To think that wolf whistling wasn't such a bad thing?

[NovemberMorn]

Joanna Lumley has just given an interview in which she says..."I never minded wolf whistling, I always thought it was tremendous".

She also said... "I think we were a little bit tougher then. Somebody put their hand on your leg, you didn’t feel affronted and report it. You’d give them a slap.”

Do you think she is right?

Well done on challenging her , your friend has some weird line in thinking.
Women that report rape are lying that's messed up ,a very small percentage do perhaps for vindictive reasons but the majority go through hell on earth to get to court even if they get there no guarantee of conviction.

I think she's partly right in that men do need to be told and that did work sometimes... 30 years ago.
However... the world has changed for the worse for women. Porn, Drag and 'Trans' now reign, degrading and openly mocking women. Men won't be told. Groups of young men openly stalk and harass women and girls in the city centres. These men have no respect for women at all and in fact enjoy any distress caused, it excites them.

Why is it that shouting down a woman having her own thoughts or experiences is allowed?
To me some women want to control other women to as much a degree as men do

I don't care about a wholf whistle
I would defend and protect a girl that did

I happily wear provocative clothes that show off a body I've worked hard for, and I don't care if that brings attention

Have absolutely no issue in myself with enjoying male attention

I have a first, I am very senior in a competitive tech industry

It's MY choice how I feel, I don't need men or women telling me how I should react

Ah, the predictable "women do it too".

I was also 10 the first time I was told I had Nice tits.
When will these women who think its a compliment realise that their compliance and complicity with this behaviour makes it much worse?

That's outrageous! And I know where you're coming from;
I never dared mention the things that were said to me because I couldn't bring myself to repeat the words that were used. There would have been a lot of - 'how does a nice girl like you know those words' - or - 'I can't believe anyone would speak like that to a nice girl like you'. As if being - 'a nice girl'- (not how I saw myself btw) was a protection!

I might make a bingo card for this thread

Maybe boys and men need more wolf whistles and unwanted hands on their legs to toughen them up, then.

This is obviously wrong too.

Generally men have privilege within society at the expense of women and that privilege includes the objectification of women in many circumstances. The reverse is not true though and it is highly unlikely that a group of female nurses going about heir job would whistle and make lewd comment to male patients or any similar female dominated profession.

When I was about 14 on holiday with my family I remember my parents having to explain to my younger brothers that the local men who had just driven past were ogling me.

@RosesAndHellebores I disagree I never learnt how to handle myself. I was sexually assaulted at work while 8 months pregnant by a much older man who was senior to me. He had probably been getting away with that shit for years. He even tried to blame me because I didn't tell him to stop, but being paralysed with fear does that to you.

I was 9. I was harassed, leered at, shouted at, and wolf-whistled every day on the way to and from school. When I went into a corner shop there were bikini-clad women on displays selling peanuts, porn mags, boobs out in the Sun and on the cover of other papers. It felt shit and I was often very scared.

No I never liked that. Found it intimidating and embarrassing.

Predictable because its true.

Obviously women can do no wrong on Mumsnet though.

I don't think wolf whistling has ever been acceptable. My great grandmother used to tell me she bashed anyone who did it to her with her handbag!

I don’t know why trans is in inverted commas or linked with porn. This is an interesting debate and doesn’t need your transphobia. It adds nothing and is offensive.

Being an 11 or 12 year old and having intricate knowledge of every building site around home and school, and taking sometimes huge detours to avoid them and whenever I did pass one having to steel myself for the wolf whistles and cat calls. I was short and had no womanly figure, was wearing school uniform and no make-up. Fucked up behaviour from adult men at work that could not have been ‘cancelled’ sooner.

My issue is that I got wolf whistled a lot more as an ugly teenager than I did as a late 20’s ‘conventionally attractive’ woman. There’s no many others with the same experience where we got wolf whistled as actual children and not as adults.

I'm sorry to hear that. I always avoided anything like that despite attracting attention in my late teens/20s - I don't quite know why but I was quietly confident and could be a bit frosty.

Oh and the first time I was wolf whistled / approached by an adult man was when I was 10. Some dude in a car parked up by the shop I was going to for some sweets asked if I'd been broken in yet. I told my dad and he dragged the man out of his car through the window and kicked the shit out of him.

It is wrong when women do it too.
Far fewer women do it than men.
Men generally aren’t scared of women.

Broken in...I always hated that term 🤮

You are spectacularly missing the point.

Women objecting to J L saying she's fine with being objectified are not objecting to her choice of being fine with it, they are objecting to the impact her being vocal about it has for ALL women.

I grew up in 60s and 70s and don’t recognise the MN portrayal of that era at all. As a girl and a young woman, I felt safe. Just because Benny Hill was on the telly it didn’t mean ordinary men behaved like that.

When I was 14 (53 now), I used to walk to school with friends past a building site. The cat calls and wolf whistling was constant.

We all got so fed up that we reversed it.

We left notes on their vehicles, we'd shout that we were in love with them, make mix tapes and play our stereos super loud outside the site.

It took, what, three days and they then left us (and we, them), alone. The remaining few weeks it took them to build several new houses, they were silent and didn't even look at us.