Derail from Feminist Gamer: Catcalling on the Streets

[Sabine Grant]

Ok, let's imagine the woman in the cartoon really was approached by a fully happy and nonsexualizing man on the street (not a "damn, you are fine!" vibe at all). Then grant that she blows it out of proportion and misconstrues the man's intent. Now why would she do that? This is where the real debate about the cartoon lies.

Some random guesses would be:

She had be truly catcalled by real perverts recently and is hyper alert and sensitive. So she is mad at the previous men in fact. I myself have been paranoid about other people wishing me ill after one person fucked me over badly.

This one may be what the cartoonist thinks - that she has been brainwashed by feminists to see all men as rapists or harassers.

Any other ideas?

----------------------------------

Let me add that the chance of a friendly non-sexual greeting from a man (who would just as likely say the same thing to a grandma or grandpa) on the street being seen as harassment is likely low in the first place. Most people who are not under a lot of stress can read peoples intent fairly well. So a highly stressed woman might misread.

So has the cartoonist approached a lot of woman with sexual intent that he thinks he is being slick at hiding it. Then he wonders why they are upset? Dumbass, people can read your intent, no matter the situation be it as a car salesman or hitting on a woman or just saying hi.

I need to add that it is usually not a greeting such as "hi" or "hello" in English or similar greeting in a foreign nation and thus language which would cause a woman to experience a sense of being objectified versus what catcalling conveys. I do not recall women (to include me) enjoying the mountain trails around Garmisch -Parternkirchen freaking out each time a male passing them by greeted them with "GrussGott!". To be noted that such frequent GrussGott is certainly not exclusively from men to women. My usual will to adapt to local cultures led me to also say "GrussGott" whether it was a man alone passing by me or another women or a mixed group of people.

And there are various cultures where men will automatically greet women they pass by. It is considered polite. I know for myself that I have never freaked out when an older generation of Frenchmen still took off their hat for a brief moment while encountering a woman on their path. Or greeting me with a "Bonsoir Madame" or "Bonjour Madame".

To be noted that catcalling is a form of communication which always conveys attention given based on the physical appearance of the woman. That is IMO what makes catcalling an issue. Where there is a higher probability of objectifying women than a greeting gesture (tipping hat off) or verbal "hello" type of greetings.

What I have unfortunately observed in the US is a trend among some radical feminists (usually a minority of them) interpreting negatively the intent of stranger man offering assistance or help to them. Such as holding the door for them. The interpretation comes down to " I am being treated like I am helpless because I am a woman" or " the only reason why is because he finds me attractive and he is hitting on me". There is such devaluation of males' intentions from those very few radical feminists. I will add that such radical feminists somehow really believe that the Universe revolves around them. It is about "he is hitting on me" instead of simply accepting that he is being a polite and helpful person.

I am not part of women who cannot help but view males as an enemy concocting and planning to harm them or demean them. I tend to be quite comfortable in a predominantly dominated male environment. I also find discussions initiated by males to be more stimulating and intellectually challenging. What the social media has revealed to me (such as Facebook) is that males who are listed under "friends" on my page are not the ones posting series of pics about kittens and puppies and other adorable critters, or the latest nail grooming fad or cosmetics and how lovely decorated and practical is this new brand of Tupperware. Where I am expected to click on "like". Because I am a sweetheart, I will click on "like" but I am not going to invest any energy into commenting in a discussion expanding on how cute a hamster wearing a sweater is!

However, to all guys out there, be aware that if you catcall women , you are simply embarrassing yourselves. You are because you then become part of the category of guys who are so damn superficial they cannot appreciate and value a woman based on her character and what her mind contains. You reverse back to "primate behavior", banging on your chest and making loud sounds. You are so unable to captivate the attention of a woman that you have to resort to catcalling by making fools out of yourselves. To put it bluntly, catcalling resorting guys are pathetic losers. To women who feel emotionally hurt by their catcalling, remember to mentally visualize the catcalling dude(s) as pathetic losers. Just move on as dignified as you know how to be. No need to give such morons the satisfaction of having you made cringe.

Unless you are as equipped as I am with the type of verbal riposte, Cyrano de Bergerac's style joust, which can only make him want to disappear in a mouse hole.

The "you" here is a general and generic one which in no way implies any of our fellow male participants to this thread is part of that "you". But we do have "guests" folks from the outside who lurk.

 

[Jayjay]

I'd like to think catcalling is a cultural, I wouldn't dream of whistling at random women on the street. I have heard it happen a few times, and I don't know what would be the solution except for women to dress more conservatively (burqas anyone?) or change culture that it's simply not acceptable to judge people based on their looks.

This debate has sparked some funny youtube parodies though...

[YOUTUBE]XDsmxgvYVFA[/YOUTUBE]

 

[credoconsolans]

I'd like to think catcalling is a cultural, I wouldn't dream of whistling at random women on the street. I have heard it happen a few times, and I don't know what would be the solution except for women to dress more conservatively (burqas anyone?) or change culture that it's simply not acceptable to judge people based on their looks.

Or how about teach men that it's unacceptable to be a jerk to women in public?

 

[Jayjay]

I'd like to think catcalling is a cultural, I wouldn't dream of whistling at random women on the street. I have heard it happen a few times, and I don't know what would be the solution except for women to dress more conservatively (burqas anyone?) or change culture that it's simply not acceptable to judge people based on their looks.

Or how about teach men that it's unacceptable to be a jerk to women in public?

That's kinda what I had in mind with the second option.

 

[Togo]

What I have unfortunately observed in the US is a trend among some radical feminists (usually a minority of them) interpreting negatively the intent of stranger man offering assistance or help to them. Such as holding the door for them. The interpretation comes down to " I am being treated like I am helpless because I am a woman" or " the only reason why is because he finds me attractive and he is hitting on me". There is such devaluation of males' intentions from those very few radical feminists.

Eh, not always.

My wife's boss had the habit of always making a point of always offering his chair to a woman, always opening a door for a woman, and standing up when a woman entered the room. This made professional interactions quite challenging. You can't drop into a room, if someone insists on making a point of your presence, it's hard to attend a meeting where there aren't enough chairs if the person running the meeting insists on springing to his feet, clearing a path between you and his chair, and then carrying on the meeting standing over you while you sit. And it's difficult to have a conversation in a doorway or corridor, if someone has leapt to his feet and insists on standing there holding the door, on the off-chance that you might want to go through it.

Now picture a smallish office, with multiple doors, and figure that the majority of their interactions are these little gender-based rituals. Can you see why this might become annoying, and the man be asked to stop?

 

[Sabine Grant]

What I have unfortunately observed in the US is a trend among some radical feminists (usually a minority of them) interpreting negatively the intent of stranger man offering assistance or help to them. Such as holding the door for them. The interpretation comes down to " I am being treated like I am helpless because I am a woman" or " the only reason why is because he finds me attractive and he is hitting on me". There is such devaluation of males' intentions from those very few radical feminists.

Eh, not always.

My wife's boss had the habit of always making a point of always offering his chair to a woman, always opening a door for a woman, and standing up when a woman entered the room. This made professional interactions quite challenging. You can't drop into a room, if someone insists on making a point of your presence, it's hard to attend a meeting where there aren't enough chairs if the person running the meeting insists on springing to his feet, clearing a path between you and his chair, and then carrying on the meeting standing over you while you sit. And it's difficult to have a conversation in a doorway or corridor, if someone has leapt to his feet and insists on standing there holding the door, on the off-chance that you might want to go through it.

Now picture a smallish office, with multiple doors, and figure that the majority of their interactions are these little gender-based rituals. Can you see why this might become annoying, and the man be asked to stop?

I am not sure that the paragraph you quoted and responded to is related to the situation with your wife's boss. I will also assume that if she experienced any annoyance it was not based on what I specifically worded as :

a trend among some radical feminists (usually a minority of them) interpreting negatively the intent of stranger man offering assistance or help to them. Such as holding the door for them. The interpretation comes down to " I am being treated like I am helpless because I am a woman" or " the only reason why is because he finds me attractive and he is hitting on me".

It does not appear that any annoyance your spouse's boss(not a stranger man) created was due to your wife or other female employees interpreting his gestures as being motivated by him viewing them as "helpless because they are women" or " finding them attracting and hitting on them".

In any case and whichever reason for them being annoyed, it certainly does not rise to the point of feeling objectified or harassed.

Now picture a smallish office, with multiple doors, and figure that the majority of their interactions are these little gender-based rituals. Can you see why this might become annoying, and the man be asked to stop?

For me, personally, it would not annoy me. But I tend to be more of a let go and let be person than someone who feels that the annoyance they would experience ,in that situation, is so unbearable that they would need to attempt to control the behavior of this man by asking him to stop.

To add that we often choose how we are going to feel about any given interaction. As I am one of those adepts of "life is too short to...", I tend to be more on the side of experiencing positive versus negative.

However and since this topic revolves around catcalling, I maintain that catcalling conveys objectification of the female recipient of catcalling. And I do maintain this :

However, to all guys out there, be aware that if you catcall women , you are simply embarrassing yourselves. You are because you then become part of the category of guys who are so damn superficial they cannot appreciate and value a woman based on her character and what her mind contains. You reverse back to "primate behavior", banging on your chest and making loud sounds. You are so unable to captivate the attention of a woman that you have to resort to catcalling by making fools out of yourselves. To put it bluntly, catcalling resorting guys are pathetic losers. To women who feel emotionally hurt by their catcalling, remember to mentally visualize the catcalling dude(s) as pathetic losers. Just move on as dignified as you know how to be. No need to give such morons the satisfaction of having you made cringe.

 

[repoman]

Did somebody say Burka?



The confession from the pedestrian at 1:37 was intriguing. Tell me more!

 

[thebeave]

Did somebody say Burka?



The confession from the pedestrian at 1:37 was intriguing. Tell me more!

That video has to be a fake. She gets a lot of attention from wearing the tight fitting top and pants, but absolutely no response when wearing the hijab. I was told that the clothing is not a factor in the harrasment:

http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?2895-Derail-from-Feminist-Gamer-Catcalling-on-the-Streets&p=84175&viewfull=1#post84175

Now this video on street harassment is the real deal:

 

[Sabine Grant]

Did somebody say Burka?



The confession from the pedestrian at 1:37 was intriguing. Tell me more!

That video has to be a fake. She gets a lot of attention from wearing the tight fitting top and pants, but absolutely no response when wearing the hijab. I was told that the clothing is not a factor in the harrasment:

http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?2895-Derail-from-Feminist-Gamer-Catcalling-on-the-Streets&p=84175&viewfull=1#post84175

Now this video on street harassment is the real deal:

Actually, Rhea's response (which you linked to) is far more detailed and explanatory than how you portrayed it,

" I was told that the clothing is not a factor in the harassment".

This is her actual response :

I disagree. The fit of the clothing is _NOT_ important. The catcalling is wrong no matter what she wore.

But even so, if you look in the background she was not wearing anything unusual at all. Go google still images of that video and just browse them. She was dressed NORMALLY. Absolutely, completely, utterly normally for the neighborhood in which she was walking. Many other women in that video were wearing snug tee shirts.

(He on the other hand, was not. He was the only one in the whole video without a coat. THAT is disingenuous to make that video as a comparison)

You cannot say that you are "not saying she should dress more modestly" and at the same time be "merely pointing out that the fit of the clothing is important." The clothinhg is not important. It is wrong behavior even if she is dressed to impress her date later and it is telling her what to wear to suggest otherwise.

Her point being that no matter what a woman wears, catcalling is wrong. Further her pointing to the above contradiction.

This bit about how women should dress and how important clothing is can only convey to women as a whole that they are partially responsible for the behavior of men who engage in catcalling. If only they did not wear revealing or tight outfits....men would not be tempted to catcall them. It really portrays men as vulnerable and weak creatures who have no self control, vulnerable to all those temptresses who parade their attributes in the streets while wearing clothing which does not hide those attributes. It reaches to religion induced mentalities such as found in conservative Islam and conservative Christianity where women must dissimulate their femininity so that men do not fall into sinful thoughts and resulting behavior...in this case catcalling.

I have to wonder how many remnants from the account of Genesis still plague the mind of people : as in the first created female, Eve, being the one who led the first created male, Adam, into temptation and his resulting sinning. How much of that image influences some mentalities into viewing women as an object of temptation and therefor women as a whole being expected to not to be an object of temptation any longer so men can be spared from being exposed to their femininity, femininity which must be dissimulated or hidden from public view. The responsibility then is to be assumed by women in their choice of what they wear in public. How much of their femininity they are willing to hide or dissimulate so those poor weak and vulnerable creatures, men, will not be tempted...to catcall?

 

[Togo]

Eh, not always.

My wife's boss had the habit of always making a point of always offering his chair to a woman, always opening a door for a woman, and standing up when a woman entered the room. This made professional interactions quite challenging. You can't drop into a room, if someone insists on making a point of your presence, it's hard to attend a meeting where there aren't enough chairs if the person running the meeting insists on springing to his feet, clearing a path between you and his chair, and then carrying on the meeting standing over you while you sit. And it's difficult to have a conversation in a doorway or corridor, if someone has leapt to his feet and insists on standing there holding the door, on the off-chance that you might want to go through it.

Now picture a smallish office, with multiple doors, and figure that the majority of their interactions are these little gender-based rituals. Can you see why this might become annoying, and the man be asked to stop?

I am not sure that the paragraph you quoted and responded to is related to the situation with your wife's boss. I will also assume that if she experienced any annoyance it was not based on what I specifically worded as :

a trend among some radical feminists (usually a minority of them) interpreting negatively the intent of stranger man offering assistance or help to them. Such as holding the door for them. The interpretation comes down to " I am being treated like I am helpless because I am a woman" or " the only reason why is because he finds me attractive and he is hitting on me".

It does not appear that any annoyance your spouse's boss(not a stranger man) created was due to your wife or other female employees interpreting his gestures as being motivated by him viewing them as "helpless because they are women" or " finding them attracting and hitting on them".

That's the point I was making. The interpretation does not always come down to those two points. Sometimes it's a purely practical problem. In this case his behaviour was impeding her interaction with other people in the office.

In any case and whichever reason for them being annoyed, it certainly does not rise to the point of feeling objectified or harassed.

Yes, it does.

Now picture a smallish office, with multiple doors, and figure that the majority of their interactions are these little gender-based rituals. Can you see why this might become annoying, and the man be asked to stop?

For me, personally, it would not annoy me. But I tend to be more of a let go and let be person than someone who feels that the annoyance they would experience ,in that situation, is so unbearable that they would need to attempt to control the behaviour of this man by asking him to stop.

To add that we often choose how we are going to feel about any given interaction.

I see. Can we choose how other people feel about us being constantly singled out for special treatment, and the prejudicial effect this might have on our career?

 

[Rhea]

That video has to be a fake. She gets a lot of attention from wearing the tight fitting top and pants, but absolutely no response when wearing the hijab. I was told that the clothing is not a factor in the harrasment:

Then you missed the point. You were told that the clothing makes no difference in whether she "deserves" to be catcalled; whether she is "asking for it." No one ever said clothing makes no difference in whether the catcalls happen.

 

[repoman]

I remember once watching a woman from Peru calling the girls from "Girls Gone Wild" (it was a commercial for it) putas. She felt they were doing something wrong and disgusting and bringing out the animal in men and creating a situation where men would expect that from other women. Kind of odd.

But I was wondering about the spectrum of clothing that women wear. The first outfit in the hijab video was fairly neutral by modern standards. But what about walking down the street in a bikini?

What I don't understand us why there is not a combination of trying to get men to get their act together and people realizing that some people will always be assholes and shit like this will always happen. You can't expect the world to change because you want it. It seems childish and narcissistic.

Also, those folks who catcalled her are probably mostly at the bottom rung of society working at low-end below-living wage jobs (thanks republicans) and getting by for the rest from handouts (thanks democrats) . They have nothing to lose from being shown to catcall on a youtube video. They can not be motivated by fear to not catcall.

I think that this shows that some poor people are assholes. They probably get fired from jobs from this kind of stuff and because they lack impulse control and can't delay gratification.

 

[Nexus]

I just watched the original video. I noticed the SJWs responding to this crisis didn't bash black and Latino males which 90% of the catcalls came from.

 

[Rhea]

I just watched the original video. I noticed the SJWs responding to this crisis didn't bash black and Latino males which 90% of the catcalls came from.

What is an SJW?

 

[Axulus]

I just watched the original video. I noticed the SJWs responding to this crisis didn't bash black and Latino males which 90% of the catcalls came from.

What is an SJW?

Social Justice Warrior. Per urban dictionary:

A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social justice warrior

 

[Nexus]

Social justice warriors. I found it amusing they felt this event justified bashing men but are prohibited from bashing the category of men on their do not disturb list even though that category was the vast majority of harassers.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I know this is about men (and since I just said men and did not specify a "the category of men on their do not disturb list" we all know I must mean WHITE men)
and how they are persecuted and ill treated and misunderstood, but maybe a word or two could be spoken about WOMEN of COLOR.

A word on women of color and the hollaback! video.

Their apology recognizes the racial bias of their video, but did nothing to acknowledge its erasure of black and brown women. So last weekend, I took to the streets of New York to speak to some fellow black and brown women about their experiences with street harassment.

As (bad) luck would have it, while we were shooting a video about how women of color were affected by street harassment, one of our interviewees was approached — totally unsolicited — by a white man who asked her for a kiss.

No editing necessary.

UPDATE: Hollaback! released a statement on Tuesday apologizing for the racial and class implications of the video and are starting a new project to make the conversation about street harassment more inclusive: "...we're using the money raised to create our own video series — with the first one currently under development and scheduled to release within the next two weeks."

http://jezebel.com/a-hollaback-response-video-women-of-color-on-street-ha-1655494647

 

[Nexus]

UPDATE: Hollaback! released a statement on Tuesday apologizing for the racial and class implications of the video and are starting a new project to make the conversation about street harassment more inclusive:

So instead of walking around for 10 hours and finding 2 white men and 18 black or latino men they will have to walk around for 100 hours to find 20 white men to edit into a 3 minute video about how menacing men are.

 

[Nexus]

I know this is about men

Why don't you think its about black men considering they made up the majority of harassers?

(and since I just said men and did not specify a "the category of men on their do not disturb list" we all know I must mean WHITE men)
and how they are persecuted and ill treated and misunderstood,

What's with the strawman? I never even hinted white men were being persecuted or targeted in any way from this crisis. I just found it amusing that SJWs were probably giving themselves micro strokes from the cognitive dissonance of blaming men yet ignoring the specific group that unleashed most of the carnage.

 

[Metaphor]

"We got a fair amount of white guys, but for whatever reason, a lot of what they said was in passing, or off camera."

In other words, the behaviour of the average White catcaller was systematically different to the behaviour of the average Black or Latino catcaller, and now reddit have to faux-apologise for the 'racial and class' implications of their video.

Interesting that the SJWs never apologise for the 'racial' implications of the fact that they trumpet that women of colour are more likely to be victims of domestic violence. Unspoken is the fact that most of these victims of colour are being victimised by men of colour.

But let's not talk about that.