Nice Tits!

[gaggiagirl]

Dont know if I'm posting this in the right place, just wanted to share and vent.
Walking into the main gates of a big hospital today I hear a car engine very close to me and a horn beep. I turn around to see a car with four lads in it about 17 or 18 years old. Windows wound down. Driver shouts "NICE TITS" then toots and speeds off.
I was walking holding the hand of my four year old daughter and I'm 35 weeks pregnant. How dare they? I'm just a bit horrified really and wanted to get it out.

And if this stuff is true, if it does work like that, for some or even many women, then we are talking about pretty massive impacts on girls and women's experience of life, aren't we.

whirlpool I have certainly felt less watched, almost safer in my heavily pregnant state. Like I shouldn't be viewed as "tits" anymore, but a mother. Those twats just ruined that for me. My enormous boobs should be able to go about their business freely.

Yes and also I think that when you're in a situation where it stops, it makes it so much more jarring when it happens. You get used to being able to get on with stuff alone with your thoughts and without people intruding.

When it's the background noise and it happens all the time you have to get a certain amount of resilience, although some of them can still break through that and be really upsetting.

I agree with your points whirlpool though I think it depends on your peers how your perceptions of women change as you get older. I'm embarrassed now about the times I tooted at girls when I was a teenager, though this was at night at weekend, certainly during the day would seem weird.

If a man seems to be 'successful' in his getting dates etc his behaviors are more than likely going to get reinforced among his peers, especially if they are inexperienced.

I sometimes think its a warped lacking self-esteem thing and thats where the "'Well I'd love it if someone said nice bum to me" comes from. It being creepy or weird to them is completely lost "I'm a nice guy". The Romancing vs Stalking line can be lost on people.

" I tooted at girls when I was a teenager, though this was at night at weekend, certainly during the day would seem weird."

At night possibly more threatening . Glad you feel embarrassed looking back, though.

I sometimes think its a warped lacking self-esteem thing

Do you think that if a man rates women solely on their looks that somewhere, in some dank corner of his soul, he rates himself that way too? So all this commenting on hotness or notness is just ego-feeding, insecurity and struggling for power at some level?

Embarrassed rather than a different emotion?

Kind of, regretful or ashamed or angry with yourself or anything?

Embarrassed sounds more like you think you showed yourself up IYSWIM. Just interested not having a go, this is incredibly common behaviour so it's interesting to hear from someone who has done it.

When they jumped or deliberately didn't look round or walked faster or edged away from the edge of the kerb or whatever did you even notice? Or was the thing just to beep and move on? Why did you do it, what did you hope to gain? Or was it just a "thing" that blokes in your social group did and nothing to do with the girls / women?

I've perfected an air of total oblivion, that really takes the wind out of their sails. I like to add things like picking gunk out of the corner of my eye, and other little details which makes THEM feel invisible. I've made them jump before when I've suddenly turned to look at them before walking away because I'm so good at it. I love to hear their brazen yells turn into feeble and embarrassed token efforts before they finally shut up. I like to think it makes them feel powerless, even just a tiny bit when faced with an un effected target.

Whirlpool I would say overtime its probably more ashamed, when i specifically did it, i was with peers and it was not to single women it was to groups of girls of similar age who appeared to be going out. They appeared to laugh and wave seemed all part of a game.

The womens experience we hardly heard about, well I didn't when i was younger, and there was no real talk about consent either, loads on environmentalism and drugs but nothing on people and relationships. Perhaps thing shave changed now?

"The Romancing vs Stalking line can be lost on people". I mean men tbh not people sorry.

Yes ninokuni I would agree with that.

It's a slightly different dynamic if it's a group of girls as safety in numbers feelings. When you're by yourself it can make you feel very vulnerable and depending on situations maybe intimidated or scared. Or just annoyed or angry or bored or whatever.

WeAllFloat yes I stopped reacting when I hear a car horn or a shout when I was in my teens! The ones who want a reaction any reaction will do and so it's preferable not to give it to them Some of course get annoyed by the lack of reaction and so up the ante to make you notice them / pay attention etc and it can get a bit nasty.

The other consequence of this is the amount of times I've had "oh I saw you on the high street and I beeped / shouted but you didn't hear me / completely ignored me" well yes I've learned not to react (if possible) to these sudden things and so that's how it is. What happens if the beep is a warning about something well tough, loads of women and girls don't turn around when cars beep because they have learnt not to.

And the other thing is when they beep right next to you it can make you jump out of your skin it's really loud, and then you can't help but jump, do they do this because so many women don't react and that forces them too? That was something I really disliked as it was the general intrusiveness + getting a sudden big fright.

Whole thing's shit really.

I also totally agree it's about claiming a space too. I was at the beach the other week, and entire swathes of the coast were taken up by men, either playing ball games that took up entire stretches between groynes, flying huge kites that could knock a child over easily (and they were violently swishing them down to ground level!) and just doing shit that required all the space. then the entire sea was filled with men on jet skis making the water a no go zone too. Literally no women were doing this. God, there were even men standing up beach lobbing rocks accross the rest of the sand to the sea, could they move to the surf and do this....thus freeing up the whole bit of beach!?!? No! It did provide a perfect backdrop to point this phenomena out to my dh, who I think might not have agreed without the ridiculous amount of examples that day.

Oh yes, that happens doesn't it, weallfloat.

How odd that when I read it I immediately knew exactly what you were talking about, but I never actually noticed before, I just thought oh those people over there are using all that beach for their cricket and those people there are playing frisbee and I don't want to get hit in the face so I'll steer clear and ditto those ones playing football and so on and so on...

This stuff is weird. How did I not notice the obvious factor there!

Same with playgrounds and football games, whirlpool.

If a bunch of schoolgirls asked for 90% of the playing field to be turned over to picnic tables or reading areas, they'd be laughed out of the heads office.

I remember being out in a pub with some older girlfriends when I was 17. Oh I was a slim leggy thing then....I was messing about flirting with the lads (who we knew) who were playing pool and one of them came up behind me and put the pool cue horizontally up between my legs. I can't remember what he said but I remember the burning red faced mortification and running off. More searingly I remember being told, you can't wear a short skirt and boots like that and not expect them to have some fun with you. That's twenty years ago and it makes me red with anger rather than embarrassment now.

tooold that's really awful

Oh the anger is useful. That it's worse now, that makes me angry.

I'm 52, and, while all this crap generally stopped a long time ago for me, I still occasionally gets some dickhead/group of dickheads accidentally checking me out then insulting me when they realise I shouldn't be on ther radar.
I suppose it's quite funny in a way (they're disappointed so ha!), but it didn't feel funny when I stopped to look in a shop window on a Saturday afternoon and four or five blokes (in their thirties) me, with one saying 'no, ugly' several times when I turned to move on.
Makes me wish my hair would hurry up and turn all grey so I'm more obviously 'aged' from a distance.

That should be group of blokes surrounded me.

A couple of guys in our office made some comments about a new girl on a different floor (not in her earshot)...how she was fit etc...

Myself and some female co-workers spent the rest of the day commenting on the blokes in the office - what we'd rate them out of 10, what their bums were like etc.

Funnily enough, said males didn't like being objectified and no further comments have been made about anyones appearance or how fit they are....

Ugh, memories of being 18 and working in a pub.

I was wearing trousers and leaned across a table to pick up some glasses. A male customer (20s or 30s) pushed his finger against my trousers right into where my arsehole was and said "boop!". I ran away crying, but my manager (male) and the other bar server (female) said "it's part of the job" as I stood there sobbing. I even felt embarrassed because I was wearing a sanitary pad and thought the man might have felt it, it seemed to make it worse somehow that's he'd know something so intimate about me through his assault. Does that make sense?

I'm shaking just writing this. I wish I'd slapped him away, it would have been worth losing my job over.

It's just an exercise in humiliation, isn't it? I still remember how the table of blokes laughed their heads off.

So many horrible experiences. I hope my daughter doesn't have to put up with this when she grows up.

"I hope my daughter doesn't have to put up with this when she grows up."

Or sons contribute to it,

I will be be talking to my son about it, as my parents didn't seem to give any direction in this.