Why do people catcall or beep at strangers they fancy?

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My point was that it's not really appropriate to label not being an as*hole as 'political correctness'.

People apply the concept of political correctness all the time to stuff that isn't actual examples of political correctness. Not being an as*hole being one of the more common examples.

Abscence of catcalling correlates with a people's civiliness; the more a people is civil the less it happens. Its abudance is a sign of a cultural lack of mannerism.

For instance, South Korea is known for being a culture that has almost no catcall incidents; it had been on the rise lately tho due to foreigner men.

In my country, catcalling is often done by locals in slum areas or by foreigners/refugees.

Syrian soldiers during the occupation were very infamously known of being catcallers.

I hope that people aren’t engaging in the behavior simply because of “political correctness.” I would hope that they wouldn’t even want to. I wish people would realize how triggering it can be for some individuals. Wearing noise canceling headphones helps.

I’ve noticed, especially when I was younger, that it’s typically worse when walking past a construction site because then a bunch of them do it. I find it puzzling because I thought people would behave better when others are around. Maybe it’s related to a herd mentality thing, though.

My dad and friends of the family worked in construction and wouldn’t behave that way, so I’m not picking on blue collar workers or anything.

Different people of the same generation can have seemingly opposite opinions about what is romantic & what is creepy. This dating stuff is confusing as f#ck for some people like me to know what is appropriate & attractive & what is not. I'm extremely glad I skipped that BS by being very straightforward & direct about asking women out & about the way I was. No figurative poker game playing.



I think the herd thing is possible but I also think it could be related to some guys being more brawn than brains. My dad & my mom's dad worked in construction as well & they never did that & I never noticed any other construction workers doing that in real life. That area was NOT pedestrian friendly thou & a car was required to go most anywhere so almost no one ever walked by unless it was related to the construction somehow. Some of the construction guys were strong aHoles but my dad & grandpa were not. They worked smart.
I cant resist posting this clip from Gumball. More brawn than brains applies to these construction workers & they're too moronic to understand why it's wrong

I just figured it out:



“I'm pretty in Buffalo
I'm a sexy b***h there, don't you know?
The boys like me in Buffalo
And if you don't believe me, I'll tell you where you can go”

“I'm from a town where mullets aren't ironic”

“I could wear Lee Press-On Nails
And Carhartt gear and crunchy bangs
And still be in the fashion show at the mall
I could drink beer every night
And eat nothing but chicken wings
And still pick up dudes at the pool hall”

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 21 Jan 2024, 9:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think it's a Tarzan / beating chest thing.
Kinda like when primates go mad.

I have some thoughts on this, I'll try to put them in some sort of order. I don't think this is going to amount to a complete hypothesis, maybe just some talking points.

I want to start first of all by saying that I do understand the urge to communicate to an attractive woman that I find her attractive - regardless of any possible outcome. I want her to know. I think that's probably quite primal, and I wonder if most men, if they're being honest, wouldn't say that they understand the urge, at least.

I think it's important to note that quite often, men catcall from a position of relative safety. There's often some sort of protective barrier around them when they do it. That might be a car that they're in. It might be the physical barriers around a work site, or the psychological barrier of being 'at work'. It might be that they're surrounded by friends.

The safety is emotional safety. Letting a woman know you find her attractive puts you in a vulnerable state. She might reject your advances and that's unpleasant. It seems to me that there's something about catcalling that protects the ego of the man doing it. It's a non-serious approach, so any outcome is also non-serious.

But why do it at all, if it's non-serious?

I think that's where it gets complicated, and there are lots of reasons, but they're probably all based in giving the cat-caller an ego boost, a little shot of dopamine.

Many men will say that some women appreciate being cat-called. Maybe some do. I can see why a man, having cat-called a woman and received maybe a smile in response, or a wink, would feel good about himself both for having spread a bit of pleasure and received a little boost back in return. That's the best outcome I can think has ever resulted from a cat-call.

But I can't believe it's all that common. I think that's probably quite a low percentage result.

So what else? Perhaps the men who cat-call aren't particularly honest with themselves about the responses they receive. Maybe they'd interpret a pissed-off middle finger response as something else? Maybe someone completely ignoring them isn't perceived as something negative.

I wonder if most cat-callers can't convince themselves that even negative responses aren't actually positive in some way. Perhaps an angry response would be interpreted as a 'fiery' temperament or embarrassment as 'coyness'. I think men might imagine that deep down, the woman would be flattered at the attention. Or at the very least, they'd say the negative response was unwarranted, unjustifiable, perhaps an indication that the woman was at fault for not appreciating it.

There is of course the gender imbalance. If a woman says something positive about my appearance to me, it's rare that I'd ever feel threatened by them. It's an overwhelmingly positive thing for most guys, I'd think, to be told you're attractive by almost anyone of the opposite sex, even if we've no interest in them in that sense. For women this isn't true, of course, and many of them would feel uncomfortable and threatened.

I suspect many men struggle to fully understand this because positive attention to their physical appearance is so rarely offered and so overwhelmingly exciting on the rare occasions it happens, they can't imagine that it would be any different for a woman.

In the past I think women have felt obliged to respond positively, or at least neutrally, to catcalling because society obliged them to, or out of self-preservation.

I'm not excusing the behaviour here, I'm just trying to understand it. The urge I think is primal, but like many of our primal urges we suppress them in exchange for being decent people and living in a comfortable society. It's unquestionably a good thing that catcalling is less acceptable/common than it used to be.

Because they weren't raised otherwise.