Quick, Jeremy Vine is discussing cat-calls.

[AskBasil]

Get on the phone!

OMG. Only 2 callers, both of whom were women who got their validation from random men sexually harassing them in the street.

Pathetic.

How? Why?

What?

Where do these women come from? I don't know anyone who likes being shouted at by strangers

So these women who rang in said they love it when random groups of men yell at them to "get their tits out" etc?

Or was the piece pretending that "catcalling" only consists of nice polite gentlemen shyly saying "you look nice" in passing and then not pursuing it any further unless given a positive response?

FFS.

Jeremy Vile probably wouldn't have let a dissenting voice speak on his show. He is the Daily Mail of radio.

I've never listened to him. I don't actually know who he is I should probably find out, people are always referencing his show

Urgh that was fucking awful, and that journo saying that there were more important things for women to be concerned about, like DV? Why is it so difficult for people to fit the pieces together?

What were they talking about though?

Catcalling is usually obscene and often aimed at children and young women with the intent of making them feel uncomfortable if not actively nervous.

Why is that not a problem? I don't understand.

It's also often combined with heavy leering which is really gross and especially when you are young.

As a girl having an old lech raking his eyes up and down you while he says something lecherous is horrible.

We are supposed to enjoy this now? It's not a problem?

This is making me angry now and I didn't even hear it!

Are we allowed to get upset over being touched or is that A-OK too?

Often very quickly turns into obscene abuse not this cheery holiness those idiots on the radio were blathering on about. Where's Laura bates when you need her?!

Holiness? Jollyness I meant

What were they talking about then?

Were they talking about what they imagine catcalling is, because as blokes they've never actually experienced it? Because actually men talking abut this is pointless isn't it. They don't get to have a view on whether women should object to street harrassment or not. They have literally no idea what they're talking about.

the only time dp saw what women experience was in paris, where quite a lot of men didn't seem to care if you were with another man (it does tend to put off men in the uk if you are out and about with your male owner )

he was pretty shocked at how explicit it was

They did touch on the fact that sometimes it's obscene - Nina Myskow (is that how you spell it?) was on saying that it was about willy-waving and male bonding and that it's often not compliments, it's obscene.

But it wasn't really dealt with in any depth. Really cursory and pathetic.

Many years ago, I was stopped on a street in Belfast by the Utv news people, and they asked me what I thought about this. I said that the only women complaining were the ones who never got shouted at. Oh my...I wish I could go back to my younger self (I was very early twenties...in my forties now) and give myself a damn good talking to!! How stupid and ignorant was I? And so many men came up and told me that I was the only one talking sense, that I was proud? PROUD???? Can you believe how stupid I was?

Sorry...meant to add that I didn't hear the programme, but one day these women will wake up and see catcalls for what they are..stupid men thinking they have a right to women's bodies and to comment loudly and publicly on them, the more humiliating the better. It is NOT a compliment.

Why is it so difficult for people to fit the pieces together?

I agree with this.

I also do not understand why so many people cannot grasp the concept that women are not public property. Women do not exist in the world for men to appraise and then comment on.

I have an extremely short fuse and I do go completely wild when men call out to me in the street or tell me to "smile": go up to them, ask them why they are talking to me, who they think they are, why they are commenting on my appearance - really insistently: follow them down the street commenting on their hair, their belly, their arse. Making men like this so upset and shaken that they get tears in their eyes isn't difficult. I have no idea why being spoken to like that wounds them so quickly and so deeply, because they obviously think it's absolutely fine to do it to women. Maybe they think we have no internal lives so it's fine?

LOL Pepper one of the women was 56 (she said) so no hope for her.

Well, Basil, there's no fool like an old fool, I guess.

That caller also said that as her husband was walking a short distance behind her when she was cat-called, he got to enjoy her being appreciated by another man. Yuck

Nice little insight into that relationship

Not