I have seen at least three FB posts, from different feeds, regarding a good-looking young woman who chose to walk through the streets of New York City and videotape mens reactions to her presence over the course of 10 hours. She is wearing typical casual clothing for the USA: Jeans and a crew-necked t-shirt. The clothing is form-fitting. She is curvy-but-not-fat. She has long, curly hair and is lightly made-up. Nothing about what she is wearing blatantly shouts that she is looking for a mate OR that she wants to not be noticed. But it IS obvious that she is pretty, young, and female...and that is enough to get the attention (some of it very polite) of every guy on the street. She does as I suggested in my responses to these posts: She behaves as if she were deaf. Unsurprisingly, many men who saw these posts responded along these lines: If I am not supposed to speak with women, how am I going to meet anyone? and, Some of those men were polite and respectful. Its going overboard to characterize them as being harassers! Many women said that this is definitely not a NYC thing. I have to concur that it most definitely is NOT. I have never been to NYC, but I have walked through cities in the San Francisco Bay Area where men who apparently had nothing better to do, spent their time hanging out on sidewalks and stoops, yelling stuff out at people. Knock 40+ years off of ME, put me back on the streets of Oakland and Berkeley, and I am the lady in that video (admittedly less-attractive than she is, but somewhat similar-looking, in terms of ethnicity, hair length, and clothing style), and Im feeling as if I cannot walk 1/2 block without some dude sidling up to me and saying, Heeeey, Baby! Can I walk wit you? I suppose that the sort of men who hang out all day long on sidewalks and stoops are appealing to some women, but my reaction to them has always been a combination of revulsion and fear. Mating rituals are a funny thing: They evolve because they WORK. (Except for when they dont.) All of those incessant cat-calls must get just enough positive attention to make rejection and being ignored seem to be a fair price to pay for the occasional success. This as the response that I posted to all of the articles on FB: If they approve, theyre very forward; if they dont approve, theyll yell at you to go on a diet; and if your face registers displeasure at all of this patronizing nonsense, theyll yell, Smile, Baby! One way to get through it all is to just pretend to yourself that you are deaf...selectively deaf, I mean! Rarely, a guy will take offense at being ignored and will physically confront you, and I will admit that that can be scary. This stuff seems to be cross-cultural, and I cannot tell whether its a matter of socialization or if its just...hormones.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 21:29:14 +0000
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