Did women used to enjoy being catcalled?

[Gofastboatsmojito]

Hi,

Filtering a recent discussion with my stepmum I just wanted to survey the 55+ year olds of mumsnet to check whether I'm way off.

She is absolutely insistent that in her youth women (most? all?) enjoyed being whistled or shouted appreciatively at when waking past a building site.

She thinks women's perception of this has changed in the last 20 years. All her friends enjoyed it in the 70s and 80s apparently.

For context she has been the subject of male violence including sexual violence and does not equate the two.

I find it hard to believe everyone enjoyed it and assume that women felt a lot less able to say they didn't like it due to fear of being called frigid, uptight etc.

I'm sure the answer might lie somewhere between the two extremes but just wondering what an AIBU poll might say.

V grateful if women of age 55+ only vote

YABU = in my youth the majority of women I knew considered a wolf whistle as a cheeky but welcome compliment

YANBU = I didn't enjoy this even in the 70s

@blackcherryconserve ageist! A 65+year old woman is never ‘invisible’ unless, of course, she thinks the only test of her visibility is the degree to which she is subject to the crudest validation by the male gaze.

I remember when a bloke walked past and said nice legs love what time do they open?
They're closed for a private party was my reply.The only comeback I've thought of on the spot so was pretty pleased with myself at 19

More like over 50. Thankfully, the unwanted attention pretty much stops 95% when you get to 51-52. (For some women it will be mid to late 40s.)

.

@RainbowsAreNotTheOnlyFruit

Anyone remember the ‘give us a smile, love’ brigade? You’d be doing something completely normal and minding your own business. Then some arsehole would be in your face demanding that you smile at them. Even if you ignored them they wouldn’t let up. You’d always get a load of verbal (and very personal) from them as you tried not to dissolve in a puddle of shame and get away from them.

YEP! My 2 late 20-something DD's still get this.. They ignore men who say this, and have been called miserable cunts, grumpy bitches, and fucking slags. For having the audacity to not give these random men a lovely big smile, so they look more pleasing to said random men.

I even had it myself a few months ago! Some man around 10 years older than me - so about 70 - was in front of me in the queue in B & M, being served. He stared right at me and said 'cheer up! give us a smile luv! You'd look so much prettier with a lovely smile!' I just ignored him and scrolled through my phone -while I was waiting for him to complete his transaction.

It was a choice between glaring at him and telling him to fuck off and stop telling women what to do, or ignoring him and looking at my phone. Luckily for him, I chose the latter option.

Me too. Exactly me.

That is not my experience.

I've voted yanbu because I was shy and awkward and absolutely hated it. BUT in my Facebook feed the same question was asked, and most older women said it was fine. Unbelievably.

54 here and genuinely hated it. Was catcalled everyday from 11 -18 years old on my walk to secondary school as the route took me along the north circular with standing traffic on this section. Often the same drivers would be moving at walk pace and do it continuously for the 10/15 stretch of road. I was a very young looking, plain girl in boring uniform. I despised everyone of those men.

Additionally you would get if from building sites and other drivers at other times. I used to dread walking past building sites. I was never ever flattered by it, the men that did it were grim predators.

You loved being told to sit and look nice?? 😳

You're right, I did, apologies.

It comes to something when women have to just take it, whatever men dish out to women who just enter their orbit, minding their own business.

I read a PP who said that women/girls were 'trained' to like/accept catcalls for their own safety. I think that is true. How safe they were is probably down to luck/opportunity for assault but it all makes me so sad.

I'm 58

If I'm honest , I quite liked it if it was a whistle , smile or a whoop ..it put a smile on my face and I might have blown a kiss back

They didn't approach .. no where in the personal space and I felt it was harmless

If anyone had ever done more than that and I felt uncomfortable I'd walk away or shoot it down but that rarely happened

Times have changed and now I don't want this for my granddaughters, however I fear more of the hidden online predators

Anyone remember the ‘give us a smile, love’ brigade? You’d be doing something completely normal and minding your own business

Urgh I absolutely loathed this. The implication being that it’s your job to reinforce the idea that you only exist to look pretty and obliging at all times.

Or the even worse variant “you would be pretty if you smiled more.”

Thanks, arsehole, for that insightful comment.

For some women it never stops. I'm 56 and still have to put up with unwanted male attention; it disgusts me. Women think that it stops after a certain age an attribute this to how attractive they are. It was never about this, it has always been about men thinking that women owe them attention, letting women know that they are there and can intrude into a woman's day any time they like.

I get that back in the day this was more widespread and sort of accepted/enjoyed by some women but any woman thinking that cat-calling is any sort of indictment of her looks is a bit daft. It's not about the woman at all.

I hated it. Embarrassing and unnecessary.

It's nice to feel attractive, so if a guy smiled at you in a cafe or something, same as today. But catcalled from a building site was embarrassing. You knew it wasn't about you personally, that they did it to every 'bit of skirt' that walked past and you were just being appraised on your legs and boobs.

This was the era of Page 3, don't forget. (I haven't RTFT so don't know if it's been mentioned.) I worked in an office where there were pics of girls with naked boobs stuck on the wall. When I tried to explain to one of my colleagues how it made me feel, that for the men I worked with, all women were reduced to a nice smile and bare breasts, he said i was being silly and that the pics were just nice to look at.

My Grandad read The Sun when I was little and it made me feel very uncomfortable when I saw him looking at Page 3.

@HeySummerWhereAreYou
Depressing isn’t it?
Standard responses

‘ Looking at you, what is there to smile about?’

‘How original. It must have taken a man to come up with something that patronising’

‘Sorry, where you talking to me? that’s such a personal comment to make to someone you don’t know,

Man-dementia?

I found it embarrassing and didn't like it. A few years ago I was driving a convertible and was stuck in traffic and some knobheads in a car 3 or 4 spaces behind mine started calling out my name and whistling and shouting (I have a cherished number). It was mortifying. From behind pretty sure I looked like a cute blonde not so much frontally.
Not sure what they'd think about their daughters being subjected to that treatment.

yup, that's pretty much what my Mum's attitude was and what she (and my Dad) taught us. My Dad laid water and gas mains in London. He was the boss of the gang and didn't allow his men to do it either.

It's always hard to think of the appropriate response in the moment, but "You'd still be an ugly git if you smiled or not" would've done it 😁

I didn’t know any different. Different times. Different culture back then. We didn’t all run screaming to HR

I don’t think women ever enjoyed it. They might have said they did because they thought it was expected, or been socialised to think it was flattering and all that mattered was male validation. But I don’t think that’s the same.

My Mum tells a story of going to work at 15 in a major store, where they had to walk through this kind of basement full of men to get the stock - I think the men did the unloading of stock arrivals or something. From what she says it wasn’t only cat calls or intimidation but often young women would be sexually assaulted. Sounds awful!

I've never known anyone "run screaming to HR".

Even in the 00s when I was starting out as a lawyer, I had a judge tell me (in private) I could wear a bikini in his court any time 😱

Exactly- portraying women as “running screaming” if they raise a valid complaint is part of the problem

I think some women had such low esteem (or not much else going on in their lives) that a wolf whistle made them, for a while, feel more superior compared to women who didn’t get whistled at.