Men: why do you catcall? I don’t mean all of you, of course. I am also a man, and I have never found the urge to spew forth a barrage of harassment when I pass a woman on the street, and I should imagine the same goes for the majority of the men reading this. But the point remains that some men think that an appropriate way to express their attraction to another human being is to engage in a series of whistles, clicks and other such behavior typically utilized in order to garner the attention of a dog, and it is baffling. Has it ever worked? Has there ever been an instance where a woman has been bombarded by inane noises regurgitating from out of the mouth of a sex pest and thought “that man is charming, I must have intercourse with him immediately”?
There has been a lot of discussion surrounding catcalling recently. Earlier this month, an apparel company put up a series of “No Catcall Zone” signs around New York City in order to make a point about street harassment. Online news channel Buzz60 went out to report on the signs and what the public thought of them, but instead ended up grabbing an interview with this guy, whose lack of self-awareness was matched only by his inherent awfulness:
The Pro-Catcalling Guy
It’s shocking to see someone defending catcalling. Prior to seeing this video, I had always assumed that men who catcalled knew what they were doing was fundamentally not nice, but proceeded to do it anyway either as a method of fitting in with other lunkheads (I have still yet to see any catcalling take place in person that wasn’t orchestrated by a group of men), or just because they could. But no; this guy believes that what he is doing is enjoyed by women. He believes that some aging guy wearing a shirt featuring the Playboy bunny with its ears replaced by marijuana leaves yelling at women who walk by him will actively improve their day.
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“I’m just letting them know that they did a good thing today by getting out of bed,” the man says, appearing to be of the belief that if he wasn’t around to give them the validation that they clearly so sorely desire, there would be no reason for them to wake up ever again. Work? Forget about it. Visiting friends and loved ones? No chance. They got up out of their apartment to see him, the pervert standing on the street corner with the shit dress sense, making inexplicable noises out of his mouth like a perverse Michael Winslow from Police Academy, except instead of making fun helicopter noises he’s making the lives of everyone around him slightly more miserable.
The man’s opinion, and what I can assume is also the opinion of many other catcallers, is that the women they are targeting feel complimented by their miscellaneous sounds and grunts. They’re letting them know they’re attractive – how could they possibly dislike it? But while people obviously enjoy being complimented, there are certainly ways to compliment them that doesn’t make you look like the kind of person who could be found masturbating in the middle of a park on a Wednesday afternoon. Bellowing at anonymous women is not one of those ways.
Poppy Smart complained about sexism before immediately being bombarded with more sexism.
The Case of Poppy Smart
Alongside the above catcalling video, there was also a news story that circulated this week involving a young woman who had accused men who were working on a building site of sexual harassment, after they had allegedly catcalled her every day for a month as she walked back from work. 23-year-old Poppy Smart, from the UK, recorded video footage of one of the incidents of the men whistling her, before sending it to police. Her complaint to the authorities led many to immediately proclaim that she was overreacting and that attempting to charge the men with sexual assault was a completely disproportionate response. Inevitably, Poppy has been on the receiving end of a barrage of sexist abuse, with a photograph of her appearing online that has seen people commenting upon how she dresses, effectively saying that if she doesn’t want attention, she shouldn’t clothe herself in a manner that even partially reveals any of her body parts, with her apparently supposed to embark upon her daily travels in a hazmat suit if she doesn’t wish to attract attention.
Regardless of whether or not Poppy Smart made the “appropriate” response, how many people could sincerely claim that they wouldn’t wish to take some form of action after being heckled every day for a month? One of the people who believed that Miss Smart should have kept her mouth shut and continued to be a moving target in which the men could launch their sexual frustration towards was one of the site’s builders, 28-year-old Ian Merrett, who said in an interview with the Daily Mail: “I’m sure if she walks past again and she is lucky she will get wolf-whistled again. I have wolf-whistled so many girls and got so many birds and snogged so many girls off the back of that, and never had a complaint before. But I’ve got a girlfriend so need to be careful what I say.”
I’m just now imagining this fictional world in which Mr. Merrett catcalls a woman whilst doing some bricklaying, only for her to launch herself towards him lips-first in an act of uncontrollable passion. “Oh, take me now, Ian,” this entirely fictional woman brewed up in Mr. Merrett’s entirely fictional universe probably said, “I just can’t control myself when a man makes whistling noises in my general direction.”
As can be summarized from the video and from Ian Merrett’s comments, catcalling is a stupid thing that is practiced by stupid people, with no exceptions. If you ever pass by a woman who you are attracted to and are compelled to drop down a few steps in the evolutionary cycle in order to grunt at her like a caveman, don’t do it. You’re making the rest of us decent human beings look bad.
Photo: Feminist Apparel
