Nice Tits!

Embarrassed rather than a different emotion?

Kind of, regretful or ashamed or angry with yourself or anything?

Embarrassed sounds more like you think you showed yourself up IYSWIM. Just interested not having a go, this is incredibly common behaviour so it's interesting to hear from someone who has done it.

When they jumped or deliberately didn't look round or walked faster or edged away from the edge of the kerb or whatever did you even notice? Or was the thing just to beep and move on? Why did you do it, what did you hope to gain? Or was it just a "thing" that blokes in your social group did and nothing to do with the girls / women?

I sometimes think its a warped lacking self-esteem thing

Do you think that if a man rates women solely on their looks that somewhere, in some dank corner of his soul, he rates himself that way too? So all this commenting on hotness or notness is just ego-feeding, insecurity and struggling for power at some level?

" I tooted at girls when I was a teenager, though this was at night at weekend, certainly during the day would seem weird."

At night possibly more threatening . Glad you feel embarrassed looking back, though.

I agree with your points whirlpool though I think it depends on your peers how your perceptions of women change as you get older. I'm embarrassed now about the times I tooted at girls when I was a teenager, though this was at night at weekend, certainly during the day would seem weird.

If a man seems to be 'successful' in his getting dates etc his behaviors are more than likely going to get reinforced among his peers, especially if they are inexperienced.

I sometimes think its a warped lacking self-esteem thing and thats where the "'Well I'd love it if someone said nice bum to me" comes from. It being creepy or weird to them is completely lost "I'm a nice guy". The Romancing vs Stalking line can be lost on people.

Yes and also I think that when you're in a situation where it stops, it makes it so much more jarring when it happens. You get used to being able to get on with stuff alone with your thoughts and without people intruding.

When it's the background noise and it happens all the time you have to get a certain amount of resilience, although some of them can still break through that and be really upsetting.

And if this stuff is true, if it does work like that, for some or even many women, then we are talking about pretty massive impacts on girls and women's experience of life, aren't we.

Until we get older and then it starts to go away and it is LOVELY

I feel so much more confident and happy going around the place now I haven't got the eyes on me all the time, and the other stuff. Not that I'm gorgeous or anything but I think that all young women are watched and assessed and looked over in a not subtle way by so many men when they go about their business that even when you aren't actively aware of it your brain knows it's happening, we are all animals after all we know when we're being watched, when we are attracting the attention of others when we would rather not be noticed while we're just doing our stuff. I think it makes a lot of females feel self-conscious and uncomfortable even if we don't realise why we're feeling that way. You see a lot of women going around adjusting their clothes, adjusting their hair, often they aren't doing it consciously, and they often look uncomfortable. I know I used to do that and I think it is a consequence of not being able to relax properly when we're out and about.

I didn't even realise until 2 situations. The first was when I was very heavily pregnant and it stopped and it took me a while to work out what was so nice. And then on the tube a bloke looked at me and I turned and he stopped and I realised that was it, I didn't have all these eyes on me any more and it was lovely.

The second time was when I went to a feminism conference which happened to be pretty much all female there were only a couple of blokes there dotted around and again I wondered why I felt so comfortable and then I realised that was it.

Now I am in my early 40s and it's stopping, I feel so much more comfortable and confident walking around the place, it's lovely.

These are just my thoughts on how I've felt and what I've noticed, not saying these are definite "things" but for me, they feel right.

The thing for me about those comments on the street is that there is a spatial element to it. It's about a group of men together exerting a kind of dominance and power over a woman to make her feel like she is running some kind of gauntlet just by being a shared space. And I think it affects the way that all of us use public space as women. We can't be 'out there' in any kind of gender-neutral way. When we walk on the street, we always walk as women.

"Which is why a lot of women react to unwelcome propositions with the I've Already Got a Boyfriend (prior ownership) defence. It's ridiculous and only solves the immediate problem, as opposed to long term social change, but it works."

Yup squared.

Yes, my owner wasn't present though, so he was doubly surprised! But prior ownership is Not A Slight On My Manhood, as I was only rejecting him due to said ownership, he had chosen a woman who was deemed so fuckable she was ownable, therefore manliness untainted, so he displayed shock and immediate backing-off but not YUB. If I'd just gone 'no thanks, you skinny fucknut, I'd break you' (which was my second thought after 'ewwwshudderewww'), his reaction may have been different and a lot more aggressive. Which is why a lot of women react to unwelcome propositions with the I've Already Got a Boyfriend (prior ownership) defence. It's ridiculous and only solves the immediate problem, as opposed to long term social change, but it works.

Poor manfeelz.

"t's like he's just admiring a nice table lamp and WHAT THE FUCK IT'S TALKING TO ME and what the fuck IT'S NOT BEING NICE."

Yup. That's the basic 'wolf whistling is a compliment' mentality.

I think the motivations are interesting aren't they

For a lot of men - the ones who are in a group or with their mates or whatever, it's about male bonding. The female is an object over which they bond. Her feelings on being treated however it is, literally don't come into it, they aren't considered, they don't even cross their mind, because it's nothing actually to do with her, it's to do with the men's relationships with each other.

I mean that's one, there are lots of others obviously. Many of them come back to it being all about the bloke or blokes and the object of their whatever it is they are doing is not even sort of seen as a person, just a collection of body parts to leer at, shout at, touch, whatever. I think this is part of the reason the reaction is so strong when the female tries to assert her personhood and have an opinion about it - it's like he's just admiring a nice table lamp and WHAT THE FUCK IT'S TALKING TO ME and what the fuck IT'S NOT BEING NICE.

Sort of thing.

Others though actively enjoy upsetting and scaring and so on (they are the basic bullies) and the added sexual component just makes it all the scarier and nastier.

Aha! And if you are already "owned", obviously you would've fucked that Fuck Me charmer otherwise, so no slur on his fuckability, he can apologise to your owner (if present) for presuming and go away with intact ego.

Ah yes, the indomitable 'ugly bitch' comeback.

I think it goes: I think you're hot or sufficiently equal or below my hotness level to fuck me. If I shout Fuck Me! at you, you might fuck me. You don't want to fuck me? My fuckability has obviously just taken a downwards turn therefore I'm going to tell you yours has too and hope it hurts you just as much as it hurts me You Ugly Bitch.

It's all really quite playground, isn't it? You may as well counter with my dad's bigger than your dad.

And if they are turned down, often they start to insult your appearance - what, my appearance, the only thing you know about me and the thing that made you want to fuck me in the first place? Find some logic, please.

"That if they aren't already owned then they have to have sex with whoever approaches them?"

I don't think it's that, quite. But some do think that, if they are attractive 'on paper' - if they see themselves as an 8 and you as an 8 or below, to use shitty language - then the default state is 'yes' - hence the Ched Evans 'we're footballers, chicks love it' attitude, DSK and the 30 years younger journalist ('I am rich and powerful, of course she will want me although my wife is friends with her mother'), the guy who approached Nino etc etc.

"I've not even read delusions of gender"

Something like that Whirlpool. And yet they get to discrimate, to say who's fuckable or not. At the extreme end, you get those men like that Californian dickdrip who shot all those people because hot chicks wouldn't fuck him and non-hot chicks weren't worth bothering with (I can't remember his name and wouldn't give him the respect of using it if I did). At the more moderate yet still dickish end, you get idiots who think they're so entitled to women's bodies they can shout at them, touch them, stake a claim to them. It's all about power, really, and domination.

And yes, the crisis thought makes the Handmaiden's Tale a frighteningly realistic possibility, doesn't it?

These men, what are they even thinking?

They are thinking that women and girls have literally no say in who they have sex with? That if they aren't already owned then they have to have sex with whoever approaches them? These are attitudes from the bible or something aren't they. We are aghast at the taleban and isis but the underpinning attitudes are exactly the same.

It does make me worry how much of women's gains are a veneer, and given some kind of crisis we'd be swiftly shut down and shut up and shut away again.

But then I think I'm being paranoid because NAMALT but BUT human beings are capable if awful things aren't they and they behave as is acceptable in their societies. Remove some of the moderating forces and do we slip back to square 1. I don't know.

Total wanker indeed (and quite literally that night ). But it does throw some interesting light on how some men think women are constantly up for it, regardless of whether they've said so or signaled it in some way. The root of some 'consent issues', I should think.

I ought to really. There are loads of things I ought to read from here! I've not even read delusions of gender

Urgh what a wanker NiNo