Wolf-whistling: are women as guilty as men?

 Yes, women objectify the opposite sex, but it’s different for us

Last week, a man — a total stranger — blew a kiss at me. I was waiting to cross the road, he was on a bike. No one else was around. His kiss was aggressive (not that a simpering version would have been any the less repulsive) — lips pursed with intent, eyes boring into me. He even swerved his bike close to the pavement for maximum impact.

The image of his screwed-up face kept popping into my head for the rest of the day.

And the next time I had to walk that way? Well, I didn’t. I took a taxi.

So when I read yesterday that Poppy Smart had considered changing her route to work in Worcester after being subjected to a month-long campaign of wolf-whistling and cat-calling from builders, I knew exactly how she felt. As will any other woman who has ever stepped outside.

After four weeks of daily humiliation, the 23-year-old finally snapped and called the police, who investigated the incident as a potential sex crime, before deciding the men should be dealt with by their employer.

Unsurprisingly, social media users had other ideas. Many demanded that wolf-whistling be made illegal, something that David Cameron has said will not happen.

Others applauded Poppy, with one woman writing that wolf-whistling was an attempt by “men to control how I feel about myself“. When a few brave blokes stepped forward to defend their right to whistle, they were roundly shouted down by both men and women.

Indeed, the reactions didn’t follow traditional gender lines, with many women slamming Poppy for being “oversensitive“, and telling her to “get a grip“.

“It is incredibly intimidating. I’m quite a nervous person and this has made my anxiety worse,” explained Poppy. “I considered changing my route to work, but thought ‘Why should I do that?’“

Exactly. But Poppy and her Twitter critics are wrong about one thing — you don’t have to be nervous to be affected by wolf-whistling or cat-calling. Any woman who has been leered at by a stranger or shouted at by a group of blokes, and felt that familiar rise of hot shame spread over her, will know that.

So let’s be clear. Whistling and shouting at women on the street, or anywhere, is not flattering. It’s not charming. And it’s certainly not trivial — something we should “take as a compliment” and brush off.

I find it inconceivable that some men (for it’s certainly not all) believe that when a woman is walking along, minding her own business, what she desperately craves is to be rated by a stranger.

No. The only possible impetus for such sleazy behaviour is to belittle, humiliate and objectify. It’s nothing but a power play.

Such behaviour is threatening. It’s a drive-by boost for the male ego at the expense of a woman’s comfort and sense of safety. Making wolf-whistling illegal might sound extreme. But there can be little doubt that we need something to set in motion the sort of cultural change that many women desperately want.

As Sarah Green from the End Violence Against Women Coalition puts it: “Sexual harassment in the street is too often regarded as trivial, when the reality is that many women feel humiliated and sometimes intimidated by it. Men who respect women do not do it.”

At this point, you might accuse me of being dramatic. Hysterical, even. Of painting wolf-whistling to be something it isn’t — a sinister and sexual threat that affects every woman, regardless of age or race.

To me, that only confirms the biggest problem we have in tackling such harassment: that many people just don’t believe it happens.

It does. Regularly. I’ve had strangers approach me in the street and say things that are unrepeatable in a family newspaper (in fact, they’re so distressing I haven’t repeated them to anyone).

Another cyclist once shouted a request that I perform oral sex on him as he whizzed past me in Kensington. A friend recently had her breasts grabbed by a random man in Soho.

Another, on hearing I was writing this article, emailed to say: “I was cat-called just now. A white van man just screamed ‘sex’ out of his window while driving past. I can hardly blame him, though. I looked hot — unwashed hair, parka and 10-year-old velour tracksuit pants.”

We all have the right to walk down the street without being hassled. Is that too much to ask?

Of course, that goes for men, too. Because the uncomfortable truth is that women are just as guilty of objectifying men.

Consider, for a moment, the hours spent celebrating the charms of shirtless Poldark (tv hearthrb played by Aidan Turner) over the past few weeks. His clippered chest has become something of a national joke. In an interview with Telegraph Women last week, Turner’s co-star Heida Reed said that if he were a woman, we’d be calling it sexism.

“I don’t think it should be any more allowed than if a woman was in the same situation,” she said.

She’s right, of course. If men can’t whistle at women on the street, why should women be allowed to lust over them on social media?

Except, well… it’s not quite the same, is it?

For starters, the chance of a hapless bloke being ogled by a group of women on the street seems slim to me (unless you’re Ed Miliband getting off a coach in the middle of a hen do).

In an ideal world, no one would objectify anyone else. But that isn’t going to happen by bickering over whether it’s sexist when women ogle Poldark. It might be silly — but it’s not intimidating or threatening. It’s not happening to 13-year-old boys on the street.

If roles were reversed — and the internet was on the verge of combusting with excitement over Turner’s co-star’s heaving bosoms — we’d all be calling it out as sexist. But, frankly, we’d have to drool over millions of topless male actors to even come close to matching the objectification of women in the public eye. And it simply cannot be compared to the negative impact of having sexual come-ons shouted at you on the street as a woman or girl.

Not even blogs such as TubeCrush come close. The site launched last year with the aim of letting users take photos of “hot men” on the London Underground and post them online to be rated. It’s been accused of encouraging the objectification of men who, often, have no idea their picture has been taken.

Yes, it’s a clear example of women reducing men to nothing more than their looks. But it’s a drop in the ocean of objectification.

While men might find it annoying to be judged on their appearance, I’m certain most won’t find it frightening. They don’t immediately wonder whether — by being seen as a sexual object — they might be at risk of physical harm, too.

Women do. To many of us, wolf-whistling and cat-calling are only a step away from being groped (if I had a pound for every time a man tried to put his hand up my skirt as a teenager…) or worse.

Campaigns such as Everyday Sexism and experiments such as last year’s viral video that showed a woman secretly filming herself being catcalled 108 times as she walked through New York are resonating with women for a reason.

That reason is relief — that women who might previously have been too scared to speak up about being harassed on the street or subjected to sexist behaviour finally have a place to voice their concerns and find others who feel the same way.

Women might be guilty of objectifying men online. But it would be short-sighted to overestimate the reach of the female voice. Women write fewer comments online than men. Yet they suffer at the hands of trolls disproportionately. A study, by the group Working to Halt Online Abuse, found that 72.5 per cent of the abuse reported between 2000 and 2012 was by women.

Some might ask: why not just leave Twitter? That’s no better than saying: “Why walk the streets alone?” or: “Why go out after dark?“

The answer is not victim-blaming, or lambasting women for admiring the odd male torso.

It’s tackling the problem at the source: by making sure the wolf-whistlers and cat-callers who subject women like Poppy Smart to daily harassment are silenced once and for all.

The Daily Telegraph

29–04–2015