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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You need to learn how to approach women? Then I can save you a step. Just follow these simple rules:
1. Don’t catcall.
2. When in doubt, refer back to Rule 1.
There. Now you can skip the catcall phase and move on to a better approach.
I remember being a teenager and wondering how catcallers expected women to respond. Did they really expect women to turn around and start seriously flirting with them? I can’t imagine any woman doing that in real life. So the idea that men catcall to put women in their place makes perfect sense to me.
@Mrs. Obed Marsh:
I’ve read anecdotes from women who did respond to catcalling by flirting back to see what would happen and the men were universally baffled and put off by it. They aren’t expecting a positive response and don’t actually want one.
O/T, but I have a question that someone here might be able to answer:
Is there a non-gendered term that is equivalent to “sir” or “ma’am” (that is, an honorific)?
@Naglfar
I’ve been telling folks to go with “comrade” when it’s earned.
Joke aside though, I am also curious about this, speaking as an enby person living in a country where language is very binary.
@Naglfar:
“Gentles” or “gentles all” might work.
Or if you are feeling cute “Gentle folk”
I asked a catcaller this once and he just denied he was hitting on me and my friends. He didn’t explain what he was actually trying to do, but I think it embarrassed him because he scuttled off. It must not feel too good for a grown man to be scolded by a teenage girl.
Felton wrote:
You win the internets today! Lol indeed!
^ Of course I meant Fenton. I had intended to go back to check the spelling, but since it was on the previous page, I forgot. :/
Mrs Morley wrote:
I think too many people will hear that as “Gentiles.”
Fascinating:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nushu-chinese-script-women
Thank you for the suggestions. I think I’ll go with “gentles” and make sure to enunciate clearly.
@Daniel – that had always been my take on this type of behaviour – chest beating and hooting among young apes.
I recall at high school one lunchtime I was walking across the quad and heard just such a whopping and hollering from an upstairs window. It was boys from my class leaning out the windows and giving girls who walked past a score out of ten (they’d pre-prepared signs with 1 – 10 on them). Being terrible at ‘judging a room’ I had missed the fact that the usually busy quad was empty, and that girls were clustered, angry and crying, under the walkways out of sight.
The boys got in trouble. But I didn’t really feel it was for disrespecting girls? This was about 1990.
I felt humiliated cos I got a low score and everyone saw it. That was what bothered me at the time. I was embarrassed and felt worthless. Because I was already inculcated by that time to KNOW that my worth was judged only by my appearance.
I have never felt more worthless than I have after that (and other) incidents.
@kupo EXACTLY on the subject of “ugly” women don’t get assaulted. I know I PERSONALLY don’t judge on appearance whether an assault happened, but I’m also very very aware of what people at large think, as I work in the justice system, (nowhere near criminal law thank goodness, I couldn’t cope with dealing with these cases) but I know how it goes in practice. I am sick of telling idiots sexual assault is usually about power and dominance not sex and getting blank stares. And I think that’s a fairly tame thing to say. And when the POTUS can just outright say someone’s too ugly to assault? It’s not changing soon. It makes the people prepared to report sexual assault and proceed all the way to a court hearing, knowing how they’ll be judged and treated, the BRAVEST people ever. And if people didn’t expose themselves like this we wouldn’t even have made the small gains we have. And it shouldn’t be necessary. It’s so wrong.
Whoops long post! I edited I promise!
3. When you’re convinced that one of the earlier two rules is wrong or bad, refer back to Rule 1.
I’ve heard “enbies and gentlefolk”, or at least that’s what I think the announcer said, though that was at an entertainment event which specifically messed around with gender.
@kupo
Umm, excuse me?
I AM considered an “ugly woman”.
I was talking from my OWN experiences and those of people I know.
I KNOW people considered “ugly” aren’t actually ugly.
That’s why it was in quotation marks.
I KNOW they have relationships and are stereotyped.
@Eddie
I think they wanted to look “impartial” by having the algorithm recommend you that book, same shit as what NaziCapitalistTube are pulling off. Either way they’re still gonna make money from it.
I think this is referring to a larger issue of men finding their voice and being allowed to do it without being labeled a predator when they fail. It’s pretty simple fact demonstrated by this generation having the least sex/marriage/kids of previous ones. Of course if you just follow the narrative of “there are bad men who do it therefore all men who try to do it are evil” it won’t make sense to you. Nuance doesnt apply to outraged idiots.
Oh, Aaron. So many things to say to all of that, but I’m going to go with this: Which generation is “this” generation, exactly?
@Viscaria
I’m guessing he’s referring to millennials, because that’s the generation older generations usually are complaining about. It seems the main reason millennials aren’t having as many marriages has mostly to do with the economy, not with catcalling.
@Universal Kami
Sounds like we’re in agreement, then? Not sure why you’re angry at me for stating something you claim to believe as well?
@Universal Kami
Sorry for the double-post, it won’t give me an edit. Just to clarify I was addressing the concept that if ugly women get catcalled that means it’s not about courtship. It sounded like you were serious about that part, so I responded to it.
Aaron
I make 20 dollars an hour and work part time. My husband has a marines salary and is thousands of miles away from me. If your talking about generation z where the oldest people in it are 21 years old, we are broke, we are spread thin, a lot of us are actual children and millennials are only doing slightly better then generation z. That is why people aren’t getting married and having children. Most of us can’t even feed, house and clothed ourselves all at once.
I also want to point out I make a lot more then other 21 year olds do, that’s why I can have my tiny one bedroom apartment. And the only reason I make that much is the 15 years of experience I have with ballet dancing. That alone came from a well off family that had the privilege to get me the education in that dancing to be able to be a teacher for it. That is not something that was accessible to many people. That is my privilege I had greatly checked, why don’t you do yours now mr. Manly catcalling man.
@kupo
I meant catcalling at all isn’t about courtship.
It’s about a lot of things, but attracting someone isn’t one if them.
I don’t know anyone who was catcalled that actually dated the person who did it.
I tried to make it sound like that so-called “ugly” women get catcalled a lot more than believed, but nobody believes us because we’re considered “ugly” and not worthy of catcalling.
Which makes absolutely no sense, but manosphereans and unfortunately a lot of cis men I know don’t seem to understand the problem.
I don’t know, I’m probably not making any more sense.
I apologise for being hostile earlier.
@Aaron, if you haven’t noticed by now that cat-calling has absolutely nothing to do with attracting someone – not even in the most incompetent fashion – there is no hope for your observational or analytical skills. Cat-calling is an act of aggression, and very often a performative display of socially acceptable (to them) aggression which men put on for the ‘benefit’ of other men.
So, they think catcalling is also a dogwhistle for feminists ?
Trying to get the attention of women on a hand, calling them “attention whore” on the other. They should have a sticker “We brake for noparadox” on their back.