Jordan Peterson fans explain catcalling to you

By David Futrelle

Women complain a lot about catcalling, but do they really understand how important it is for young men to be able to hoot, whistle, and make gross smoochy sounds with their lips whenever an attractive woman crosses their path?

Yes, I’ve been reading the Jordan Peterson fan subreddit again, and this is one of the important really stupid questions raised in a recent discussion subject of catcalling — which, in the judgement of some of the lobsterboys, is a critical part of the “the boyhood transition to manhood” that evil feminists are trying to eliminate just because they don’t like dudes sexually harassing them all day long.

According to one JBP fan called sand313man, women

don’t even realise that all that cat calling, was just shy non confident men learning how to approach females and just failing miserably, but learning all the same.

Yes, “shy” is definitely the first word I think of when I think of men yelling “dat ass!” or “I want to lick you” at a passing woman.

Now many men are scared and Unconfident of being labelled some sort of predator.

COUNTERPOINT: If your favorite way to, er, court women is by hurling sexual remarks at them on the street, maybe you should worry about being labeled a predator.

Women now wonder why so of them are single and having a mid life crises of career without family or meaningful relationships.

Clearly it’s because they weren’t catcalled enough when they were younger.

Every man they meet is pussified by their own doing.. as they desperately look for real men, which often times they have killed.

Uh, so women out there are regularly murdering good men? I’d like to see the statistics on this.

They destroyed the boyhood transition to manhood. People need to fail to learn to be confident.

A catcall is simply a miserable attempt at approaching women. But back in the day, we were allowed to miserably fail, in order to learn.

In a followup comment, sand313man adds that:

The majority of people aren’t born as a natural Casanova. You must fail again and again to get anything right.

It’s a slow progression. Maybe starts with what some might call a ‘cat call’… to cheesy pick up lines.. to saying stupid things.. to saying even reasonable things but still not being confident.

A man always had to face the consequence of rejection over and over, and one day he actually gets good at even getting with hot beautiful girls.. one day he might even find the perfect one to marry that he clicks with.

Because most women would be thrilled to marry a man who spent years yelling sexual innuendo at other women on the street before he realized that he’d do better saying “you seem really cool, do you want to get coffee sometime?”

But how are people of today supposed to even attempt failing when they are automatically labeled a predator because they might lack game …

Woman have the right to say no. But this notion of cancelling and labelling someone predatory is a sickness. I mean really grow up, and be happy that you were even worth someone’s attention. Sometimes I think it’s the ugliest wenches who first complained about cat calling for being ignored.

Someone called RossFrom Britain wholeheartedly agrees:

its definitely the ugly ones who complain the most, probably because catcalling is a rating system which places them lower than hot women

i do sympathise with women on this though, because being approached all the time and by guys who quite often turn out to be creepers and stalkers, or people who flip out if they are rejected, must be pretty shitty. not to mention scary if the guy is physically intimidating

but as you say – how will men learn to court women?? with population density as it is, all men are now competing with like X million other men… how on earth will the inexperienced/less attractive men ever get a chance to learn?

So suck it up ladies, men need to be able to sexually harass you in order to learn how not to sexually harass you!

The idea that catcalling, however stupid and ineffective it is as a means of courtship, is simply the best idea that some dumb men have come up with to meet women may have provided the basis for an old Jerry Seinfeld routine, but it’s not actually, you know, true.

Catcalling isn’t about courtship; it’s about aggrieved entitlement — and asserting power over women. According to one of the authors of a recent study on catcalling in the Middle East and North Africa, street harassers

have high aspirations for themselves and aren’t able to meet them … So they [harass women] to put them in their place. They feel like the world owes them.

Others who have studied the subject note that harassment is, well, fun — at least for the harassers, if not their victims. Catcallers aren’t looking to learn anything; they do what they do because it makes them happy, and allows them to feel better about their lives.

The idea that the catcallers themselves are somehow the victims here, the hapless targets of mean old feminists trying to derail their transition to adulthood, is not only absurd but perverse.

So par for the course on the Jordan Peterson subreddit, I guess.

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