A man just shouted at me in the street

[Dallia]

“Why are you wearing a curtain?”

I kind of smiled awkwardly and carried on crossing the road to him shouting “oi, you, I’m talking to you!”

I was absolutely mortified, lots of people were watching but no one said anything.

Why do people do this? He seemed like a “normal person” and it was really intimidating. He turned back to look and I thought he was going to start following me. Has anyone ever had weird random things shouted at them in the street, or is it just me

For the record I was wearing a stripy maxi dress as I was on my way to get a spray tan. Really wish I’d had a witty comeback.

Only 2 that truly stick in my mind first was wen I was 21. Was walking through a park from the go with my 6week old wen a group of teenagers clocked me. A ginger lad shouted 'look its ur baby momma' this other lad actually came close enough 2 peer in the pram and shouted back 'nah bro that baby ginger, its urs.' I was just about 2 respond wen my dh came round the corner having heard the exchange and did not look impressed. The lads all ran away.
2nd was not long ago wen some bloke stopped his van and shouted 'do ur flaps rub together wen u walk the same as ur thighs' I shouted back 'no and ur apparently not man enough to handle hip grippers'. His passenger (who looked a fair bit older) burst out laughing and sed 2 me 'don't mind him love his mummy didn't give him any lunch money'

Oh well little things please little boys as my nan used 2 say
X

I teach in a special school. I took my class out last week and one of my pupils is a 16 year old boy with a special interest in cats. He shouted out of the mini bus window to some workmen on the road, "Meow, my little kittens". We had some very confused looks.

Actually 'awww did mummy not give you any lunch money?' Might be a good universal put down for quite a lot if these dickheads.

People are awful.

I was once walking back to my house at 2pm in the afternoon on a Saturday, having had a row with my boyfriend. (in a very naice area if this makes any difference).

As I crossed a side road of a perfectly normal road (think total surburbia) a man in a car was coming out of the road, quite a bit older than me, I was in my 20s, he was in his late 40s-50s. As I went to cross behind his car he wound the window down and asked me where I was going - I didn't know this guy, it was odd. I said I was going home. He asked if I wanted to go somewhere fun. (?!) I said I didn't feel like it after a row with my bf. (instinctive reaction, I wanted to get in that I had a bf i.e. not available). He asked if I felt my bf appreciated me, I said not really, he said "Well he should". Feeling uncomfortable, I said I had to go anyway as I had some stuff to prepare for work, he asked what I did and I told him (fairly serious business environment, low-middle level). We said goodbye and I walked on even more confused/puzzled/wondering what the hell. Who tries to pick up a female in the middle of the day, quite obviously younger, minding her own business? He was totally nondescript, jumper and jeans, greying hair, looked like a dad. Ford Mondeo type car, not a flash Harry.

It was only later I wondered if he thought I was a lady of the night. I was wearing knee-high boots (this was years ago when they were trendy for day time) and a knee-length Spice-girls type coat with a big fur collar. I just think it was so bizarre that he stopped especially to pick me up (didn't bother disguising it by asking the time or directions or anything first) and ask if I wanted to go somewhere more fun.

I binned the coat soon after and didn't wear the boots again.

i heard, as a response to 'Wouldn't mind getting into your knickers '
*
Thank you, but I already have one cunt in there.*

When I was 14 I had dyed red hair and was walking home from school in my uniform and a grown man shouted 'ginger bitch' out of his car window as he drove past.

I've also had men leer out of cars/vans at me and shout the usual comments about tits etc.

They're always ugly, greasy looking losers.

Badhair, that’s funny!

Just thought about this one too: if I had a quiz for every time a man has made a comment about getting fat when they see me eating something. For context, I am not fat and never have been (not that it is ever ok to make those comments), whilst quite a high proportion of the men making the comments have in fact been quite overweight.

At a wedding last year, I was eating a Krispy Kreme, when a man about 20 years my senior said: ‘Oooh, you can’t eat that, you’ll get fat’. I was annoyed and a bit dumbstruck but also quite tipsy, so responded by basically cramming the rest of the doughnut in my mouth all at once and saying: ‘I love cake’, no doubt spraying doughnut crumbs in his direction.

I’m not normally one to brag but I looked pretty good that day- was wearing a fantastically flattering swing dress- and can only assume that the old goat thought I looked nice but realised he could never have me and thought he might as well say something bitchy.

I also have a twat of an uncle who always makes the cake/fat comment. It’s so fucking boring and predictable. He also said it to my DD when she was aged about 8 and was eating some cake at the wake after my mum’s funeral.

Arsehole.

I forgot as well a couple of years ago DP and I were on the drive washing the car. Three 12 year old lads went past only saw me and one of them said 'will you shag me?' He didn't know what to say when DP replied 'No, I'll pass on that.'

@luckyfucky my confidence was shattered in that instant

That's the awful thing about these incidents - the way they can send you crashing down in seconds.

It's somehow worse if you have made an effort to look nice - I remember being out for a family pub meal wearing a new outfit for the first time; I wasn't exactly thinking I looked great but I thought I looked passably average; and then a man on the next table stared at me and called out: 'You make my dog look sexy!" to gales of laughter from his mates.

I wanted to leave there and then, but not everyone with us had caught what had happened, and those who had obviously decided it was best to ignore it, so I had to sit the whole thing out, knowing the cockwomble at the next table knew he had succeeded in humiliating me.

This happens to women all the time it's bloody ridiculous. Like there are these men who see a women walk by and want to interact with her in some way, but instead of being honest about it they say or do something ridiculous.
Like me and my friend walked in front of a parked van with worker men in once, and they honked the horn at her child. Like having some form of interaction gives them a buzz, but they are too dumb to know how to even do it property

@ScreamingValeta what a shitty situation They seem to do it more when they are in packs, like wild animals

Brainless twats!!

Right, so my DD is nine and on the cusp of this.

We wandered blindly into the arena but our daughters shouldn’t have to.

I don’t want to scare or inhibit her but I think I need to give her an understanding of how the adult world is skewed against her, through no fault of her own.
I’d like to start sharing some of my own methods of jumping the barriers.

How are you talking to your girls about this stuff?

Also it's likely they see women as property. Like they just automatically have a right to make random comments about how they look. Like we aren't people, we are just trees or other items of the scenery

I had some cheeky comment made to me by a young lad as I walked past him. I was with my two kids.

The only retort I could think of was asking him if his social worker knew he was out by himself. He looked a bit

If it’s safe to do so, just take the piss out of mens penis size if they shout comments as they go by or ask them if they kiss their mother with that foul mouth.

I do think that men, as a sex, have something wrong with them in the upstairs department. They’re just so universally nasty and entitled. They do hate us, you can see it in them. They probably begrudge us our very existence.

Valenta that’s horrible.
You must have looked lovely that night or the vicious little shit wouldn’t have chosen you as a target.

I think if I had a daughter I would explain it to her as because men have been societally and evolutionarily conditioned to see women as property.
So they feel they have the right to make comments about them randomly, because it makes them feel like they have power, but that's only because women are actually the ones who have power over the reproduction of the entire human race and so men feel intimidated by them secretly.
And so we just have to take there comments non-personally and realise it's actually speaks volumes about them and means near to nothing about us

HL’s stub
That’s just fucking weird. Perhaps she mistook you for someone she’s got previous with?

I am a bit strange I admit, for reading a book I had just bought in the street. I couldn't wait to get home! But I was standing next to a shop near a pedestrian crossing, just standing there, browsing my book. The road over which the crossing stands is closed due to roadworks, though for some reason the council haven't covered them up. I am happy in my bubble, when a big man in a deep voice suddenly yells at me from the other side, "The man is Green! Can't you see? You are meant to cross the road when it's green!" Now I thought I was crazy, but this guy was a loon. Was he really waiting for me to cross on seeing a green man over a closed road? "Oh, do fuck off" I replied, and walked away. He continued to complain. Dickhead.

@SleightOfMind I'd honestly have settled for blending into the background. I remember exactly what I was wearing - a long teal-coloured jumper with a crew neck over black jeans, with black mid-heeled ankle boots - so not an outfit that screamed 'look at me' by any stretch of the imagination. I never wore it again though.

God, it's depressing isn't it? I can remember being told in front of my boyfriend by a bloke that I had known for a few years, that I used to be really ugly. I was told the same by some Belgian lads that my parents kindly let camp in their field once a year - they said you look better this year, last year you were quite ugly - they said this in front of my Mum who was not impressed, but I was so programmed to think it was my job to look pretty for men that I agreed with them (facepalm). I mean what sort of arrogant arsehole accepts someone's hospitality & then feels it is entirely acceptable behaviour to call their child ugly in front of them? I was asked in a club by some random bloke why I was so fat, he couldn't believe how fat I was - I was a size 14. Then there was the time I was cycling home and a white van drew along and the male passenger reached out cupped my bum and started to push me along whilst the van kept driving. I have never had the urge to tell someone that they are ugly, fat etc etc, I mean why would I feel the need to do that?
I think MrsKoala is spot on with her comment The sexual comments piss me off. But the observational ones are equally offensive. It’s pure arrogance that some men feel entitled to blurt out any thought they should have and we should be grateful for it.

Lily I’m not telling DD that!

While it is a partial explanation of ‘The Difficulties’, it’s a massive fudge.

she’d probably scamper off half way through to play.

I do appreciate you trying to come up with a way of broaching this though. It’s a tough call.
I like the idea of explaining the basis of misogyny.