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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The Kubler-Ross stages of learning to court:
1. Catcalling
2. Denial
3. Anger
4. Anger
5. Anger
6. Anger
7. Anger
8. Anger
9. Anger
10. Anger
Isn’t this the same golly-gee punitive reasoning they use about not being able to sexually harass women on the job? “Well, gee whiz, if I can’t pinch butts, how AM I supposed to work alongside these creatures? I might say something wrong and be labeled a predator. Better hire men only.”
If they know catcalling doesn’t work, then why are they starting there? And why does their confidence take priority over women’s comfort and dignity?
“I need to learn how to play saxophone, which requires me to douse you in pig slop. Hold still.”
I’m waiting for the next thing Peterson’s fans pull out of their ass to be “how can a man get better at sex if they can’t rape women” or some shit like that.
Aren’t there actually slightly more women than men in the global population? If anything, that would imply women would be competing for men.
Oh my god, now it makes since why they were complaining about lesbians and bi women the other day!
@Talonknife:
If there is no sex selective abortion and infanticide practices there are a bit more women than men.
However in places like India and China, where sex selective abortion and infanticide are illegal but widely practised, there are tens of millions of women ‘missing’ because they either weren’t born or killed shortly after they were. So much so that there are villages with no young women, infant girls are kidnapped to be raised as someone’s wife, and trafficking of marriage age women is rampant.
This is actually a great line. Low-key yet interested. Not creepy. Not homicidal.
@Kat
That’s basically how my husband asked me out. Granted he did just catch me after I tripped over a curve and helped me put my stuff back into my bags. That line has been proven by me to lead to finding soul and marrying them.
So marriage is the goal. Start with catcalling and end up at the altar.
@Lainy
So it turns out that approaching another person respectfully can lead to happiness.
From my personal experience and observations it’s actually the women considered “ugly” that are catcalled at all, so that explains why the “ugly” women complain about it so much.
It also proves it’s NOT anything to do with courting them.
So close to getting the point, but then: What about the menz?
And as other commenters have pointed out: I you think of catcalling as courting (which is debatable at best), see the rejection of catcalling as feedback. Nobody wants that. This is one avenue of approach you do not have to try anymore because it is never appreciated.
Are the Peterson fans slacking off? I just realized they forgot to tie lobsters and/or the Bible into this one.
@Talonknife
As Knitting Cat Lady mentioned, sex-selective abortion and in some places infanticide has made it so there is specifically about a 1.01:1 ratio of men to women worldwide at present. There are more men in younger age groups and more women in older age groups (among people over 65 it’s 0.79:1).
Source
@Battering Lamb
The catcallers sure are bad at learning. Most of the time when someone does something a million times and it doesn’t work, they should learn not to do it again.
I seem to have managed to both fail and learn without ever resorting to cat-calling. It wasn’t even hard to avoid. I think it’s mostly a question of whether or not you care.
I have another theory. I very much doubt that it is a novel one, nor is it mutually exclusive with any of the other explanations being offered. Nonetheless I think it explains a lot when catcalling comes from men in groups. Think of the picture at the top of the article.
I think that old style catcalling is largely about signaling within groups of men. They are asserting their heterosexuality to eachother and bonding over their shared experience of being horny heterosexual losers.
The woman is largely a prop being used in this performance. There is no expectation that she will be impressed by a display that isn’t intended to impress her. If there is any expectation of a response at all, it is hoped to elicit an expression of annoyance. If this happens then the men will all laugh together and the bonding effect is enhanced. This is similar to the horny losers on the lobster subreddit. None of them are trying to work out how to actually impress women. They are just trying to impress eachother.
Reading from these comments, maybe we can start off with classifying Peterson as a terrorist because his ideas seriously lack consideration for women, and other marginalized genders and religions. I don’t know yet about his ideas on race.
OT:
The EFF sent me an email with this link: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/music-copyright-lawsuits-chilling-effect-935310/.
Ideally, I’d like copyright and capitalism phased out or at least significantly changed. Both aim to use culture for money. All we have are business ideas.
I will never forget a couple of these incidents. One when I was taking my infant for a walk in his stroller and these guys in a pickup going past started yelling “Nice ass!’ and I’m thinking here I am with a baby. Another time I’d been up all night with flu-stricken kids and went to the local store to get juice and popsicles and of course I looked like hell and they sat there in their truck going “”woof woof woof” and it was a good thing I didn’t have a weapon
@Universal Kami
You may find this shocking, but “ugly” women get courted. We also have sex. And people are genuinely attracted to us, and not just for our personalities! It’s almost as if “ugly=no one would want to date them” isn’t actually true!
(I know you were probably being facetious, but this is a very real and very harmful stereotype that gets conventionally unattractive women targeted for extra abuse and disbelieved about the abuses they endure.)
@kupo, Universal Kami
And of course there’s no one objective standard of beauty or ugliness. Some people may find one feature ugly while others find it beautiful.
If only there was some popular figure young men find credible, who could act as a teacher, transmitting the hard-won wisdom of older men on how to positively interact with women and be a generally respectable member of society.
@Lumipuna
The problem is, reactionaryism sells better to that demographic than respect. There are definitely some good men in the world, but misogynistic men and boys (the people who would need to be taught the most about respect) would prefer to listen to affirmations of toxicity than advice on respect.
Sometimes catcalling is based on class jealousy (for example, construction workers jeering at women walking to classes or office jobs in order to put them in their place). More commonly, it’s done by socially inept men who are taking out their frustrations on random women/underage girls who can’t defend themselves.
No matter what the woman does, she can’t win. If she ignores or rejects the catcaller, then he gets to play the misogyny card (after playing the “now I will yell sexual comments as loudly as possible so everyone who hears will think I’m a sex-haver” card). I’m always amused by how fast catcallers whiplash from “Hey pretty thing, I want to sleep with you” to “ugly fat bitch, no one wants you anyway”. And then they finish up by screaming “I was just trying to give you a compliment, you #%*$@ €#^%*!!!”
Catcalling happens for a variety of reasons, but the end goal is always the same: publicly disrespect women, make them feel bad, ruin their day. These goblins know exactly what they’re doing. It has about as much relevance to actual courting as methane does to cows.
@Buttercup
A more apt comparison would be as cow dung is to milk.
@Naglfar:
Nor did they whine about context. “But you’re not seeing the catcalling in its proper cooooontext!” or something similar.
But is this a sign of a “movement” that’s puffing its last? Or the quiet before some sort of Petersonian storm?
@Naglfar
Nor for having any sort of grip on learning, for that matter.
I recall a precious tale by a Mammotheer a while back. She had just been to the dentist for some involved surgery, and was catcalled while waiting for her ride… She opened her mouth and let blood cascade from her mouth….
I’m bettin’ the caller second-guessed his lust….
I got a recommendation from Amazon for a J.Pee. book….
Given my purchase history, they need to work on THAT algorithm….