To ask what your best comeback for being wolf-whistled at is?

[legolegolego]

I've recently realised that I walk past groups of rowdy men very sheepishly if they have started doing the whole wolf-whistle thing as I approach.

I'm not attractive so I imagine they are doing out of sarcasm but I've got to the point where I want to be able to walk down the street without worrying that someone is going to comment or whistle. Sometimes I have the children with me and they still do it?!

I want to be one of those strong women who challenges this kind of behaviour - give me some comebacks!

Oh silly me. I'll just get in my time machine, go back to when I was 13 and terrified of the weirdo that was targeting me and other girls my age as we walked to and from school and I'll tell myself:

'Y'know, this fucking pervert who's harrassing you regularly and trying to put his arm around you? Yes, him, the one who scares the living shit out of you. Well, you need to just turn the other cheek because, bless him, he's just a silly man who doesn't realise he's bothering you and really you need to stop choosing to be such a victim! He's obviously a slave to his hormones and you just need to suck it up and deal with because that's how the world is'.

Or we could realise that targetting schoolgirls is behaviour of the scumbag variety and perhaps not talk about victim mentalities. I now have a 13 year old DD of my own and if she comes to me and tells me that anyone is making sexual remarks to her on the street I will involve the police.

I work in a primary school and only today have had to deal with disgusting sexual remarks made by one boy about another boy and a girl. The children involved are 10 - the comments involved 'fingering' (yes, really). The girl was distraught - should I have told her to pull herself together and stop being such a victim?

For a victim of dv you are showing a serious lack of empathy and a shocking amount of ignorance towards other people.

To insinuate that women should just walk away when they live with an abuser is disgusting. Well done you for getting out, but don't assume everyone else is like you. It's incredibly insulting.

tin but people ARE responding in a way that matches how upsetting and offensive they find the behaviour. They find it very upsetting and very offensive and they are complaining to the managers of the offenders.

I work in a university - should I put up with people telling me my tits look great in front of the students? Should I put up with a professor wolf whistling me as I walk into a faculty meeting?

I am the same person walking down the street that I am at work. No one has the right to bully or harass me at work or in the street.

ha - can you imagine gangs of middle aged women in vans wolfwhistling 13 year old boys in school uniforms? If and when that happens regularly I will accept its just a bit of fun and not at misogynistic power play.

tin I don't think we have a choice about whether we are offended, many women don't like being harassed in the street. Why should they not be able to express that? Why should they repress their feelings about it? Why can't men just stop doing it?
Children should know that other people don't always behave in a way we expect, but using that to justify and excuse the behaviour of men sexually harassing women in the street, really?!?
No, if I ever have a daughter I don't want her to think this is ok. I don't want her to expect this, or learn to turn the other cheek or smile sweetly at it. I don't want my son to think this is harmless or 'banter'.
To be honest your opinions on this appall me.

They rarely whistle properly. I stop, smile, whistle properly (fingers in mouth, at a volume that can pierce lead) then shake my head sadly and say something like,

"If you're going to wolf whistle someone, don't whistle like a little girl...this is how you do it...."

It has 100% of the time been met with gales of laughter / ribbing of the initial whistler from their mates on the site, which in my opinion, is more humiliating for them than any snarky response from me.

Twice on my return journey the whistler has apologised. I think I must have a good death stare.

I don't think it's harmless. I ignore. Doesn't happen very often these days though.

Years ago, my DSis was flashed at as she walked home from school, and she responded: Ooooh - I've seen something like that in a book once, only it was a lot bigger and called a willy...

Look the offender up and down, say 'You must be fucking joking' then laugh hysterically and walk away.

Or 'save your breath. You'll need it to blow up your girlfriend later'

Please don't say "you whistle like a little girl". That us designed to be an insult, right? Cause girls are shit at whistling and everything in general.

This amuses me

It's not a compliment. It's a display of power. I don't give a fuck what some random man thinks of my physical appearance. I don't exist in the world for male approval.

Fuck off.
Not the most witty reply, but makes me feel better.

Well would you believe someone shouted "alright darlin" at me out of a van today.

Totally ignored him of course.

"Don't be that guy"
It's got me a few apologies..

They do it because their friends do it, they have never been raised to realise how bad their behaviour is, and because they have met that 1 in 50 women who says she likes it - and then have justified it by believing that all other women who don't are unreasonable/misguided/mistaken/stuck up bitches.

Its amazing how certain countries are worse than others. It is pretty awful in Turkey, yet if you go to Scandinavia or much of Northern Europe, it barely happens at all. Which makes it seem all the stranger when you come back to the UK. Why the UK should be so similar in terms of the way men behave to countries where women have traditionally had less freedom and well paid jobs, I do not know, but I do think its a matter of upbringing and peer pressure.

FWIW I consider it harassment. If I behaved like that at work, I'd rightly be sacked. How on earth can they be working properly if they're on the lookout for women all the time?

Siobhan

That made my blood run cold. Particularly the man who walks beside her.

I rarely experience it now. I get looks but to often whistles or comments. The nest response is to stare right through them.

I agree with Lagertha that it's a display of power (what gives them the right to assess a woman?) , but that some men are probably not even aware of that fact. Stupid men.

Have you seen the Harry and Paul Intellectual Scaffolders sketch.

Look it up on YouTube

I am having trouble linking if anyone can help?

this amused me

Some twat in a pub charmingly said to me "come and sit on my face darlin'", to which I responded "at least if I sat on it, I wouldn't have to look at it".

When I was in Greece twenty odd years ago a man said he wanted to fuck me, I, rather stupidly, told him to fuck off, he punched me square in the face

oh yarp cross post! funny!

Skipton

I like that

Sunny

Say thank you and walk off with your head held high, hardly traumatising is it!! And if my DCs were there we would probably have a giggle about it

Thank you for what?