How do you feel about being whistled at on the street?

[TheBolans]

Do you find it a compliment or a form of harassment?

I saw a discussion with a woman saying people need to get a grip if it bothers them because whistling is harmless. I think if I got the odd whistle every now again at this age, I wouldn’t mind, but back when I was a teenager/early 20s I didn’t like it. It was usually never just whistling. It’s usually shouting crude comments too and so found it degrading and embarrassing. But some seem to think it should be taken as a compliment

That still is the case maybe not too obvious but yes still goes on, i suppose the hot weather does change the dynamics

Also I’m in my late 20s now and it still happens occasionally but the vast vast majority of it happened when I was a teenager in school uniform. So when a bloke whistles at me it just makes me think “yhe you probs been whistling at kids earlier and now I’m last pickings since it’s not school run time”. Really, that’s probably not the case all the time, but it’s just an instinctive thought.

I used to think my dad was a hard arse for lecturing me about rolling up my skirt when I was at school but now looking back he was right. I find myself giving the same lectures to my teenage nieces. I go about it in a different way though, my dad scared the shit out of me by telling me about that janitor who kidnapped those two school girls. He is a builder so he used to tell me it’s not a compliment. They might whistle and say morning beautiful but as soon as you’re gone they’re saying “vulgar shit that you wouldn’t even think of”. Food for thought if you think it’s a compliment.

Some men also do it to intimidate you and I 100% believe that. When I was 20 and I was pushing DD in her pram I got it a few times in dogey arse and then got further harassed when I ignored them. I had literally just had a baby so I wasn’t exactly looking fit, they just saw what they thought was a venerable woman with a baby. I am in fact a right bitch and a bit of a chav so I made a huge scene - I was so sleep deprived they’re lucky I didn’t launch something at them.

When I was a young women with nice legs and long hair, getting whistled at on the street was common, especially when walking past a building site. If it was just a whistle and nice comment it was fine and sometimes you could have a bit of a laugh with it. I didn't mind.

But if they got crude and disgusting it was not very pleasant. Some of them are absolute dicks. The best approach was it ignore them and carry on. I did mind.

Now I'm getting on a bit I don't get whistled at any more. 🙁I kind of miss it sometimes 😂. When you get older you are invisible to absolutely everyone anyway.

This reminds me of a sleazy bloke who asked me while I was working behind a bar what colour knickers I had on. I called over my well built 6’4 boyfriend who was also working behind the bar..

‘Darling, this guy wants to know what colour knickers I wear, are they still in your pocket?’ Never seen a scumbag scuttle so fast out of the pub

Once when I was jogging with a friend (on the pavement besides a busy road) a man in a nice car in a suit reached his hand out to try to hit her on the bum as he went past. Gross. By definition any man who cat calls/harrases/gropes women is not sophisticated but some of them are neanderthals in suits (although actually maybe that's unfair on neanderthals).

Marvellous! A woman after my own heart. Men 0, women 2.

I would say I got whistled at way more as a teenager (from the age of 12 to about 18) than as an adult. Especially in my school uniform. As a result, the fact it stopped doesn't really make me feel sad/as if aging turned me invisible. I was a young looking very gawky teenager with a flat chest, braces and spots. Objectively I was much more attractive at 25 when I was also actually attractive to and asked on dates by normal men my age. Catcalling/being whistled at/ having someone call me fatty (on one memorable occasion) isn't really about being visible/young and attractive to me. It always felt more like bullying. So I don't feel wistful in the way I do about aging generally.

Loads of it, and a bit of attention was always nice.

But you could say that about any interaction with a stranger - I don’t like anyone thinking it’s acceptable to try to force me to pay attention to them by attempting to interact with me outside of an emergency

My DD is 21 and it’s not nearly as bad here as what’s she’s just had in Columbia. She’s used to travelling around London (took the tube in daily since 16) and ignores any comments as usually harmless (but still unwelcome) but one solo trip to a store during the day there and she realised she was the only woman and felt very uncomfortable, and never went out alone again. Any time they went out as a group (wearing normal t-shirts, jeans or shorts/skirts, nothing revealing) and the men would constantly harass them.
I do think it’s better here, but I’m old and no one is telling me to ‘just smile’ anymore. What is the end goal? Do the men think the women take it as a compliment? No, women have made it clear that they do not. That comments, cat calls, touching etc only serves to make women wary at best, scared at worst. So one can only assume that the men who persist are wanting to exert their greater strength and enjoy humiliating and scaring women.
As for those who say ‘back in the day we just got in with it’, shame on them. Teachers used to hit students with rulers (or worse). Men could hit and force their wives to have sex without punishment. Yea people just ‘got on with it’. That never made it right.
You’d think the ‘Me too’ movement had some lasting effect but it doesn’t appear to.

I don’t like it. Not actually for some deep and meaningful reason, simply I’m not remotely interested in tne sort of man who does it. So their opinion is not something I wish to know. For me it’s akin to some loser approaching me in a bar. I’d rather they didn’t.

i only find anything which alludes to my attractiveness levels complimentary/welcome, when it’s from a man who I would feel flattered he found me attractive, someone I’d be interested in, anyone else, can quite frankly, fuck off.

And that sort of man doesn’t work on building sites, never mind work on them harassing women.

lilly Allen nailed it in her song. “Knock em out”

“Can't knock 'em out, you can't walk away
Try desperately to think of the politest way to say ('Er, sorry, yeah, but nah')
"Just get out my face, just leave me alone’

when did this happen to you last?

I think the Me Too movement has had an effect in that young women are much less accepting of it (rightly) and people get angry at the thought of teenage girls being whistled at. That's a very recent change TBH, since I was a teen in the 2000s and I think sparked a bit of a backlash amongst the loser men/tabloid writers along the lines of "it's feminism gone mad"
What was odd to me was that I can remember being quite badly harassed at a train station as a teenager (being followed around and weird leg touching from a creepy guy). We went and found a station worker and he was dismissive but let us stay near him till the train came. Then my mum was incredibly dismissive/made me feel like I was overreacting. But years later when locally to us there was an "incident" when an asylum seeker was alleged to have groped a teenage girls leg and called them sexy my mum was outraged. Rightly so, it shouldn't be happening. But it was a weird contrast to the way she saw what happened to her own daughter 2 decades before. Lots of "it would never have happened in the past" (aaargj it did). But I don't know if that was changing attitudes from my mum because of changing social attitudes, or if she was more angry at a brown man harassing a teenager than a white man harrasong her child. I couldn't really ask without causing an argument.

I think how you frame these things matters to how people view them. Some of the "we used to have a laugh and consider it a complement back in my day" types in the Daily Mail one day would be complaining about the degradation of Western values another day.

ETA: my mum wasn't there. It was me and another friend the same age and my mum was baffled as to why we felt so intimidated as to find the station guard.

I was 18yo going to a job interview in a pencil skirt and heels, in 1988. Exactly the era when some women apparently remember it fondly.

I walked past a building site and was whistled at. It absolutely was not a compliment, the men found my clear discomfort absolutely hilarious.

Even then they were doing it deliberately to demonstrate their ability to make us uncomfortable. If it as supposed to make me feel good, wouldn't they be horrified it had had the opposite effect, rather than amused?

No, it isn’t. It’s liberating.

But I suppose that depends on what we
value. Patriarchal society chiefly values women for their appearance, but we were not put on this planet to decorate it for the terminally vapid.

I don’t believe that the right of women to go about our business unaccosted is asking too much.

Oh to add to changing attitudes, I know theres anxiety about teenage boys and rising mysoginy. But they all do seem to have the attitude that a man whistling at a 14 year old girl = paedo. There's much less acceptance of big age gaps and men/women calling underage children attractive compared to how it was when I was a teenager. Which is a good thing.

I suppose I'll find out should it ever happen, which, given that I've reached the ripe old age of 60, I very much doubt it will.

Doesn't bother me personally if it happens, but the thinking and culture behind it do.
Because its not a compliment. Its a myth that they see a woman and find her so attractive they have to express it. They basically see a woman and decide to entertain themselves at her expense. Any woman, and indeed young girl will do. And some women and girls find it embarrassing and intimidating and that's good enough for me to say it needs stopping.
No way should a bored man passing the time take priority over any woman or girl feeling uncomfortable.

I had it the other week, and I did something I never thought I would do - stuck my fingers up and told them to fuck off. I’m 46 now and when I was younger felt intimidated but the other week thought ‘ fuck it’ - if they want to behave like gobshites this is what they get.

The fuckers called me feisty and one blew me a kiss. Such pathetic behaviour.

Guessing you're not the most fun person at the party.

🙄

I never found it degrading, I liked it. But back in the day it was never followed with horrible comments, so maybe that’s the difference. I’m so old now it hasn’t happened for many years.

Dunno, it’s literally never happened to me.

It wouldn't bother me but I respect other women's different views. It's our individual body and mind and therefore ours to decide.

I don’t believe anyone should bother anyone else while out and about.

I have known shouting a comment to a random woman work for at least one man though.

It started when I was 13! I was tall for my age but god it was mortifying. I never worked out how I am supposed to respond other than hide. I am glad its mainly stopped in my 40s but there is still the occasional beep from a van or something that means the same thing. I still feel just as mortified.