Q4W: How is it possible for normal women to experience constant catcalling/harassment in their childhood?

Acaciduh · 2024-08-07T13:33:06+00:00

Catcalling is not constant or typical in middle class suburban settings. The few times I’ve been catcalled have been at ghetto gas stations because it’s a low brow interaction so mostly low brow people do it.

What most women do get is covert leering, making off color remarks about your body, attempting to get you alone, etc. and I don’t know a single women who has hadn’t at least one instance of this starting young af. Men don’t see it is entirely the point. Because men behaving badly when they know they are doing something wrong don’t do it around other men•

attendquoi · 2024-08-07T13:42:01+00:00

My first experiences were at school, church, and the mall.

EulenWatcher · 2024-08-07T14:00:21+00:00

If you're a normal, middle-class woman who grew up in a decent suburb, how exactly did you experience constant catcalling and harassment in your childhood?

You're talking about a very specific sample here. Lots of people aren't from middle class or lived in a decent suburbs growing up.

Having said that men usually aren't that stupid. Strangers harassing kids and teens choose secluded areas. People harassing kids they know usually harass kids they have access to. They can be teachers, care-takers, trainers, relatives of kids' friends etc. Groping can happen in a packed public transport and it doesn't really matter whether you live in a decent suburb or not. Online sexual harassment is also a thing and kids do get targeted.

p_fulga · 2024-08-07T13:48:19+00:00

I grew up fairly middle class and I certainly had my share of creepy ass encounters, starting around about 15-16 for the most part but with a few before. I had an old man when I was like 7 approach me in the thrift store when I was looking alone at toys and followed me around to buy me things and compliment my body. I've had dudes wait until I was alone with them to try touching me. I've had guys brush my ass and try to play it off. I've had trucks pass by and people whistle at me from them. I've had a dude literally stalk me at an old job. I've even had people follow me at bus stops complimenting my body.

The common thread was these men ALWAYS waited until I was alone to pull their creep out on me. Or I was ignored when I went to others for support.

TheAvocadoSlayer · 2024-08-07T14:44:40+00:00

Well, if things like this was common then I would've seen or heard about it, regardless of whether I'm "sheltered". But like I said, I've never seen or heard of anything like this at my middle school, except among the ghetto kids.

What's the point of this post? You've gotten hundreds of responses from other women telling you their personal experiences with being harassed in the suburbs, yet you're making comments like the one above? I feel like you secretly think all these women are lying which is an insane cope.

And by the way you act on here, I wouldn't want to tell you about getting harassed if I was your sister, either.

You acknowledge catcalling/harassment happens in urban areas, but it's so hard for you to believe it happens in the suburbs? Why would it be any different?

Suspicious_Glove7365 · 2024-08-07T14:28:05+00:00

Yeah if you’ve never gone outside unsupervised and are a man, you won’t notice this stuff happening to women around you. Don’t you think that something pretty much all women claim is a shared personal experience maybeeee has some truth behind it? Or you think we’re all just making it up for laughs? Seriously, look inside yourself and genuinely ask why you feel the need to challenge this at all.

I’m come from upper middle class suburbs California and I started getting catcalled when I was maybe 12. If you were a girl, it might have happened when you were biking or walking anywhere with a small of girlfriends or just traveling alone anywhere. YOU won’t notice it of course because men don’t catcall when other men are around.

ohdiddly · 2024-08-07T14:04:26+00:00

So I'm really curious about this "universal female experience" that doesn't align at all with my experience growing up

BECAUSE YOU AREN'T A WOMAN LMAO

Of course it doesn't align with your experience as a man. You will almost never have to experience it. What a luxury to be able to question women's experiences of sexual harassment, because you personally have never experienced it.

howdoiw0rkthisthing · 2024-08-07T15:16:59+00:00

Look, I’m not someone who experienced sexual harassment as a child, at least not any I’m aware of or remember….

But what kind of an argument (I get it’s labeled Q4W but still) is “hypothetically if I were female I wouldn’t have been harassed”

That’s like me saying “hypothetically if I were born male I’d have no problem getting a date.”

MyLastBestChance · 2024-08-07T13:55:24+00:00

It’s not just construction workers cat calling. It’s creepy comments and attention from friends fathers or older brothers. It’s getting hit on by the dad when you’re babysitting. It’s gross leering from old men at the mall and inappropriate comments and questions.

It’s sports coaches and tutors and music teachers and school teachers.

It’s middle aged customers at your first job when you’re 14 making really uncomfortable sexual comments and asking you out and making clumsy attempts to touch you.

This is a real thing that absolutely happens to girls starting at 11 or 12 and sometimes even younger.

These are actions intentionally taken by grown men and they are frightening and confusing and absolutely disgustingly common.

nightsofthesunkissed · 2024-08-07T13:41:51+00:00

Sometimes it would take seconds from leaving my front door as a girl aged 14 - 19. Yes, seconds. I grew up in a fairly middle-class area in a nice home.

And yes, it was absolutely incessant. I hated leaving the house because I felt like I was being constantly watched. Going through rougher areas and busy cities was scary af - some men from those areas would literally try to follow me. I've also been physically grabbed and groped as well..

It'd mostly be men catcalling or shouting obscene things from cars and men saying shit to me under their breath as I walked past them. Tradesmen here in the UK in particular were notorious for it.

It begun to die down after around age 21 or so, but it'd still be very regular.

37 and fat now lol, being practically invisible is goddamn amazing.

januaryphilosopher · 2024-08-07T14:06:13+00:00

Well, people don't usually it when all their friends are listening. The more private/quiet, the more likely. Although I'm shocked you apparently haven't come across anything at all. Maybe you just didn't think it counted or agreed with/supported it?

SeveralSadEvenings · 2024-08-07T14:21:39+00:00

My first my memory of groping was when I was 11 years old, standing in a crowded line at an amusement park (6 Flags Over Great America). I was with my older cousins waiting to get on a ride, and we were all smooshed into a herding pen. My cousins were in front of me, I was behind them, when I felt adult male hands grab my ass and pinch my chest. I yelped, turned around, but all I could see was a sea of anonymous people. No one else had noticed what happened.

I told my cousins that someone was bothering me, they turned to look, said they didn't see anyone, and then told me to huddle in closer with them.

This was just one of a handful of these sort of instances. Usually predicated on large groups of people packed together, thus the ability to offend and then vanish into the crowd.

Why you consider this to be abnormal is quite frankly baffling and insulting.

queen-of-dirt · 2024-08-07T14:09:48+00:00

The entrance to the dance studio I attended as a teenager was in an alleyway in a relatively upscale downtown area. There was a whole system in place for pickup; we would wait in the dressing room for our ride to arrive, they would text us or honk there horns, then we would go down to meet them. We were NOT allowed to wait on the sidewalk, because that’s where strange men liked to hang out and smoke, and would often leer and whistle and occasionally call out at us. I was 14 when I enrolled but some of the girls as young as 11 would experience the same thing. Yes we were all in skintight leotards because that was the required dress code.

ItIsnt0verYet · 2024-08-07T14:14:50+00:00

I was a middle class kid who was harassed pretty consistently as a kid. My neighborhood had mostly families and older couples. My hometown even now has less than 20k population. We had a nice park a couple of blocks away from my house. We did not live in a large city. I did live near large interstate.

I had to walk to school most days and because my family was not very wealthy, no one was available to walk with me. I got stopped by men in their cars nearly every time I walked. When I was 10 my friend and I were nearly kidnapped from our park by a car full of men. When I was 16 I was followed halfway home until I was able to hide from them behind some buildings. I dont think as many young girls are spending time alone walking long distances so it might not be an "every girl" experience. But it was mine.

When I got older I spent time shadowing people in law enforcement and womens shelters and was shown a map of kidnapping/human trafficking cases with my area lit up following the interstate.

y2kjanelle · 2024-08-07T14:14:40+00:00

Grew up in a middle class city in California. Men just wait until you are alone or with other young girls. They just pick moments where they have the power and no one is watching.

Think of it like how people speed more when cops aren’t around. You’re thinking, well I’ve always been around cops and I’ve never seen anyone speed??? So why do people say they always speed on the road? Why are there so many accidents caused by someone speeding??

Also sometimes it’s just normalized so men don’t care or even notice.

My HS had horrible POS boys who had a nude ring and they would threaten 13 year old girls while they were like 17/18. They would terrorize all the girls. Make fun of them. Belittle them. I remember clearly and so do lots of girls who went to the same HS.

I would imagine that none of the boys would really remember. They didn’t care or notice at the time or if they did, they went along with it to seem cool. It was normal “boy” behavior that they thought wasn’t a big deal and wasn’t sexual harassment or coercion.

egalitarian-flan · 2024-08-07T13:48:56+00:00

If you're a normal, middle-class woman who grew up in a decent suburb, how exactly did you experience constant catcalling and harassment in your childhood?

I'm 42, so we didn't have school buses drop us off close to our homes or at our front yards like the majority of drivers do nowadays for safety. My school bus stop was about 3 miles from the main neighborhood, and although there were streets where more of us would end up meeting, it meant that for a decent portion of either the walk home or walk to the stop, I was alone.

It's not just from old dudes driving by, catcalling me out of their car windows, though. I was sometimes followed around when alone at the mall (like parents are at Macy's and you're wandering around to other stores at 15 or 16), when left to meet with friends outside the movie theater, or riding my bike in the more urban/commercial parts of town.

Note: I hit puberty at age 8 (yes, it sucks as much as you think), so by the time I was 11, my body had been developing for a few years. I firmly believe this is part of the reason I got catcalled more than my female friends who were lucky enough to not get their period until 12 or 13. Precocious puberty is one of the worst things a child can go through, outside of poverty, medical issues, or abuse.

Lysa_Bell · 2024-08-07T15:23:46+00:00

My first sexual assault happened by my cousin when I was like 8 during a family bbq.

Around that time was when all the girls in my class also publicly complained about the male gym teacher and his "help" when we had to do aerobics. He would regularly "help" by grabbing us between our legs.

Boys in class would regularly snap our bra straps because they thought it was funny.

My chemistry teacher when I was 12 would always stand behind us girls during experiments and touch us.

The father's of friends would hug me as a welcome and let their hands linger and wander, stroking up and down my back and hips.

A typical thing was also the wandering hand on my thighs. Men loved to sit next to me and just without questioning would put their hand on my knee in a "friendly" way just to let it sit there or wander over my thigh while striking up a conversation.

Routinely we would hear from the friends of our dads "come here and let your uncle (we weren't related) give you a hug and kiss". If I was hesitant they would grab my arm and drag me into them. I can still remember feeling the semi hard through their jeans while they would squeeze me close to them.

The amount of comments like "you are developing so nice" and "you are almost a woman!" I would hear when I barely hit puberty was insane.

I got taught from a very young age to not make a fuzz about being touched by other people and just let it happen. I was guilt tripped and scolded hard when I didn't want to get touched or moved away. My body was never allowed to be just mine.

I grew up in a town with 2k people. Very rural. Then moved to a town with 30k people. It made no difference.

2024-08-07T16:10:03+00:00

It happens in more mundane settings than what you're imagining.

Maybe a man at the grocery store tries to talk to you when you're away from your mom, or a friend or coworker of your dad's makes an odd sexual joke at a barbecue. Maybe you're working a summer job at the mall and a grown man keeps asking for your number until your manager has to tell him to leave you alone. It's not always yelling/shouting/grabbing/violence, although it can be, but can be intimidation and crossed boundaries coming from men towards girls.

I also think that you have a hard time imagining it because men don't often do this in settings where they know they'll get called out for it by other men.

Makuta_Servaela · 2024-08-07T15:20:16+00:00

I was homeschooled and kept on female-only sports teams, so had little interaction with young boys. I also grew up low-middle income with a working dad and stay-at-home mom: we lived in the place in walking distance of "the bad part of town", but we weren't actually in it.

The only interaction I had regularly was at my weekly 1 hour Church Sunday school and later Youth Group. There were two boys who would harass me in the Sunday School, joining up to take turns: one would harass me, the other would egg him on, then they'd switch. It wasn't directly sexual, though. I have very few memories in general from that age, anyway. My memories in general mostly start when I was around 13-14, probably related to depression sapping my memory-recall skills.

When I was around age 10, my brother's male friends wanted to mock me for having a large toy horse (one of those 3 feet tall ones) so they mimicked raping it, and were so violent with it that they broke its neck. (I remember that one because the horse's break served as a reminder).

I remember I was 15, walking to the store, and a guy pulled over his car and flashed me. I remember my first job around that age at the Renn Fest of old and young men hitting on me, old men commenting in front of their wives that they wished their wife looked like me, a teenage male coworker asking if I had a deer's vagina in front of children (I was wearing fawn ears and face spots and pretending to be a fae).

I also remember as a teenager sitting at the nearby playground and hearing boys who couldn't have been older than 10 making sex noises at each other. Not at me, but just in general, very loudly and in hearing distance of me and a a few young girls.

My brothers would also mimic sex-noises in front of me, as young as age 10 or so. They weren't doing it at me, again, just at each other, but very loudly and sometimes in public.

I was antisocial, homeschooled, barely interacted with the outside world until I got a part-time job, and I still have more stories than I can count.

-Shes-A-Carnival · 2024-08-07T15:51:57+00:00

men pull their cars up to you to say inappropriate things, service workers, your parents friends, male attention is constant from puberty, why do men find this so hard to believe?

MiddleZealousideal89 · 2024-08-07T17:24:19+00:00

You'd be surprised by the amount of :

Dudes who genuinelly perv on young girls
Dudes who like making young girls really uncomfortable, even if they aren't actually trying to hit on them

These two types of shitty dudes aren't all relegated to a specific socioeconomic class either, you'll find them among rich and poor alike. Granted, I've never lived in a suburb so maybe there are fewer overt creeps there but the suburbs are a very small, walled off part of the world, it's not like everyone and their grandmother lives in a suburb and has never taken public transport or gone to the store to pick up some stuff for their parents.

A big disconnect I am seeing from my own personal experience is how women online claim that it's a universal female experience to be incessantly catcalled and harassed ever since they were a little kid, and that this type of sexual attention was what first made them despise male sexuality. However, thinking back to my own experiences growing up, I simply can't fathom how this can be anything close to reality.

I mean, based on my own personal experience, getting hit in the balls isn't all that painful. I haven't experienced it because I have no balls but I can't imagine why the general male experience tends to differ. Weird, that.

Sharp_Engineering379 · 2024-08-07T13:27:15+00:00

Men don’t leer at and screech at little girls when another man or older boy is present.

You know how not a single man knows a pedo or rapist?

Men are just willfully ignorant until it happens to their little girl.

If you're a normal, middle-class woman who grew up in a nice suburb, how exactly did you experience constant catcalling and harassment in your childhood?

Playing in the yard, playing in the park, playing in the creek, walking the dog, when I started running, riding bicycles along or with friends, walking to friends’ houses, walking around the block with friends.

I grew up in four different middle-to-upper class neighborhoods in the suburbs. Happened in every single one. And no, I didn’t develop early. I looked like a child with a child’s body and face until I was 17 or so.

Sophiatab · 2024-08-07T16:35:19+00:00

I would say you were lucky. However, many women do not have that sort of luck. My childhood was in a middle class area were street catcalling was not a major problem, but what happened in the schools was horrendous. Sexual harassment (really attempted child rape) was basically my life from as early as I can remember.

Goodgurusarefree · 2024-08-07T18:53:42+00:00

From the age of 9 to current it's happened to me at the grocery store, the library, at school, at the park and in front of my house. Men are everywhere. Yes, even in white suburbs.

SnooMarzipans8221 · 2024-08-07T19:04:14+00:00

Nice thought experiment you have there. Good thing nothing bad happened in theory-land.

It's wonderful your sister grew-up not experiencing that. I would wish everyone could have had childhoods that preserved their innocence. Or it could be that she doesn't feel safe talking to you about her experiences for whatever reason because you think this way.

Man, I have awful memories of being cat-called by the older boys and men I went to church with in the nice neighbourhood my parents worked hard for us to stay in. It went on for years. The anxiety that filled me to see their faces walking down the church aisles would render me catatonic most Sundays. It started when I was 7 or 8 back in 2002 or 2003. Perverts were less scared of being shamed and receiving consequences from the general public or law enforcement then because frankly, no one wanted to care. It was common enough.

I have lost track how many times my skirt was flipped when I still wore school uniforms by random boys.

I was stalked 3 times in my life. Twice in high school by upper-classman boys and once in uni.

"HOW IS IT POSSIBLE" you ask here in your post, "WHY DID IT HAPPEN TO ME?? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE IT?!" some of us ask ourselves over and over. Sure it didn't happen to EVERYBODY, but does that make our experiences and pain from it less real?

If I hypothesized having balls and getting kicked in them over and over again, I simply will just refuse to feel the pain in my simulation.

Sillysheila · 2024-08-07T20:18:32+00:00

Your argument that middle class people couldn’t have experienced it because of their area is a weird one and isn’t very watertight.

Like you don’t send your entire life in the area you grew up in, do you? You’re telling me you never left your area? I went to go to school and sports, and music camp etc. Harassment experience isn’t 100% contingent on living in a certain area.

SaBahRub · 2024-08-07T22:51:07+00:00

Because it happens occasionally not constantly

Economy-Shake-1448 · 2024-08-07T23:39:36+00:00

It’s funny how men rebuke and scold women for having salary requirements and remind us over and over again that the average salary for a household in the USA is something like $68k and how our salary requirements are so high.

But then people like OP come in and think that growing up in a nice suburb is “normal and middle class”. In most states you need at least $100k for a household to grow up in a nice suburb and in places like California, that inflates to like $200k or more for a family with kids.

Growing up with financial troubles in kind of shitty places is the norm for most women. So most women will experience catcalling of some sort in these settings.

DJ_Dialga · 2024-08-07T19:16:46+00:00

They were typically isolated incidents and usually done by men who weren’t following normal social patterns, so mostly drunk or homeless men. I was walking with my grandma at the age of 11 when my first incident of a group of men in a car being totally inappropriate while passing by me. There was at least 3 incidents of cars passing by me when I was a kid where guys would yell something inappropriate. This wouldn’t happen in the closed off parts of the nice suburbs, but if you were in busy parts with a lot of drivers passing by pretty quick it often happens. Every single incident happened when nobody else but me and one of my family members was there, so I imagine it was more opportunistic. And yes it does condition you to dislike male sexuality from a young age.

Maryclitmas · 2024-08-08T08:08:08+00:00

I grew up in an expensive resort town and it was a huge problem. It was a slight problem with the locals, and a gigantic problem with tourists. A lot of male tourists had bikini fever.

IcyTrapezium · 2024-08-08T09:10:17+00:00

Catcalling and following me were constant things I experienced in my teenage years. Once I lost the baby fat in my cheeks around the age of 21 there was a precipitous drop in street harassment.

Men used to slow down their cars to try to get me to get inside on a daily basis when I was in high school. Yes, literally daily. I walked home and it happened every day. I grew up in a poor city (Memphis) which probably contributed to this. When I lived briefly in the suburbs it happened way less.

apresonly · 2024-08-08T14:59:47+00:00

i lived in a small town and men would scream out the window at me when i walked around as an underage girl

when i got a job, i had a few regular customers who were VERY inappropriate with me and i didn't realize it until years later (one would tip me extra money if i wore my hair in a ponytail, for instance)

Mentathiel · 2024-08-09T00:57:35+00:00

Catcalling is very much a local culture thing. Different cities have different cultures, even within the same country.

Harassment though I think is pretty universal. Girls often downplay what's happening because it's often passed off as a joke. Maybe my experience isn't the American suburban middle class, I'm Eastern European, but I'm curious will you relate to anything I list. Have you ever had your hair pulled or your bra unhooked as a joke in school, for example? Did you ever get an unsolicited dick pick in your inbox/spam? I don't know a single woman who hasn't. A doctor and a nurse joked about how I had nice glutes when I was 14 I think, maybe a couple of years younger even, I don't remember for sure. It's always a joke.

And that's without getting into all of the groomers, the situation might be worse in my country since age of consent is 14 I think, but a lot of girls are approached by much older men from a young age. And if you call them out on that they'll play dumb, like they're like your older brother, they're a mentor figure, they would never, they're just joking around a bit, etc. They will admit everything when they think they've broken you down sufficiently for you to accept it because they tested boundaries and you allowed them to push them for long enough that they gain confidence to be open about their intentions. But until that point, it's just a joke, aren't you cool enough to flirt around like an adult?

Then there's that guy at your workplace which has tried his shot with every female employee who has ever worked there. There's bosses being inappropriate, inviting employees to strip clubs and similar. There's people locker-room-talking who's the hottest chick from X department when they think nobody is listening.

It's not really constant in the sense that it's happening every day. But it's constant in the sense that it's widespread enough you sort of have to develop discernment to recognize it, assertiveness to set boundaries, work through your previous experiences to not take out your frustrations on those who don't deserve it, etc. Point is, even if it happens like once every 3 months or something, over 10 years that's like 40 instances, which is enogh for you to start being vigilant a lot of the time, which means it takes up your mental bandwidth.

I'm really curious, how much of this do Western women relate to?

anna_alabama · 2024-08-07T16:43:51+00:00

I’ve never been catcalled, harassed, or hit on ever

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Trouvette · 2024-08-07T15:17:46+00:00

I’ll be honest, I have the same question. It just wasn’t my experience at any time in my life. It’s not a denial that women experience it, but I can’t call it universal.

Title	Q4W: How is it possible for normal women to experience constant catcalling/harassment in their childhood?
Author	f_lachowski
Upvotes	0
Comments	295
Date	August 7, 2024 1:24 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1embpn3/q4w_how_is_it_possible_for_normal_women_to/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/q4w-how-is-it-possible-for-normal-women-to.1526598 https://theredarchive.com/post/1526598

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