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

Not disputing her experience at all, but it isn't weird that I had a different experience surely?

Have you considered that my very ordinary suburban upbringing in a quiet safe town where I went to an all girls' school may have offered a different experience?

I've been catcalled a few times when I was younger and I can honestly say it never once bothered me!

Horrible. Would cross the street to avoid it. Deeply embarrassing and sometimes hostile.

This isn't my experience. Curb crawling as escalation was more common in the past imo. They have never got out of a car after getting the middle finger from catcalling me.

No, @poorbuthappy - in mine and others' experience, it was certainly very threatening in the past. Social media is new, but harassment, intimidation and male violence sadly isn't.

For me I’d say (as the incels fear!) that it would depend on the man doing it. If they were attractive then it was seen as a compliment, but also if it was just a wolf whistle or an innocent “hello darling” it felt like a compliment.

However, if the man catcalling was old and gross, or if it was a “show us your tits” or a more leering version of a catcall then I would have found it uncomfortable.

Now that I’m invisible to men I do kind of miss silently locking eyes with someone when out and about and feeling ‘seen’ but I certainly don’t miss the verbal side of it at all. I find it most disconcerting that men I would consider attractive (30-50 ish) will now stare at my teenage daughter instead of me as we walk past. There’s a little bit of envy there that I’ve lost that glow of youth but also repulsion that these men old enough to be her dad would happily shag her. 🤮

Well why didn't you caveat with that then?

You mentioned clubs and I didn't know that there were nightclubs in the suburbs.

I'm only 34 but even now a wolf whistle from a hot young lad is a compliment/flirting. Get ya tits out from someone old enough to be your dad is gross but rarely threatening.

I was not brought up to see it as a compliment.

Fascinating thread with so many differences in views and experiences. I have mixed feelings. Someone giving a wee whistle or saying morning gorgeous or even nice legs (and I did have good legs back in the day and wore short skirts to show them off) was very different to being told what they wanted to do to you or when I was followed off the bus, had my bum felt or side of my breasts stroked (both on buses).

I didn't used to mind a whistle necessarily.... or once a quite posh man walked past me and said I was the nicest looking lady he'd seen all day. That was fine and not upsetting. Crude comments are very scary though. Whistling and commenting when a woman is alone and he's with a big group of friends or it's dark or deserted is horrible and frightening.

I'm 55. It happened a lot less in the country I grew up in, but it never bothered me and I'd secretly feel flattered, I never felt threatened by it.

About 5 years ago I was out cycling (in lycra) early one morning when some young blokes in a car drove by and one shouted 'milf' at me out of the window. I found it amusing (mainly because I doubt they'd have shouted that if they'd been closer and seen how old I actually was) and told DH about it. He was absolutely horrified - more so by the fact that I wasn't deeply offended!

I do not want, or NEED any man to tell me I'm beautiful. I don't need to be validated - or have my confidence boosted - by some random man desperate for attention, simpering giggles, and fluttering eyelashes from a woman or girl.

Would he say this to another man? Even anything similar to this? No he fucking wouldn't. If you are a man (not you individually, the collective 'you') and you are about to say something to a woman that you know you wouldn't say to a man, then keep your fucking mouth shut.

I'm 62, never enjoyed it. I used to roll my eyes, ignore, or tell them to piss off.
Edited to add, It was the touching that used to really make me angry. I swatted away an awful lot of hands in my youth.
Sad part was I looked very young for my age, at nursing school when I was 18 I was always being told I should have finished school before going to work. So thesis men must have assumed I was under age ick!

I'm 62 and I absolutely hated it. I was a quiet, shy girl. The casual misogyny of my teenage years and 20s was relentless. I developed a phobia about going out and never felt safe.
Men constantly commented, touched and made disgusting co.ments. I was watching a tv programme on the 70s last night and it brought it all back.

Had men whistle, call and and beep their cars at me. Regularly staring at me. Comments. Throughout my twenties and 30s. I enjoyed the attention as I was very flattered. Certainly wasn't offended in any way.

Funnily enough (but not really), I notice men eyeing up my teenage son. Since he was about 13 or so. And yes, old enough to be his dad too. 🤢 I give them a hard stare.

That is desperately worrying and super weird. OMFG her poor daughter!

Imagine having a mother like that!

I never saw it as a compliment and wasn’t flattered. I didn’t think I was particularly attractive and assumed they did it to every youngish woman. I’d cross the road (didn’t work) or walked faster. I was glad when companies brought rules into to stop it happening.

I'm early 40s and was walking my DD to primary school only a couple of years ago and a scaffolder said, "morning love, nice!" The nice was said in a slow way whilst looking at my chest area as I noticed my top was showing a slight cleavage! When I was catcalled in the past it made me feel uncomfortable but I think groping, being smacked on the backside especially in a work context, had that in an office role once when I was very young, are worse but I wouldn't say any of these changed my behaviour so I wouldn't walk a different route or anything. What I hate is that my daughter who is a young teen but is not womanly in anyway yet more Bambi legs and very skinny is being looked at, hot beeped but some lad of about 19 when I visited my Mum in a rural market town- I told him at the lights he was disgusting before he drove off from the lights. In the summer DD and I stayed out quite late in central London as she is a keen photographer and we were taking photos near parliament square, before we got the train home we visited a mini Waitrose and DD went off to get her sweets whilst I found a drink on a different aisle, when I came around the corner a man who was probably early 30s was trying to talk to her and was encouraging her to buy the sweets or he would for her as you only live once, when I appeared and made myself known between them he was taken aback and scuttled off, now he may have been only making conversation but I am a very cynical person when it comes to stuff like this and I just thought he was a creep!

I'm in my 60's and I liked getting a wolf whistle. Wish I still did. Not so keen on the cat calling but I didn't find it a problem, and I either answered them or ignored them.

There's nothing flattering about being leered at by a the sort of men you wouldn't touch with a shit encrusted barge pole.

Reading through these I have to say the cat calling I got was never as crude or disgusting as what appears to be said now. Good grief!

I was harassed constantly as a teen in the 90s and catcalled everywhere. It terrified me, but I do think I was socialised to expect and accept it to an extent. To complain about it to friends and family would have landed as conceit, in some ways. There was a subtle undertone that I should be grateful, that being catcalled was far better than being the alternative (not being attractive to men, rather than not being catcalled).

I wasn't arguing about whether or not some women like catcalling. If they like it, that's fine and not my problem. You clearly haven't read my post properly. I was responding to the poster who said that things have got worse over the decades and that lewd remarks are more likely from men these days. I said that was "nonsense" and cited examples of the comments that were deemed perfectly acceptable in the 1960's and 1970's. Some of which transcend lewd and are in fact utterly vile and obscene. It was also considered perfectly OK for men to speak to 12 and 13 year olds like this. I know, I was there - so it's hardly a difference of opinion is it.