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

This definitely.
Im now 60 so it was constant in the 70s and 80s.

I'm 60 and hated it, particularly when I was a teenager. Even worse was being told to smile or cheer up. I'd want to say that I'd cheer up if they'd piss off and leave me alone.

@HedgehogCabinFan but i still get revved at crossing the road by wankers to make me jump. Exactly the same thing. It's not flattery, it's aggression.

Absolutely hated it (I'm nearly 60). I don't know anyone who liked it - all my friends were the same as me.

We were all pretty aggressive in telling them to fuck off too. Which horrified my mother, who thought I should be flattered.

It's male entitlement and an expression of dominance, othing to do with attraction or appreciation.

I’m 44 and got cat called frequently as a teenager and told my random men on the street to smoke and would get my arse felt up in night clubs too. I hated it. Would give them the Vs and push away the gropers. How any woman liked this is beyond me, it perpetuates the stereotype that women’s bodies / looks are all that is important about them. Thank goodness times have changed.

Odd response from someone in their 40s - it's normally slightly older folk who enjoy it (though not all older folk).

I’m 65. I used to cross the road/take the long way round if possible to avoid this .I was never any good at flirting, and could only think of the witty comeback long afterwards. I used to dread passing groups of men. I hadn’t much confidence then, not much now either, but better than I was. I love being 65 .

55+ here - never liked it, but wasn't scared either. I did consider it harmless - but not sure if it really was or if it was context.
(No ubiquitous violent porn in everyone's pocket)

Am 55 and always hated it. Used to cringe walking past building sites. Men would shout things from cars. It made me feel humiliated and embarrassed and never felt like a compliment but like a horrible power play.

It happened to me all the time when I was younger & I found it extremely tedious. It was definitely intimidating at times as well - men would shout stuff out of cars, often hard to discern something like “woooordarlinnicetits” and if you ignored them they’d pull up ahead of you or drive along slowly next to you. That could be scary more than tedious.

Kerb crawling was awful.

I'm quite a lot younger than your threshold so haven't voted but perhaps because I'm from a small town it was still really common when I was a teen/younger woman. I don't live there anymore but I can say it was a mixed thing, on the one hand at the time I think I regarded is as being seen as attractive, but I was also quite naive about men and I think it also contributed to making me even more self conscious than I already was. Which is a shame because I was already very shy at that time.

All these men who catcalled are probably married with families and daughters. It's such a strange thing to think about

I’m 60. I hated it.

When l was a Goth in my late teens and early 20’s l used to tell them to fuck off.

I remember my dad catcalling at women out of the car in the 70s with my mum & us children in the car 😳

Honestly, I think some women did and some women didn't. We're all different. I hate attention, for example, others don't.
Certainly not true to say all women enjoyed it. Equally untrue to say all women disliked it.

Your mother is weird. I'm 62 and have always HATED it, especially when I was a teenager (often in school uniform) and would get wolf whistled or shouted at by builders up ladders or driving past in a van.

It made me feel horribly self-conscious and vulnerable.

Nobody likes having "Wahey, get your tits out darling!" shouted at them.

My mother told me all the time I was hideously ugly and so I found it really flattering and it boosted my confidence 😔

I am early 50s and would ignore it and have conscious thought about how arsey men were for doing this but secretly I liked the feeling that men found me attractive. I didn’t like men in cars beeping their horns and shouting shit though as that made me jump and did feel threatening, nor random men shouting or saying shit in the street as that felt threatening too. Men in building sites felt safely contained I guess!

I’ve always liked the feeling of men finding me attractive. I’m a heterosexual woman and I think it’s understandably normal to enjoy feeling attractive to the sex you enjoy having sex with.

Like pp’s mum, I find it really, really hard that that has all but disappeared. I go to dance events and festivals and the men my age there will utterly ignore me and dance with the younger women next to me. I really am completely invisible to them. I don’t at all understand women my age who say they love that age has made them invisible to men. I don’t. I loved that sexual ‘dance’ ( using dance metaphorically here) with men. I loved seeing out of the corner of my eye that men were watching me. I am pretty fit for my age and try to focus a positive view of my body and its capability and strength and the joy that brings me ( and it does) but that sexual side was also a really important part of my physical embodiness and enjoyment of my physical self, and I miss it.

@Waitfortheguinness
"But I think the dynamics have changed over the last couple of decades and there’s more lean towards trying to shock or demean the individual. Far more likely now to come out with a disgusting comment, trying to impress their peers and the more uncomfortable the woman seems the better."

Sorry but this is nonesense. The "hayday" of catcalling was was the late 60's and all through the 1970's. I had lewd (and sometimes) obscene comments shouted at me from the age of 12. For example, I had very striking strawberry blonde hair and I can't tell you the amount of times workmen shouted "do your pubes match love". On another occasion, when I was 13 and in my school uniform, one man shouted at the top of his lungs from scaffolding "what you need is 13 inches of throbbing wet dick". That was 1970.

I don't know a single woman from my era who enjoyed it. Men could do and say exactly what they like back then - and they did frequently. It was quite normal to get groped at least once a day at work and for comments to be made about your boobs or arse, as if you weren't human. There was no-one to complain to, and even if you did you were told you were frigid or a lesbian.

Always hated this behaviour - as did my mother and grandmother both of whom were ardent feminists.

Oh love 💐 I am sorry xx that’s an awful thing to have done

I'm 53. In the 80s and 90s I had incredibly mixed feelings.
I was a young looking child for a long time with a late puberty and did not get cat called at all when I was very young (unlike some girls). The sense I had of being objectified and threatened physically/ sexually came more from boys who were peers who were as rough and disrespectul as they liked - they would pull your skirt up, smack you, pinch you, insult you with sexual words at school - no one did a thing about it.

Many of my friends were subject to some form of regular sexual abuse from a family member. (I was not.) If someone told you what their granddad used to do them, they were very ashamed and they swore you to secrecy. I never told anyone about these confidences and I worry to this day about whether I did the right thing.
My music teacher used to grope me at times.

So groups of men in public were nothing to all this, the real dangers were elsewhere. Even when I was older and subject to more classic cat calling, although I always felt a bit intimidated by a group of men when I was alone, I never thought they would actually do anything. That might be naive but I just thought if I walked past quickly no one was going to actually come and follow me. It was embarrassing but so what.

When I was in a group or being flirted with one to one, it was different, sometimes annoying but sometimes fun. not threatening. I grew up in the northwest and back in the 80s / 90s at least, a come on was not necessarily hateful. The only thing was it was not the done thing to tell them to get lost so even if you could not be bothered with it you had to play along to an extent or it would take even longer to get rid of them while they harangued you for being stuck up, or followed you.

When I moved to the south in the 90s I encountered a different kind of flirting which felt hateful and insulting and I didnt even recognise it as such. I was used to men in the NW who wanted something from me - company, or a smile - being flattering, trying to charm. In the SE they would sneer and insult you and I didn't understand why they were being so mean to me because surely they wouldn't be like that if they fancied me, where do they think it's going to get them? That mode seems to be the mode that is most common now in men's unsolicited interactions with women. Some sense that we owe them something and they want it, but they also hate us.

Not the point of the thread but Lima is not in Ecuador!

Late 80s DH and I bought a new build when we were first married and I had to walk the gauntlet past the other homes still belong built on my way to and from work. After a while nearly every time I walked past there were catcalls and whistling so I just gave them the finger. I wouldn't have thought to complain to the site manager though as then it was just something women had to tolerate.