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Notes -
I know that several Mottizens are American attorneys--have we got any solicitors or barristers about?
This week I've seen a couple of articles about Surrey policewomen posing as joggers to catch men harassing women out exercising. This is ostensibly to combat "violence against women," and this particular article's subheading reads:
As an American, my instinct was that this had to be sloppy (or deliberately misleading) reporting. For an expressive act like catcalling to rise to the level of unlawful harassment in the United States would require either a severe single incident, or (more often) a pattern of unwanted behavior and either actual or constructive ("a reasonable person would know") knowledge on the part of the harasser that the behavior was in fact unwanted. I know the UK lacks anything like the protection afforded to Americans by the First Amendment, but they aren't entirely without speech protections. Sure enough, the article seems to suggest that most men do just get "educated" (I assume a stern talking-to, maybe a pamphlet?) while the 18 arrests are for something more like actual assault. But attempting to ascertain the state of "catcalling" law in the UK sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.
According to one article, the "first London fine for catcalling [was] dished out after undercover operation" in 2022. This was an application of a "Public Space Protection Order" (PSPO), which makes "certain anti social activities within a mapped area prosecutable"--including such diverse things as noisy supercars, protesting near abortion clinics, and "kerb crawling." Anyway this fine (£100) was issued to a man for making a "sexually suggestive remark to a woman in a late-night takeaway."
So, neither apparently severe nor an established pattern of unwanted behavior! With specific regard to harassment, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (PDF) suggests that any "unwanted behaviour directed at an individual with the purpose or intent of humiliating, disrespecting, intimidation [sic], hurting or offending them" qualifies, even if it is a single incident. The laws I was able to find use slightly different language, suggesting that harassment is anything a reasonable person thinks harassment is, plus "alarming the person or causing the person distress"--but also suggests that a "course of conduct" must include "at least two occasions in relation to that person" or "on at least one occasion in relation to each of" two or more persons in a group. But all of that may be moot, if these PSPOs are not specifically dealing in harassment law, but instead are more general mandates against whatever "antisocial" behavior local politicians can be convinced to be concerned about.
This is of course related to a common hack in "Common Law" jurisdictions with "reasonable person" standards: if you conduct a successful campaign to shift people's attitudes, you can actually change the law without ever changing the law. And people's attitudes are apparently changing! After the 2022 London fine, other parts of the UK took up the cause and expanded the penalties; the £100 fine was presumably deemed insufficiently punitive, and in 2024 the city of Bradford boasted of seizing four cars in a "catcalling crackdown."
Not everyone is impressed with this use of police resources. But what brought me up short, personally, was the asymmetry of it all.
I don't really understand catcalling, in approximately the same way I don't understand smoking, or aggressive driving--that is, I know that some people's preferences run that way, but I'm pretty sure it's because those people are to that degree some combination of stupid and inconsiderate. Particularly when a woman is on foot and her, uh, admirers are in a car, it is unequivocally terrifying to be abruptly shouted (or worse, honked) at from a moving vehicle. Wolf whistles from men on foot are less immediately terrifying but can portend a different sort of danger, and England has certainly had its share of sex assault scandals. So I rather see the objection to such behavior!
But in drawing the line between "inconsiderate" and "criminal offense," it feels like the UK has opted for an approach that caters primarily to outrage merchants and the terminally online, rather than to their own community norms. If you were a culture warrior back in 2014, you might remember "10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman," which generated pushback from diverse angles (most of the men in the video were not white, a repeat of the experiment in hijab showed reduced harassment, a similar video taken in Mumbai recorded no instances of overt harassment, etc.). There seem to be cultural, demographic, and/or geographical contexts in which catcalling happens or does not happen, and "when women are exercising in public" seems to be the currently contested context, at least in the UK.
So where I find myself uncomfortable is in the way that the press and, presumably, the police PR are clearly tying catcalling, wolf whistles, and even sexual comments together with simple and sexual assault. The articles often admit, somewhere on page 3, that a lot of the objectionable behavior isn't (maybe can't be) prosecuted, but instead met with "education" efforts. "Did you know this frightens women?" Well, hashtag-not-all-women, surely? Rather like the epidemic of "dick pics" on dating apps, actually--"if today I catcall a hundred women and one of them flashes me her boobs, tomorrow I'll catcall a thousand women?"
In other words, "male sexual strategy," such as it is, is understandably disconcerting to women (especially when the men don't know the rules), but the reverse is also true. Women dressing in form-fitting or revealing clothing and parading themselves in full view of the public is something that some men find "alarming" or "distressing." You can see the result of laws that seek to minimize that distress. Is this just down to "women in the West were oppressed in the past, therefore it's fine to flip the script?"
My own personal position is that these are things that should not be decided by law, but by norms. If the 18 men arrested in Surrey were all arrested for touching a woman without clear invitation to do so, then I have no particular objection to their arrest (beyond the slight stench of entrapment that all "sting" operations inevitably report to my senses). But (if indeed this is happening) law enforcement officers dressing people down for a wolf whistle, much less fining them, much less throwing them in prison, seems excessively aggressive given the interest on the other side. To be overtly sexually attractive, in public, and never have anyone comment on this in any way might be nice, but it hardly seems like the sort of thing one can reasonably demand be enforced by law. And using the media to disingenuously suggest to men that they are under real risk of serious punishment, not for sexual assault alone but even for comparatively innocuous, annoyingly antisocial behaviors like catcalling, has us wandering out into "actual psyop" territory.
When I was an undergrad I was a runner and would sometimes run through campus. I would occasionally get hot enough that I'd remove my shirt and tie it around my waist. More than once, cars of females would hoot at me with varying degrees of fervor. I never quite believed that they were seriously going for any sort of praise --more like taking the piss. I wasn't sure. I have never related this to anyone. But this was a long time ago. Today if we were in the UK I wonder if those sorority girls would be arrested.
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I am so through with the performative institutional feminism. Watch as these police decoys don't jog in the no go zones, instead doing circles along rich neighborhoods for the photo op, convenient material to gaslight "all men" about something only the underclass does. Hell, you got these old women jogging, where are the very young police girls jogging near the Pakistani and Nafri neighborhoods?
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Much of what they do is retarded. British 'green energy' includes chopping down forests in Canada, processing them into wood pellets, shipping them over and burning them. Burning wood releases all kinds of impurities and air pollution and doesn't even produce very much power. Naturally it gets subsidies because it's not economical. 6% of the UK's electricity comes from this.
They've got Motability, a scheme where the disabled get vehicles paid for by the state. At least 1 in 5 new vehicles is purchased via this scheme, 'anxious' people getting cars, secretaries... It's a joke. Local authorities are being bankrupted by judges ruling that different jobs need to be paid equally, or a law making them pay ridiculous amounts for taxiing disabled children to school. The perverse incentives should be obvious.
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-british-economy-cannot-sustain-its-contradictions/
Or they pay billions to Mauritius so they can give away land to Mauritius. Or they pay billions to bring Afghan 'refugees' into the country. Just the other day they sent out a memo telling people to delete old images and emails to save water: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/uk-government-inexplicably-tells-citizens-to-delete-old-emails-and-pictures-to-save-water-during-national-drought-data-centres-require-vast-amounts-of-water-to-cool-their-systems
Somehow the infamously rainy UK is short of water.
It's not like they're making honest individual mistakes that can be learned from. The mistake is 'having the govt permanently run by retarded/malicious wreckers', which only happens if the basic institutions are also broken. It's no good looking at individual Soviet failures like 'why are their televisions so bad and prone to exploding' and 'why did they kill all these whales' or 'what happened to the Aral Sea'.
Each time it's the same answer. The nature of the Soviet system was retarded. They did some things well but as a whole it was retarded.
This is only true in the sense that anything bought out of state benefits is paid for by the state, including the food retirees eat etc. Motability is a scheme where people getting disability benefits can have their benefit paid directly to the leasing company, which mean they are more creditworthy and get lower lease rates than they would be if they had to remember to make their own car payments on time. There is no cost to the taxpayer beyond the benefits we would be paying these people anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motability
Massive growth in the number of pip claimants:
https://x.com/thurhyde/status/1949753087419207786
IFS: 'The rapid growth in [working-age] health-related benefits [post-COVID] seems to be largely a UK phenomenon.
https://x.com/maxtempers/status/1945752894868701444
Less than 10% of motability cars have any modification for the disabled.
I'm sure we all benefit when the state pays for everyone’s BMW. He is providing much more than mobility to the slightly anxious, he’s doling out unheard of creditworthiness to the not-so working class.
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The UK's infrastructure seems to be extraordinarily brittle. Three days without rain and they institute a "hosepipe ban."
The UK has failed to build any new reservoirs for, IIRC, several decades. This despite the fact that the population has expanded considerably in that time.
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I wish I had a fraction of the energy and creativity for upskilling and entrepreneurship as so many women have for finding excuses to farm sexual attention with plausible deniability.
This would be another example for how, in Western societies, the compromise with respect to the trade-off between female freedom and protection is expressed by limiting male freedom and protection. We can’t suggest to women that they could dress less thottily, so let’s arrest men instead. This would fit well in a country where people can be arrested for hate-speech.
Catcalling is an avenue for women to humblebrag; she's so attractive as to be catcalled all the time. A Wojak with a seething mask in front, but smirking behind it, comes to mind.
It reminds me of US police bodycams. Progressives went from being pro- to anti-bodycam as the bodycams just reflected that indeed, non-Asian minority suspects are as wrong-thinkers might think they are—perhaps worse. Thus, bodycams became a Problematic vehicle for which stereotypes might be reinforced, like security cameras in Californian public transport later on became.
For better or worse, cat-callers are by default, an unsympathetic group, like drunk drivers or age-of-consent-trespassers. There’s compass unity between progressive and social conservatives, with only a staunch subset of libertarians willing to go to bat for them. However, I could see progressives getting around to support cat-callers for disparate impact reasons.
Such verbiage allows for “know the workplace rules”, to be attractive and not be unattractive. Just read her mind, bro, otherwise know your place. In addition, it allows for anarcho-tyranny, where men of different cultures could have different views on what constitutes “reasonable person.”
That being said, I rather dislike catcallers. To me, it’s aesthetically bad in not being a good look.
It’s also annoying in boosting women’s egos and baseline paranoia levels. Men catcalling is rendering it more difficult, on the margins, for higher status and/or better-looking men with some semblance of tact who would otherwise have a shot at the catcalled women. Yes, yes, I know—other men have always been the primary victims of men cat-calling women. *crosses arms, turns away*
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On the one hand, police clamping down on catcalling with anything other than a talking-to seems to me like a government clampdown on an unsavory lower-class norm. On the other hand, I sure am glad that bottom-pinching is no longer considered merely an unsavory lower-class norm.
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The New York Post ran an article about this a couple days ago, and the comments were variations on the following themes:
I'll admit to admit that it's a bit unfair to judge conservatives as a whole based on the New York Post comment section, or any online comment section for that matter, but I don't think I'm going out on too much of a limb to suggest that conservatives in general think that busting people for catcalling, or even viewing it as a police issue, is stupid. The culture war angle here is that if you replace "catcalling" with "panhandling" the polarity reverses instantly. I have no doubt, based on prior stories the Post has run on panhandling, that if they ran a story about how some American city did a similar crackdown on begging we'd be hearing about how it was about time that a mayor grew some balls and cracked down, and that all those people should be locked up in mental institutions or forced to get real jobs.
In essence, though, whether we're talking about catcalling, or panhandling, or various other things associated with homelessness, what we're really talking about is obnoxious behavior that occurs in public, and the right to be obnoxious in public.
Catcalling in theory has targets who would like the compliment, even though this may not always be true. No panhandler thinks his targets like being panhandled. Furthermore, the panhandler has a profit motive and incetives for annoying people are very different where a profit motive is involved.
"In theory" is doing a lot of work here, as is "may not always be true". In theory, the men commenting on that article would be flattered if a flamboyantly gay man publicly whistled and pointed out what a great ass they have. In practice, I'm routinely bombarded with images created by people trying to get me to give them my money, and I don't think the purveyors of these believe that I actually enjoy looking at them. Especially when they're advertising a good or service I couldn't make use of even if I wanted to. This is some all-star hairsplitting.
I specifically mentioned that if there's a profit motive, it's different.
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I agree. I think in some of the conversation downthread this is getting teased out further. Actual physical contact is (generally) an easier line to draw; when it comes to things like offensive clothing, nauseating smells, vulgar music, horrifying imagery, etc. people often have very strong but not very consistent opinions about what should or shouldn't be allowed, and what constitutes an appropriate response or deterrent.
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I feel like I need to see the actual encounters being solicited and/or prosecuted to have an opinion on this. Making it illegal to hit on women in public is left-coded (feminism run amok), but arresting flashers on public transportation is right-coded (tough on street crime). Which one of these is, “sting operation on catcalling hotspots,” closer to? I have no idea.
My immediate thought was those videos of women recording themselves getting harassed by immigrant men (Brussels) or black/hispanic men (NYC) - both women studiously denied the obvious racial angle that everyone else could see, naturally - .
I'm not sure whether most catcallers in the UK would be the native underclass or immigrants, but I'm fine with the police going after either group. Catcalling is an antisocial act, it's not asking a woman out, it's shouting at her in public, very different. If Surrey Police are doing it for feminist reasons that doesn't bother me, it might be good for these policewomen to learn who the antisocial men on their beats actually are.
I wish the police used the same logic in setting up bait bikes to catch bike thieves.
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I think that the intent of the actor is a much better standard than the interpretation of the receiver.
For example, if I was in a jury, you would have a hard time convincing me that someone who wolf-whistles intends to humiliate the recipient. It seems reasonable that in the mind of the accused, he would merely be acknowledging that the recipient is judged sexually desirable, which is not an insult.
Even a sexual invitation might not meet this standard, in my mind. "Hey babe, wanna have some fun with me" is likely to make a jogger uncomfortable, but might be a serious suggestion on the men's part. In Victorian England, that would be the kind of insult which leads to duels, because it implies "you look like the kind of woman who would fuck men she just met on the streets". Today, there is nothing wrong with women fucking men who just cat-called her.
Of course, if the woman was wearing a hiab instead, I would assume that the man had concluded that the woman was very unlikely to be promiscuous and was just trying to insult her by implying otherwise.
Likewise, "why don't you gag on my cock, whore!" seems pretty clearly intended to humiliate. The defendant might claim that the humiliation was just instrumental for getting sex because he thought that the woman was into that, but that does not change the mens rea. Of course, if he can prove that his victim had explicitly opted into being sexually humiliated by random guys in the street, it would be fine.
Honking a car's horn except to warn of danger is already a traffic offense. If the driver wants to argue that she was causing a danger by being distractingly sexy, then that raises doubts about his general ability to drive a vehicle in the Western world, unless she flashed him or something.
By contrast, single remarks which merely felt insulting to the recipient -- e.g. by someone who does not know the rules or is just gambling on low odds -- should not be a criminal matter. People feel insulted by all kinds of statements directed at them specifically or not. Personally, I think it depends on the odds. If a verbal behavior will feel offensive to 60% of women in the same situation, but also leads to 10% of them being flattered, that seems very acceptable from a criminal law point of view. If 95% would feel deeply offended and less than 0.1% would be flattered, things look different.
As an unfortunate consequence, this probabilistic standard would mean that the line of what is acceptable would depend not only on the woman and her situation but also on the guy. So a 25yo Chad driving a Tesla might be allowed to ask a given woman if she would be interested in "having some fun", while a 60yo homeless alcoholic with a beer belly might be on the other side of the dividing line.
While it would be possible to replace the person of the speaker with a generic standard person for the purpose of determining if the success chance meets the threshold, I think that this would decrease overall utility.
While not an insult, this is a different kind of social faux-pas. Walking down most streets in the daytime (obviously the street in front of a club at 1AM is different, and I'm sure some influencer is wearing a skimpy outfit on TikTok) is not a place most people intend to be judged sexually desirable. It's a (very minor) social injury in the sense of bringing something more private into a more public area.
Compare it with having a woman in a class/meeting and someone saying out loud "let's all give an applause for how great so-and-so's tits look today". The injury from this isn't the insult, it's the public airing.
The etiquette about displaying and acknowledging sexual desirability is certainly complicated. Outside of bedrooms and strip clubs, either is normally clad in plausible deniability.
I think that plenty of women (and some men) spend quite a lot of effort on looking hot in public spaces. Of course, one could also argue that the causation is the other way round -- they know that they will be judged either way, and find it preferable to be judged hot than to be judged not hot.
Normally, the judging -- which I think is done both by men but also by other women -- is of course more subtle than a wolf whistle or an outright remark on one's tits. More stuff like "nice top", or even non-verbal, I think.
Right, it's not really the judging -- it's the public airing of it.
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Is this true in NYC? Because if so, seemingly every second Manhattan driver needs a talking-to.
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This gets into questions of constructive intent. If you know or should know that your actions result in X, did you intend X?
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The interesting thing about social norms and equilibria though is that they interact strongly with intentions. In other words, whereas in the past catcallers may well have reasonably intended flattery, nowadays (arguably), they can't possibly think that because it's been made so clear to them that their attention is unwelcome.
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Can you elaborate on this bit? I guess I can imagine being of a puritan mindset where I would want to suppress feelings of being attracted out of shame, or out of a strong moral view on female virtue, and therefore would prefer form-fitting clothing be kept away from me wherever possible. Is that where you're going with this, or something else?
Setting the legal debate aside (I find myself not too sure of my views on what the laws should be in this area), I do think there is highly significant asymmetry of discomfort between a woman being catcalled and a pious man seeing some legging-clad ass, and a fairly significant difference between actively getting into someone's space by catcalling them and just being seen by them as you go about your own business.
I'm far from a Puritan, but there's a certain tenant who recently moved into a rental house we own. They have a teenage daughter, she's thing and reasonably good looking, and she dresses in ways that make me want to avoid standing too close to her. Gossamer thin tank tops worn without a bra, which barely cover her stomach, and shorts so short I'd be arrested for wearing them.
I'm not aroused by her in any way that's above normal or disturbs me, nor am I particularly ashamed by any feeling of arousal I might have. But in any conversation beyond a few minutes, I'm filled with a sense that I don't want to be seen talking to her. Perhaps this is an overactive superego, a feminist or Catholic panopticon living in my brain, but I don't want to be seen chatting with a girl who looks like that. I have an inner sense that the image of me talking to a teenage girl dressed like that is inappropriate, and I'd prefer not be near her.
She's perfectly pleasant, if essentially uninteresting, to talk to; but immediately after I tell her whatever it is I need to tell her I cut the conversation short if no one else is present and go about some other business until her parents arrive, even if I have to invent some pretext to be inspecting or doing something else. I simply don't want to be seen by anyone to be chatting with a teenage girl dressed in that way, call it an extension to the Pence Rule.
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An asymmetry, sure, but I'm not so sure we can definitively come down on either side. I find catcalling at best trashy and at worst threatening, and I like seeing semi-naked women on the street, but then I'm a guy who got laid when he was younger so I expect that affects it.
But for a lot of men I imagine seeing a semi-naked woman is like a homeless guy seeing me light a cigarette with a 20 dollar bill. Sure, I'm not hurting him, and he's not entitled to my money, but I can see how it would be painful for the homeless guy. In the same vein, rare is the woman who is relieved when she reaches middle age and men stop paying attention to her. Instead she desperately clings on to her youth and tries to stave off invisibility.
I think it's a mistake to see dressing in provactive clothing as a passive act, which is how a lot of women frame it. It's an act with plausible deniability, perhaps, but when a woman dresses like this she does so in the full knowledge of the effect it is going to have on men. All men, not just the ones she's interested in.
My suspicion is that a large part of the dislike of cat-calling (at least among adult women) is the offence that a trashy low-class man thinks he has a shot, as opposed to fear of violence, although certainly that's going to be common, particularly for teenage girls. What I really want is a truthful survey (probably impossible) on how many women feel like this.
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There 100% is. Women walking around in their underwear is an unfortunate commentary on the state of society; it’s not directly threatening.
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Well, some guy who is jogging stark naked through the city is also just going about their own business, and yet we treat it as actively getting into someone's space in most of the Western world.
I think that I can understand where the puritans would come from at least in theory. If I were in a business meeting and the woman across from me was sitting there bare-chested, I would be annoyed because her tits would be hijacking my attention. By contrast, if I go swimming in the lake and see some women tanning topless, I think 'yay boobs'.
I realize that this is totally dependent on culture. Some guy from Saudi Arabia who has never seen the hair of a woman who was not his wife or relative might get similarly distracted by seeing a woman without a headscarf. And some guy from a society where clothing was not a thing and people masturbated during social gatherings all the time might consider me a terminal prude, but would perhaps freak out when people were eating meat during a business dinner.
Well the jogging stark naked guy is probably crazy. Even if not though, streaking is way more wholesome than flashing!
As you say though all this is quite culture relative and I often think about how a woman willing to ditch the head scarf in a very repressive country is doing something that must feel brazen to her and read as overtly sexual to men around her.
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The example I provided was a picture of women in full niqab. My experience with men from countries where niqab is common is that they are often extremely distressed by the comparatively immodest dress of Western women. Traces of that remain in most Western regimes, too, though usually limited to the exposure of genitals (and sometimes breasts) being treated as legitimately "distressing" to display.
(Fun fact: Australia used to require protruding labia to be removed from pornographic displays, so even in contexts where it was legal to display female genitalia, it was not legal to do so with complete anatomical accuracy! I have seen it argued that this may have contributed to the rise of cosmetic labiaplasties.)
This seems super culturally mediated, though--I'm not sure I'm in a good position to just tell a pious Muslim or devout Amish that his feelings about bikinis simply don't count the way that a modern woman's feelings about wolf whistles does.
I'm not sure I see how catcalling "actively get[s] into someone's space," which is why I noted that provided the 18 arrests were made for actual assault rather than mere catcalling, there's less to complain about here. The realm of "offensive speech" and unwilling audiences is a fascinating one for legal theorists precisely because what counts as "invading" someone's "space" in public is really tricky. Our bodies are an easy place to draw a line: unwanted physical contact is bad! Our senses are much more complicated. How is dressing provocatively any different from speaking provocatively, from the perspective of the unwilling audience? Are our ears more important than our eyes, somehow? "You can just look away!"--or--"you can just plug your ears!" There seem to be a lot of unstated assumptions in the assertion that there is a "significant" difference between catcalling and parading around in provocative clothing.
("But you shouldn't think of something like exercise clothing as sexually provocative!" "No, you shouldn't think of something like catcalling as provocative!" Etc.)
I think it's more an active vs passive thing.
A cat-caller actively intrudes into the life of the random passerby. They do this intentionally by inserting (hah) themselves into the life of another.
The bikini clad ass may upset the Amish or Muslim man, but it doesn't force them to look. It's a passive object in their life they can choose to interact (hah) with or not.
I guess the counter is you have to first notice the bikini to then ignore it, but I again just have a very hard time not finding a someone deliberately taking action (making noise that is in 99% of cases unwanted and coded as threatening) to be anywhere near equivalent as someone getting annoyed as to what someone else is wearing.
I think you're definitely supposed to think about it this way, in connection with women's dress at minimum, but I also think this simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Catcalling is no more active a choice than wearing a bikini, especially with the intent to wear it somewhere conspicuous (i.e. not at the beach, although even at the beach a bikini can be pretty damn conspicuous). You are no more forced to listen to catcalls than you are forced to look at someone in a bikini--though you may not be able to initially prevent yourself from hearing the first or seeing the second, you can always respond to either by plugging your ears or closing your eyes. The idea that catcalling is somehow more "intrusive" doesn't make any sense; we're talking about people sharing public spaces, and finding the proper balance allowing that space to be used by everyone for the activities they prefer. Why does a man's preference for catcalling rank below a woman's preference against it? The answer can't be "intrusiveness" because we actually often want intrusiveness to be a feature of shared public spaces--for example, political protests are deliberately intrusive, and lose their effect when they are not at least somewhat intrusive.
(I think the most likely answer, as others have noted, is probably just "public hetero male horniness is a low class signal," and nobody wants to speak for the interests of horny low class males, who are also often criminal elements, undesired immigrants, the uneducated, the antisocial, etc. Plus I suspect that many men who can keep their mouths shut would like the catcallers to stop, simply because living in a culture where women regularly go out in public half naked is something many heterosexual men prefer, and quietly enjoy.)
Part of this may be a "noncentral fallacy" problem, too--honking your car's horn at a pedestrian when there's no actual danger is a very obnoxious thing to do quite regardless of whether it is part of "catcalling" someone. Whereas wolf whistling is not coded as threatening (though some women take it that way, and seem to think every woman should, even though this is actually fairly paranoid on their part). To use some other examples of obnoxious public behavior, carrying around a protest sign with graphic imagery of aborted babies is gross. It's surely as "intrusive" as someone yelling sloppy compliments in your direction. "Well you don't have to look at it" doesn't really acknowledge the depth of discomfort many people experience when seeing such imagery.
While I agree with a lot of what you say, I do wonder if maybe my active/passive definition didn't work.
Catcalling is a specific act, targeted/focused at a specific person. One that is in the overwhelming super-majority of cases is not desired. I would also posit that many a cat-caller does it not just because they think someone is hot, but because they enjoy the fact they get to flex "power" over someone by making them uncomfortable with no recourse against them (dovetails nicely with everyone's discussion about lower class men, they don't get to flex power often).
Having ones ass out is an unfocused act, it is not targeted at anyone. While it may make some uncomfortable, it does so at a much lower rate (and makes people happy at a much higher rate). There is no intent to cause distress.
Finally, while I agree that society is teaching and reinforcing women to be far more paranoid than is warranted, the Venn diagram between "is willing to break social norms by cat calling" and "is willing to go for a cheeky bottom pinch or other form of personal assault" has overlap, there is a small but credible possibility of violence from that person. The Venn diagram of "has ass out in Lululemon" and "will grab your dick through your shorts" is 0, unfortunately.
I'm unconvinced cat calling should be an indictable offense, but comparing it to skimpy clothing is ridiculous.
I'm not especially sympathetic to the "sex as a power trip" narrative, but assuming it is basically correct--isn't women dressing in revealing clothing also often an opportunity for them to enjoy flexing their power over men? I think maybe part of what leads you here--
--is a background Western assumption that men have power, and that power is what men have. I occasionally see feminists (especially, "sex positive" feminists) move past this decidedly mid-20th century "Second Sex" narrative into a more postmodern, Foucaultian "women's power is different" narrative. Men may dominate physically, but women dominate socially; men may gatekeep the levers of action, but women gatekeep the levers of status. Occasionally in these "catcalling debates" women will decide to flip the script and start catcalling men; this never works out because men love this shit. Not the truly aggressive and negative stuff--honking at pedestrians, shouting insults--that might well get you punched in the face! But "CHECK THE GUNS ON THIS GUY" is going to put a smile on his face for days.
Putting on a skimpy swimsuit is the psychologically female equivalent of a man looming over someone and saying, "hey, you wanna feel my muscles?"
And sure, you might not find this totally persuasive, but I think it's a long way from ridiculous. Except in the sense that ridicule itself is a way of socially signaling; countenancing the idea that women may have just as much power over men, as men have over women--just in different ways and contexts--is very low status, at present! It's the kind of thing you might expect to hear some "beta cucks huffing as copium," in the parlance of the iPad youths.
The Venn diagram between "is willing to ask you out" and "is willing to rape you at the first opportunity" has overlap, too. Women are wise to be cautious of men! That's clearly true, and surely of importance in this discussion. One of the reasons I started it is because, like other posters have more explicitly suggested, I think there is a kind of person who will feel unsure about the Surrey stings until they see the color of the perpetrator's skin! Or two kinds, if we want to separate them out--people who will only be mad if this is enforced against non-whites and immigrants, and people who will only be mad if it is enforced against native whites outside otherwise-criminally-problematic neighborhoods. As an anti-identitarian I think both of these perspectives are avoiding a real substantive issue, namely, the regulation of interpersonal behaviors in public spaces shared between individuals with diverse and not entirely compatible interests. Likewise, treating women's interests in public space interaction as weightier than men's interests in the same, is identitarian rather than appropriately considerate of all the issues involved.
(One solution some cultures implement is to simply segregate the disparate interests; men from women, white from black, whatever. That is a workable solution in many cases but the West has rejected it, and as a liberal myself I think it is both possible and desirable for people with disparate interests to share public spaces without significant conflict. So I set this solution aside, but I know not everyone does.)
Somewhere downstream from catcalling is a slightly different thing: the cold open. Most people here are not old enough to remember the Clinton years, but a phrase that got kicked around a lot (with direct reference to Clinton's own behavior) was, "it doesn't hurt to ask!" Meaning: the First Amendment protects men asking women if they'd like to go out on a date--or even have sex! Even if those women are strangers! Even if 99.995% of women are going to say no!
We don't seem to actually live in that world anymore; we punish men for even asking, in almost any setting, and so they have in many cases just stopped asking. Norms are forcing these conversations out of almost every environment, onto dating apps that optimize for something other than flourishing. All in the interest of preventing women from ever being put in an uncomfortable position in public--while allowing them to put men into uncomfortable positions through comparable, albeit not identical, practices, like dressing provocatively* while immune from any kind of interpersonal or societal response.
*I here leave aside the tiresome conversations about what counts as provocative, as of course different cultures will have inculcated different views on the matter; as a rule, people know what "sexy" clothing is for people in their sociocultural environment, even if they try to ignore the actual biological implications of the word "sexy."
That was an interesting link. I often wonder about all the variables that are leading young people to date less — of course, “no woman wants to date me” seems to be a plurality answer from men, and I’m well aware of male friends of mine for whom that’s the entire reason they’re single. I have a friend who’s gone from social and engaged to depressed, suicidal, and medicated as his 20s have flown by without a wink of intimacy. Nicest and most prosocial guy you’d ever meet — maybe that’s the problem.
I do wonder sometimes how I’d feel romantically if I hadn’t had some formative positive experiences with dating as a teenager. It certainly wasn’t all roses, but I can trace my own strong drive for intimacy to a before/after with my high school sweetheart. If I hadn’t fallen into a relationship with her… would I be dating now? Would I feel as strongly about dating as I do now?
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This is a really well thought out comment, thank you for writing it.
I think I agree with most of it. I still think the "mechanism of action" for a cat-call vs skimpy shorts (or whatever) is far enough apart that they don't compare well, but I'll concede they're on the same spectrum of human behaviour/motivations.
I'm gonna read this again later when I'm not in motion, thanks again.
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I'm pretty sure there was a post here by a frustrated man who didn't appreciate seeing tight gymwear constantly in public. I can't find it now unfortunately but I believe it was well-received or even AAQC.
So apparently not just a Muslim thing.
This forum also has seen some Aella-inspired discussion of this phenomenon.
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Women shouldn’t be allowed to wear bikinis in public, but neither that nor speedos nor the Borat swimsuit justify potential violence the way a particularly forwards/lewd catcall would.
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Perhaps but we are talking about UK culture, which I am part of, and so I do feel fairly comfortable telling a British religious person this. Moreover there's a gradient of feelings where some religious people will be upset about even having to see parts of a woman's face or hair, and in this extreme case I don't feel too many qualms about telling them they need to get over their feelings. Perhaps that's the same in reverse as a catcaller telling a woman she needs to get over her objections to catcalling, but so be it.
For sure there's a theoretical debate to be had which I think is perhaps too laborious to really get into here, but part of that debate would need to get into questions of intent. The catcaller is manifestly trying to get a specific woman's attention and prevent her from going about her business undisturbed. The skimpily dressed woman may also be trying to distract a given man. But we actually don't know, and most of the time cannot know, if she is or not merely from the fact of her dress. It's just harder to establish an intent to impinge on a specific individual to the woman in this case than the man. If she actively flashes a body part at a specific man, we would have established an intent towards that particular person, and in that case, the woman's act is similarly invasive as catcalling – maybe even if another woman is showing a similar amount of skin as a matter of course, but not pushing it specifically towards a given unconsenting man. Innocence is not merely in what is shown but how it's shown.
Right, so, one of the things I allude to in my original post is that this bit is really vague in UK law, as best I can tell. Sometimes it seems like "harassment" under UK law requires specific and directed intent, but sometimes not. And even when intent is required, the kind of intent is usually something like "intent to cause distress or shame." But of course screaming "NICE GAMS," while it might very well cause embarrassment to the admiree, is perfectly consistent with intending to make a woman feel good about herself, rather than to cause distress or shame. So when you say--
--this seems at least half mistaken. The catcaller wants to get someone's attention to pay her a compliment, albeit perhaps a compliment she'd rather not receive. (Is it also "catcalling" to yell putative insults at a woman, e.g. "whore" or "slut?" I think maybe this also would qualify as catcalling, but then the vulgarity and more aggressively threatening content of the speech seems to more clearly establish hostile intent.) Disturbing her "business" does not seem to be a necessary (or indeed generally intended) aspect of catcalling.
Likewise, UK law seems to think that you can direct harmful intent without a specific target in mind--for example, using PSPOs to forbid people from protesting near abortion clinics. Merely holding a sign that says "abortion is murder" near an abortion clinic need not be done with any intent to impinge on any specific individual. Likewise, wearing a diaphanous string bikini to walk around a busy pedestrian area need not be done with any intent to impinge on any specific individual, and yet a reasonable person might well find it an alarming sight--and doubt that it was done with anything less than mischievous intent.
As you allude to, there's a 'reasonable person' standard. Someone could flash a woman hoping the woman would be excited by the sight of some random unexpected genitals in their eyeline. But that's unreasonable. A reasonable person would understand that they are more likely to cause upset, so the only reasonable intention we can impute is a malign one.
With catcalling, it seems to me pretty unreasonable in 2025 to imagine catcalling might be welcome, so even if a given catcaller wishfully thinks it will be taken as flattery, British society has (arguably) reached a point where the only response to this is 'Give me a break, pal'. Among my own male friends, certainly, I would flatly disbelieve one of them who said they thought catcalled women liked it and they were doing it to flatter them. I'd tell them, 'Really? Or do you get off on upsetting them, because that's what you're mostly doing.'
With the walking in a string bikini example, depending on the location I think this would very possibly be done with mischievous intent. Except at a beach though I think that's a pretty strong example. Tight leggings or bare midriff is more likely the disputed case and I think a woman dressed thus would be within her rights to say to someone offended, 'I wasn't thinking of you at all'.
I think this is probably close to correct (obviously from these articles, there is a meaningful percentage of British society that presumably hasn't reached this point, as they still engage in catcalling), but is rather my point about being in psyop territory. Convincing everyone to believe that catcalling should be perceived as negative seems to be the actual goal of these "stings," not because it was democratically decided that catcalling is in fact negative, but because certain people genuinely don't like it and they don't want anyone else to like it, either, or be subjected to it as a result of others liking it.
As I suggest in my original post, I don't really understand catcalling and regard it as at best inconsiderate. But I also don't like it when the government and news media collude to nudge people's values around instead of having an honest conversation about controversial-but-not-to-everyone behaviors.
I guess I just never understood the appeal of catcalling — what do you think is gonna happen, she’s gonna decide that random horny construction worker #25 is so hot he deserves a handjob? It just seems like pointless horniness.
But then again, I also don’t see the appeal of a strip club so maybe there’s a whole psychology of looking but not touching I don’t share.
Classically, catcalling is a builder who is with his mates, not by himself. It's done for the mates to strengthen the group and give them the small stroke of pointing out a hot woman to look at or whose reaction to be amused by.
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I mean, you’ve never tried to flirt with a woman you just ran into? Imagine that but….
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Yeah, I don't know. But to try to steelman it, maybe--imagine you're an audience member at a beauty pageant or a fashion show. (Yeah, I don't get beauty pageants or fashion shows, either, but they're definitely a thing!) You see all the work these models have put into their poise, their dress, their movements, their facial expressions... so you cheer! Cheering is surely a thing at beauty pageants (I admit I'm assuming here). You're expressing your appreciation and admiration. Indeed, isn't it perfectly natural, even polite, to express your appreciation and admiration for someone like that?
Well, some people just... aren't that smooth with their cheering!
Or to take it up another level, have you ever deliberately tried to provoke a smile from someone? Maybe an angry child, or a grumpy friend? Maybe you took it as a kind of personal test, a self-imposed challenge of sorts... so maybe catcallers are thinking, maybe unrealistically, "I bet I can get a smile out of that girl." And in some cases, should they fail, they might feel ashamed by that, and lash out instead--"oh, too stuck up for a smile, girl?"
These are surely not the most artful approaches, I'm trying to steelman and I'm still not coming up with highly sympathetic actors, here, but I think there are many analogous behaviors out there. I don't really understand catcalling but there's a lot of irrational human behavior I don't understand (professional sports!) and most of it doesn't get you a dressing down from your local Bobby.
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Society is not uniform. For instance the incident that naraburns alluded to when most of the catcallers weren't white. I wouldn't be surprised if there are sections of society where catcalling is acceptable. They just don't overlap with friends of Internet geeks very much.
Yeah, this might be true and if they could keep their cat calling within their section of society maybe that would be okay? But not very practicable if we're talking about whistling at strangers.
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Well, maybe you're not but here is an appeal to authority that the devout Amish, at least, should acknowledge.
Yes, looking at women(other than your wife) in bikinis is sinful… but Jesus also says that those who lead others to sin are more sinful- he specifically says it would be better for them if they were killed.
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I was raised christian (though I'm not anymore) and traditional teaching is very clear that avoiding sin is a communal project, i.e. you're supposed neither to directly sin, nor to make someone else sin. See the literal Enemy, Satan, whos' most dangerous attribute is making humans sin, not the fact that he himself sins.
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I'm not sure whether this is your point, but if I were the kind of person to take that particular Biblical edict seriously, I would likely be in favor of laws that discouraged other people from behaving in ways that might tend to inspire rebelliousness in my extremities.
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It's worth prefacing this post by saying that obviously any government restriction on speech (minus libel, slander, perjury, andtrademark violation) is abhorrent.
But anyways, this is basically how every well-ordered society throughout history has behaved. Powerful, high-status men restrict the use of the mating strategies that lower-status men have a comparative advantage for. Women tacitly or explicitly support them because they don't want weak, low-status men making sexual advances that don't directly renumerate them. Painting anti-catcalling measures with the "feminist" brush is accurate to the point of describing that women benefit from them, but misses the fundamental truth that this behavior reinforces the position of already-powerful men, rather than dismantling it. That being said, it's still perfectly rational for feminists to support this. A matriarchal government would also seek to impede the reproductive success of low-quality vs high-quality men, and an anti-catcalling measure would still be in the cards; it's a rich-get-richer tactic rather than an explicitly patriarchal one.
I sort of disagree, but only because I do not agree with the definition of "powerful" or "high-status". From an aesthetical, logical, and spiritual perspective, these people possess traits which only mimic good development. From an evopsych perspective, I'm more neutral: Social status is high value in a sense, but excess sociability is also a sign of weakness and therefore low value.
Powerful men might think that this benefits them, but that's only because they're elite normies. Above average in many areas, but not truly intelligent, and therefore unable to consider second and third-order effects. In short, it's locally beneficial and globally harmful.
I agree that this is causing the power-law distribution to get steeper
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Yeah but basically all of feminism/lgbt/idpol works this way. Powerful people benefit from the benefits and are insulated from the social ramifications of the breakdown of gender roles in society.
'The sexual revolution primarily benefitted high status men who wanted consequence free sex, while destroying middle/low class families and communities' is not a hot take.
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No, they don't want no one commenting on it. They only want desirable men commenting on it, by whatever their standards are for "desirable". It's pure Hello Human Resources/SNL rules.
The idea is for women to be able to filter the guys (or girls) they want from the guys they don't. The strategy is to put up a brickwall filter (a set of rules which allows no one to approach), which then filters out anyone too timid to ignore their rules. The stronger the punishment for breaking the rules (for someone who isn't too timid but is unattractive in some other way), the better the selectivity.
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Everything about the UK is a cautionary tale at this point. It's a conquered country.
They had two policewomen jog around with their camel toe's out (not joking, look at the photos). They do this for the same reason police in the US write tickets for people going 45 in a 30 instead of 90 in a 55. It's safer, easier, the person going a measly 45 is more likely to comply, and they just don't give a fuck.
I've also heard theories this is a desperate hail mary to game the stats and have more white people committing "sex offenses" since the current stats are so stubbornly brown. Honestly I doubt that, unless you start seeing it at scale.
Personally, I think these two badged Karens had an idea, and nobody up the chain of command had the right IDPOL cards to shut it down. Or maybe it was a way to keep them busy and out of the way of people doing actual work.
Given that most 30mph limits exist for a reason (like "this is an urban street") whereas most 55mph limits in the US are a holdover from the oil crisis, I would (without further details) be much more worried about someone doing 45 in a 30 than 90 in a 55. And therefore I would support cops focussing on the former.
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I'm fascinated by the fact that people like Jess Philips have no problem talking about misogyny or condemning the more gender egalitarian Western societies but generally but shy away from specifically targeting minority communities (I don't see how this can fit @TwiceHuman's model: if the point is for high status men and women to tamp down on low status behavior why give low status minorities a pass?). The (apparently correct) assumption is that they're the ones that will take it.
It really does seem like a weird displacement thing where you go after the easy cases. The charitable stance is that they go after both in the background but it's rhetorically easier to not get into migrant/brown crime. I don't know how many people in the UK believe that though.
I think men and women are quite different.
I'd like to conclude something like "Women are more interested in rock stars and movie stars than in politicians", but I can't find any studies on the attractiveness of politicians. You know how some murderers in prison get fanmail from women? I don't think that happens as much to politicans. I have no evidence of this, but the game of politics is rather gross to me, and I can't imagine why a women would be attracted to a man who is playing a game which won't even allow him to be genuine for a moment.
As for that woman - it looks like a shit test to me. Women want to be targeted by high-value bold men while avoiding low-value bold men. Somebody who can break the rules because they're powerful awnd because they understand the rules well. So they speak nonsense, being brats, hoping that some high-value man comes around and puts them in their place. I think the whole "You can't handle a woman like me" thing is a taunt, they want to be handled. That said, this could also just be agreeableness/conformity, or the kind of mental illness which makes them side with everything weak on principle (except their own in-group, which is superior because it sides with the weak. Broken maternal instinct perhaps?). Politics has too many layers of deception, I'm afraid that a model which makes too much sense might actually be wrong. I stick to the evopsych view of "high value" since it doesn't have all these distorted layers
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Very unlikely if you speak to anyone who has been catcalled in England.
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Why not both? And I don't mean game the stats to get more white offenders or whatever, I mean it in the usual sense that police departments game the stats by going out trying to write lots of citations to hit their quotas for the week. These lady cops (or their supervisor) had the bright idea to go out doing this to generate some citations and pump the numbers, and the supervisor might have signed off on it to help his employees hit their numbers, as well getting them out of the way for some actual work being done. Unremarkable business as usual for police departments.
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