Cat-calling is harmless flattery...

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This ultimately boils down to sense of entitlement. Some men seem to feel they're entitled to attention and affection from whichever woman they decide is of interest at the moment. It's just an issue of how aggressive they will be in pursuing what they feel they're owed.

Let's stop making excuses for this sort of behaviour. When you try to defend this you're defending the indefensible.

Nevertheless, it sounds like stereotypical-intoxicated-behavior although I'm sure it happens when a person is sober as well. Alcohol usually isn't a legitimate defense for anything either especially if it's used while committing a crime like domestic violence, drunk-driving, or the possibly during the incident described in the first post in this thread. It usually originates from the person being an overconfident-idiot in the first place while in their normal sober state.

I don't understand why you think entitlement is an issue here. It seems like you are making assumptions regarding the attitude of "some men", but I don't see how communicating with a woman suggests that a man believes he is entitled to anything.

Sure, he may be interested in pursuing some kind of relationship with that woman and is curious whether the woman may be also, but that is not entitlement.

I definitely agree that alcohol has little to do with catcalling, but I don't think the societal view that woman are public property is prevalent among those who catcall. How did you come to the conclusion that this is the underlying assumption that guides this kind of behavior?

Shouting at someone isn't communicating with them, at the very least it's not making an attempt to communicate with them as though they were a person of equal value. It's demanding attention without any concern over the person who you're making the demand of.

Additionally, when the attention isn't given and they respond by pestering further, or by insulting or by assaulting it's pretty clear that the cat-caller believes they deserved more than they got. I'm not sure how you define 'sense of entitlement' but that fits my definition.

I studied the issue from all sides of the debate.

Also, as a female I've been subjected to catcalling on many levels and can say without a doubt the driving force was a sense of entitlement to women. Their bodies, their affections, their sex... etc. Why do you think so many become hostile when a woman shows disinterest? It's entitlement... which is driven by the belief that women are public property. This is hardly unique to catcalling. Sexual harrassment of all kinds have the same basis... as does sexual assault.

Yes, well shouting at someone or pestering someone after they've communicated that they're not interested in reciprocating is not catcalling, it's harassment. I've seen thousands of catcalling incidents in NYC but no harassment, so I think it is important to distinguish between the two behaviors.

Catcalling *is* harrassment.

Well, I think it is true that men are desirous of women's bodies, affections, sex, etc., and they devise strategies that can possibly fulfill their desires, but I fail to see how that is equal to entitlement. Wanting something is different from feeling like you deserve something, but in both cases the observed behavior may be the same.

And hostility can result from rejection, but I don't think it is necessarily related to entitlement. I think if someone feels angry after being rejected, it is likely the re-living of past rejections they experienced early on in life and never fully resolved. At least that is a brief psychoanalytic explanation I will attempt.

However, I don't know the percentage of men who become hostile after a catcall is not reciprocated, but from my observations it is fairly low. If I had to bet I would guess that most of those people have some issues with intimacy and rejection that are deep-seated and result from bad relationship patterns established in the first couple years of life, not a sense of entitlement regarding women's bodies that is handed down from "society".

This is something that confuses me, though. Because in the infamous catcall video, there were examples of "catcalling" that amounted to a guy saying "good evening, miss", or "how are you doing", etc. I hope that isn't harassment, it would be a very confusing world for me then!

*sigh* I'm not going to keep repeating myself. If you don't get it at this point, you don't want to.

Exactly!

It has not been my experience that catcalling is in any way related to alcohol consumption. Where I live it tends very often to be workmen who shout out to passing women, and there have been times when I have taken a longer route to avoid particular building sites just so that I can avoid being harassed as I walk past.

*facepalm* at the people who think this only happens to women.

Again....I'm a dude....and an ugly one at that, and even I get it happening to me.

It depends on the neighborhood and what state you live in.

New York (the bad parts of it) California (again, bad parts), places like that....if you look good or even look strange, you will get catcalled, whether male or female. I know because I am one weird-looking gent and I get it when I go to places like that.

If you go to a place like Bexley, Ohio, or some other richie-rich type place, it won't happen, because the culture is totally different. Even in places with middling income, it won't happen very much. You'd have a better shot at predicting how long you'll stay alive.

Doesn't mean harassment is okay...... but it's not one of those things where you step one foot out of your house and you're getting bombarded, unless you're in a sh***y neighborhood.

Again with the assumptions regarding others' motivations! Maybe your ability to understand others' motivations is not as strong as you believe it to be.

You don't have to repeat yourself for me to understand, it's just you are making a simple point that may not stand up to further scrutiny. I'm certainly willing to consider alternative viewpoints and arguments, as long as they are logical and well-articulated.

Really? For most of human history, women were effectively considered property, but not public property—they were always a particular man’s property. Biological evolution is slow, so we’re still mostly physically adapted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In the state of nature, you’re entitled to anything you can get by force, and, conversely, you have no rights if someone can take them from you by force. In this piece of news, the assailant played exactly by these rules: he wanted the woman, so he challenged his “owner” in order to prove the legitimacy of his claim by showing he was the stronger rival.

You're basically shouting in Japanese at a brick wall. Or maybe she's the one speaking Japanese and you're the brick wall. Who knows? Who the hell cares?