And I did answer your question regarding catcalling. Your post also shows a lack of understanding about how power (political, economic, physical, social, etc.) affects relationships between groups. If you’re the person in power, you’re going to perceive something like a catcall differently than someone who is in the less-powerful position.
[quote=zk]
Here’s another question for you: You said I probably had no idea what it was like to be catcalled by strangers. I mentioned that that had actually happened to me on a couple occasions, and that I really liked it. I was watching “The Seventies” a couple weeks ago on CNN. Great show. They had footage from the ‘70s of feminists having an “ogle day,” where women would ogle men. There was a feminist trying to “harass” a man on the street, in front of TV cameras. She was saying what nice legs he had and how his pants brought out the best in him. She didn’t seem to notice the look on the guy’s face, which was some surprise, but mostly pleasure. The guy was loving it. She went on to say, into some microphone, how they were trying to show what it felt like to be catcalled by strangers. I remember thinking that those women didn’t understand men at all. I think most men would really like getting catcalled by women they didn’t know. And the main reason these women didn’t understand men is that, like so many feminists in the ’70s, they believed gender identity/behavior was a social construct. They thought that men and women were mostly the same, prior to social conditioning. So they thought that, since women don’t like being catcalled, neither would men.
Do you think that if all children were raised in a gender-neutral fashion, that boys would hate being catcalled by strangers, or that girls would enjoy it? Do you think if a girl, one individual girl, was raised in a gender-neutral fashion, that she would enjoy being catcalled, as most men would?[/quote]
[quote=CA renter]Um, yeah… This really shows how little you know about sexism and misogyny. Re-read my post to scaredy* about why women want men to protect them — the one about how many females are sexually assaulted before the age of 18 (which is an understated statistic). See, many/most women perceive sexually aggressive men to be threatening, so they don’t take catcalling as a compliment, they consider it a threat.
After all, female groupies and male stalkers are similar in almost every way, other than their sex. So why are stalkers considered threatening, while groupies are considered to be fun, or maybe a nuisance?[/quote]
*Referring to this post:
[quote=CA renter]
Why do women want men to protect them? Because men are generally more capable of providing protection due to their generally larger size, greater strength, and more aggressive personality. This is especially true if women are not allowed to arm themselves.
I cannot express enough how differently people behave around a woman who is escorted by a man (especially a larger man) vs. a woman who is alone. I’m sure that most women will attest to having been catcalled by large groups of men (at a minimum), groped, aggressively cornered, molested, raped, etc. at some point in their lives, often by men who are decades older than the victims. Some females have been exposed to many violent/sexually violent situations by the time she is twenty years old. These offenses very rarely occur when women are being escorted by men (this assumes that the escort is a trustworthy male since it’s not terribly uncommon for the escort to become the perpetrator).
All too often, these offenses occur at a very young age (<18 years old), and these exposures to sexually violent men tend to cluster in a girl's youth, when they are ~13-20 years old -- and the younger ones are most definitely understated in official statistics, for obvious reasons. These exposures to violent/sexually violent men at an early age make females feel physically vulnerable where violent men are concerned, and certainly cause women to seek out men who are capable of protecting them from these threats. The age/size differential for young girls who are victimized by older/larger males adds to the perception that men are more powerful, both as a potential threat and as a potential protector.
This is why men who are tall, muscular, and selectively aggressive are sought out by many women. It’s also why so many women end up in abusive situations, because they have a difficult time discerning between those who can protect them from danger and those who are a danger…because these different types of males often share the same traits.
This is why cops and criminals often share the same traits, too. Those who are in charge of selecting law enforcement recruits sometimes have a difficult time discerning between the strong, unafraid, aggressive “good guy” and the strong, unafraid, aggressive “bad guy.” Cops and criminals often share the very same traits, by default.
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“Children
15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12.3
29% are age 12-17.
44% are under age 18.3
80% are under age 30.3
12-34 are the highest risk years.
Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.”
