s the difference. I’m so old now it hasn’t happened for many years.

Guessing you're not the most fun person at the party.

🙄

I had it the other week, and I did something I never thought I would do - stuck my fingers up and told them to fuck off. I’m 46 now and when I was younger felt intimidated but the other week thought ‘ fuck it’ - if they want to behave like gobshites this is what they get.

The fuckers called me feisty and one blew me a kiss. Such pathetic behaviour.

Doesn't bother me personally if it happens, but the thinking and culture behind it do.
Because its not a compliment. Its a myth that they see a woman and find her so attractive they have to express it. They basically see a woman and decide to entertain themselves at her expense. Any woman, and indeed young girl will do. And some women and girls find it embarrassing and intimidating and that's good enough for me to say it needs stopping.
No way should a bored man passing the time take priority over any woman or girl feeling uncomfortable.

I suppose I'll find out should it ever happen, which, given that I've reached the ripe old age of 60, I very much doubt it will.

Oh to add to changing attitudes, I know theres anxiety about teenage boys and rising mysoginy. But they all do seem to have the attitude that a man whistling at a 14 year old girl = paedo. There's much less acceptance of big age gaps and men/women calling underage children attractive compared to how it was when I was a teenager. Which is a good thing.

No, it isn’t. It’s liberating.

But I suppose that depends on what we
value. Patriarchal society chiefly values women for their appearance, but we were not put on this planet to decorate it for the terminally vapid.

I don’t believe that the right of women to go about our business unaccosted is asking too much.

I was 18yo going to a job interview in a pencil skirt and heels, in 1988. Exactly the era when some women apparently remember it fondly.

I walked past a building site and was whistled at. It absolutely was not a compliment, the men found my clear discomfort absolutely hilarious.

Even then they were doing it deliberately to demonstrate their ability to make us uncomfortable. If it as supposed to make me feel good, wouldn't they be horrified it had had the opposite effect, rather than amused?

I think the Me Too movement has had an effect in that young women are much less accepting of it (rightly) and people get angry at the thought of teenage girls being whistled at. That's a very recent change TBH, since I was a teen in the 2000s and I think sparked a bit of a backlash amongst the loser men/tabloid writers along the lines of "it's feminism gone mad"
What was odd to me was that I can remember being quite badly harassed at a train station as a teenager (being followed around and weird leg touching from a creepy guy). We went and found a station worker and he was dismissive but let us stay near him till the train came. Then my mum was incredibly dismissive/made me feel like I was overreacting. But years later when locally to us there was an "incident" when an asylum seeker was alleged to have groped a teenage girls leg and called them sexy my mum was outraged. Rightly so, it shouldn't be happening. But it was a weird contrast to the way she saw what happened to her own daughter 2 decades before. Lots of "it would never have happened in the past" (aaargj it did). But I don't know if that was changing attitudes from my mum because of changing social attitudes, or if she was more angry at a brown man harassing a teenager than a white man harrasong her child. I couldn't really ask without causing an argument.

I think how you frame these things matters to how people view them. Some of the "we used to have a laugh and consider it a complement back in my day" types in the Daily Mail one day would be complaining about the degradation of Western values another day.

ETA: my mum wasn't there. It was me and another friend the same age and my mum was baffled as to why we felt so intimidated as to find the station guard.