14-16 was when I got catcalled the most

yolosunshine · 2020-12-04T14:02:14+00:00

Absolutely true. The worst is the middle-aged men would be the main ones to ogle and talk to me at 13-17. I very obviously looked like a kid and was not very "developed" body wise, so it wasn't about being very attractive or maybe looking a bit older than I was. I grew into my looks later and attracted age-appropriate boys. Those middle aged men ogling slowed down with each year afterward. They're straight up pedophiles and they only do that because young girls usually don't have the confidence to get away from them. I've seen so many (and been one of the) young girls get protected by older women from creepy men in public - unfortunately no other men have helped once in my experience.

chateauduchat · 2020-12-04T13:47:39+00:00

I remember when I was shopping with my mom and I was barely 10 dancing to some music, and this old man went up to me when my mom was distracted for a little bit and he asked me “if you dance in front of the store, I’ll give you this gold coin”.

If I wasn’t taught about stranger. I never danced as a kid in public (or any age again for that matter). I think that’s when I first started to realize how dangerous and easy it is for men to prey on women.

curiouskait999 · 2020-12-04T14:26:34+00:00

Yup, received the most catcalls walking around in my literal high school uniform

hippiepotomus · 2020-12-04T14:59:22+00:00

100%. 12-16 was when I had the most and worst incidences with catcalling and men saying weird creepy shit. GROWN ASS MEN with kids and wives. not kids my age. Disgusting.

hiraethsidhartha · 2020-12-04T15:03:28+00:00

I can attest to this too. I'm late twenties and it does still happen but nowhere near as much as it did from 11-16.

I was thinking this just the other day. Which is why I make an active effort to protect the girls around me from older men to be a supportive ear for any of the younger girls around me.

Honestly. I'm so glad I don't have to be a teenage girl again. It was such a hard space to wiggle around in and very difficult to keep myself safe.

Charming_Mix7930 · 2020-12-04T14:17:54+00:00

I have a hypothesis: besides pedophilia, this was a way to try to keep women in "their place". They knew thry wouldn't be able to deal with adults so they stop it.

Davina33 · 2020-12-04T15:24:52+00:00

Yep unfortunately this is true. I'm a petite woman the size of a 12 year old girl so you can imagine how I looked at 10, when my best friend and I were abducted by an old scrote! He tried to get us to do some nasty things and we weren't offered any support or counselling afterwards. I remember this one time because it was the only time I ever saw my mother tried to protect me, we were walking to school and I had my uniform on. I was 11 and these grown men in cars were staring and leaving on me. I was chronically starved so looked about 9 and my mother started shouting at them all, calling them perverts and telling them to fuck off. Later that night she said I was really pretty and needed to be careful. Men are absolutely vile and as a woman I find myself looking at their reactions to schoolgirls when I'm out. They make me sick.

Snoo71021 · 2020-12-04T14:25:01+00:00

[removed]

Novemberinthechair · 2020-12-04T16:24:50+00:00

Yes... I remember being told I had “nice pussy nice tits” as a (fully clothed) washboard flat 4th grader.

It was about asserting their dominance over me, not about my actual body.

button-up · 2020-12-04T13:25:21+00:00

This is actually true for me, it was a weird time.

redwineandsolitude · 2020-12-04T16:32:55+00:00

Children are more “approachable” than adult women. I pretty much glare at most men now and not afraid to give them the finger or cuss them out. Little 13 year-old-me didn’t know those moves yet

mywifesnameisdave · 2020-12-04T14:01:43+00:00

It's scary how true this is

HottPinkSlug · 2020-12-04T14:54:59+00:00

I remember being 12-13 and some man had said something to me that I remember being confused by. I knew it was something bad because of the look on his face so I kept it in my head. I was an adult by the time I realized what he meant.
It was so disgusting that I was too young to even understand what he said he wanted to do to me

cancerkidette · 2020-12-04T16:59:24+00:00

Because girls and teenage women seem VULNERABLE. And predators love to prey on vulnerability.

kittycakes22 · 2020-12-04T16:38:56+00:00

I was asked to join a threesome by a couple at a fair when I was 14 years old. I didn’t even know what it was.

LevelTurbulent · 2020-12-04T16:17:03+00:00

Yep, happened to me the first time when I was 10 years old. And I did not look older, I looked younger than I was. I dealt with men saying sexual things to me and coming onto me from that point on and I did not even begin to develop breasts until I was 16 years old.

So many men are pedophiles.

SoybeanApocalypse · 2020-12-04T22:03:04+00:00

The insane thing is that men who defend this and froth at the mouth about "FDS hags" literally think we're jealous of teenagers and want that attention back

Like the fact that they can miss the point so spectacularly is hilarious.They just don't want to get it, you could show them a 50-ft neon sign with "Women had bad experiences with older men or saw it happen to their friends when they were young and that is why they are protective of younger women. They don't want attention from pedophiles." and they would straight up just pretend to be blind.

saragc92 · 2020-12-04T14:37:56+00:00

This is so nasty. I almost barfed in my mouth, at how scary and true this is.

whysys · 2020-12-04T16:42:59+00:00

Yeh first catcall one of the few times I was walking alone age 11/12 and then builders/cars walking to and from secondary school. It's always when you're alone or with maybe one equally young female friend. It's a lot less now I came to this thought myself recently. So predatory.

gutsandgorey · 2020-12-04T17:48:36+00:00

And the scrotes lurking will misinterpret this as jealousy 🙄

InayahDaneen · 2020-12-04T17:06:47+00:00

I remember being ogled a lot at age 9 by creepy old middle aged men. I felt scared whenever I’d catch one staring at me with intensity.

disposable20201129 · 2020-12-04T18:17:55+00:00

Ugh. When I was 12, I attended a summer program at a nearby university, and during one lunch, what looked like a team of student athletes jogged past my cousin and me. They called out, "HOW OLD ARE YOU?" I wasn't going to respond but my cousin rounded up our ages to "THIRTEEN!" so I bellowed, "TWELVE." Then they hollered back as they , "YOU'RE TOO YOUNG FOR US" as they left. I was so steamed, I ranted on Xanga about how it was no duh that we were too young and how could college guys possibly be more immature than middle school boys.

OHIftw · 2020-12-04T20:36:21+00:00

YES. I remember my friends Dad used to hit on me when I was 16 and try to touch the small of my back and always comment on how beautiful I was... it was beyond creepy and my parents never took it seriously.

freebritney93x · 2020-12-04T17:10:32+00:00

so true it was the worst from age 12 to 17 when I basically looked like a giant baby

CountingDownTheDays5 · 2020-12-04T17:21:12+00:00

mine was 12

UnstrirringCoffee · 2020-12-04T18:31:54+00:00

Guys got creepy to me as shortly after I had turned 10. As a woman in my tenties I had already grown thick skin and men couldn't shock me anymore. Lo and behold, the creppy behavior got a lot less. Maturity makes it easier to tell people to fuck off. These cowards creep on young girls for that reason alone.

Striking_Play_1393 · 2020-12-04T20:29:29+00:00

This. Is. So. True. They prey on young girls because they don't have a strong voice yet. They see grown men as adults and being a teenager you are still a kids who is supposed to respect and obey adults. Young girls don't know how to be assertive and tell them off, grown men know it and take advantage of naivete and volnerability. I remember those times all so clearly. Nobody dares to say shit they say to teenage girls to actual grown women because we would tear them apart and they know it. Sad

fireforestfairy · 2020-12-04T14:07:27+00:00

I think it's more of a western thing. I'm from Asia and I had met guys catcalling me while traveling in Europe. This has never happened to me in Asia.

And some of these catcalling guys are racist. I'm from Asia and when I traveled in Europe as a teenager, I had guys catcalling me saying stuff like "konichiwa" and "I like sushi". I'm not even Japanese.

CityOfBirth · 2020-12-04T17:48:52+00:00

I recently started using irl pfps on facebook for the first time in years (I'm 21 now), & I expected to get bombarded with dick pics & harassment like I did when I was a teen (that was one of the big reasons I stopped using irl pics & deleted all my old ones).

I was surprised that I've been getting almost no random dick pics. Maybe in the last 5 years men have changed, & became much more polite & less predatory online?? Orr maybe I was the one that changed, & men were only interested in sending unwanted pornography to children. It could be either one, who knows!

honeybeeroll · 2020-12-04T19:49:23+00:00

Dude I think about this a lot!! Like from 12 to 17 or so how much I got harassed. Sometimes I think maybe I just wasn't used to it back then? Or maybe I was in more situations where I'd get catcalled. There was a housing boom in my neighborhood when I was a teenager, so perverted construction crews everywhere, and I remember like an entire fucking construction crew HOLLERING at me and my friend when we were like 14/15 and I just started screaming at them. Or when I was 16 some guy made a vulgar gesture at me from his car while I was crossing the st w/ my parents right there. Or another time, me and my 2 friends were waiting at the corner of our hs, in uniforms, and these fucking perverts drove aeoind the block like 3x to harass us. Fucking pedophiles.

I think I got used to being stared at, but for actively being catcalled at, that has rarely happened to me in the last several years. And I've lived in the same areas my whole life. I think it depends on where you live... The times where I have gotten catcalled as an adult, it's usually happened in certain neighborhoods that I visit but don't live in. I got harassed in my neighborhood months ago, and I was shocked as that was the first time I could recall being harassed here. I'd lived here for nearly a year at that point and had hung out a lot here as a teen.

Maybe they're like this because they can tell you're young and they think you won't fight back 🤢.

frustratedmarxistfem · 2020-12-05T07:13:15+00:00

I have a vivid memory of walking to the park at 13. I was meeting a boy so I put a skirt on to be cute, I had just gotten some body for the first time and felt like I was poppin, but I was also naive and childlike, I had grown up in a small town and moved to the city.

I got SO MANY catcalls from grown men who were older than my very young dad. Men pulling up and stopping to talk to me. Men following me.

Grown ups. Adults that I had always trusted to be authorities were saying sexual things to me. I was traumatized, I called my dad and begged him to come get me and cried all day. Men are ready for us to be women when we still want to be children.

2020-12-04T23:48:38+00:00

13-18 were my worst years, easily.

Thirty year old men would catcall, and boys in high school would mumble rape jokes under their breath.

I miss looking youthful, but the male "attention" (sexual harassment) ruined me during my formative years.

Send catcallers to the coalmines!

spicyspa · 2020-12-05T00:07:51+00:00

When I was about 10, we used to go to a beach near our town. The first time we went, there was this late middle-aged dude probably late 50s or early 60s with greasy slicked hair who would put his towel near ours. He could have sat somewhere else there was plenty of room, but we didn't think anything of it. And then every Saturday there he was so we would move to the other end of the beach. And then on the next Saturday he would be in our new area of the beach. Old pervert. Most of the cat calling I got was under the age of 15. Although I was cat called about a month ago. I'm in my 50s but I am under 5 ft tall and very small and depending on the close I'm wearing a look a lot younger than I am if you don't look closely at my face or see my gray hair. A lot of men who have chosen me online have chosen me specifically because I am tiny. While I'm not opposed to people having a preference, when a guy goes on and on about how tiny I am I usually don't continue talking to him. I think I'm a stand-in for a child.

TheOGJammies · 2020-12-05T08:57:27+00:00

That’s insane I never realized that until she pointed it out but she’s absolutely right. Wtffff. My teen years were a nightmare of men trying to get at me and it’s partially why I’m i empathetic biotch I am today. Males are depraved.

Responsible_Ad5085 · 2020-12-04T15:36:45+00:00

I got catcalled for the first time when I was 11. Hasn't happened to me in years.

mysecretdiary2 · 2020-12-04T16:20:17+00:00

This reminds me of when I was 13 and on holidays in Italy with my parents. There were those black men in the beach selling jewelry and bags to tourists and this one dude straight up walks up to my mum and me pointing to me saying: “let’s make cappuccino babies!”

Wtf.

veddie_babes123 · 2020-12-04T16:30:43+00:00

Yep! Construction workers whistling when I walked by or being honked at while walking 14-16 years. Gross

Stupidtiffany · 2020-12-04T18:26:30+00:00

Yep I was catcalled the most starting around 11, I wasn't developed at all, just a chubby little girl. I've had several men flash me their penis when I was out on a walk starting at 11 years old, another time at 13 and a few more times between 14 and 23. Another grown man gave me the eyebrows to the beat of a sexual song playing in the background when I was bowling with my family.

Olives_ona_pizza · 2020-12-04T18:55:37+00:00

I got cat called while walking with my mother, she said "I think that was meant for you dear"... I was 10

EurasianEmpress · 2020-12-04T20:46:57+00:00

I have almost never been catcalled before and I used to think it was because of a combination of being very small and dressing modestly, but seeing so many women ITT who were also petite and looked younger than they were and STILL got regularly harassed by grown men showed me I was wrong. I was fetishized a lot growing up but I guess catcalling from men was sth I never had to worry about.

aquarieux · 2020-12-04T23:03:34+00:00

My sister has this story of being 12 or 13 and going for a walk to the park. She's walking along and this group of men in a car start following her and start shouting obscene, nasty, and hurtful things to her as she's just walking, just existing in public. She was so traumatized by it that she never wanted to walk alone after that, and it's something she still talks about (some 10+ yrs later) as something that severely impacted her confidence and development. Men who catcall are psychotic, dangerous creatures. There are zero excuses for that behavior.

donttakemelightly · 2020-12-04T23:30:57+00:00

I practically never get cat called anymore (25) but literally alwaaaays got cat called from 15-17. I've never thought about this until now. Oh my god.

your_last_braincell · 2020-12-04T23:33:20+00:00

Reading all these comments makes me sad and disgusted, how many (old) men make pathetic attempts to make little girls helpless. I was a fat kid, so I guess I was safe(?) at least I was fat, happy and safe. So that’s what counts. Only times I got cat called was a few weeks ago, when I wore high heels again and was at the bus stop. Other time when I was cycling home, a old guy whistled at me and I turned angry to him. And one time I was waiting for the bus on a bright summer day, a bunch of boys in their car asked me to step inside. (I was somewhere 15-17 years old.) I declined 😬✋🏾 I didn’t wanna be gangr4ped or found in a ditch.

spicyspa · 2020-12-05T00:11:05+00:00

I had gone to the mall with my daughter who was about eight at the time. Stupid me I had gone to get the food and I turned around and I saw my daughter looking at me mortified. An old man had sat down at the table with her. She was just frozen. I ran over to her and grabbed her. I never let that happen again.

esterfanie · 2020-12-05T05:42:45+00:00

That is so true, happened to me too and I believe surely all the other girls in the world. Once when I was 14-15 I confronted a degenerate middle aged man who was making sexual coments about me (I was eating an ice pop minding my own business ffs) and the pig thought that was the most hilarious thing ever.

And then my dad had the nerve to say that "cat calling it's not a big deal. How else are men going to court women and find love?? Of course this is just about respectful compliments, a gentleman would never dare say anything crass to a lady so don't worry!"

Not all men, huh...

sukiepoekie · 2020-12-04T14:45:33+00:00

As a 14 year old I already had cup d boobs and a curvy body. I had long beautiful curly hair, and I looked a lot older then I was. It wasn't fun. I felt really unsafe in public spaces because men kept reminding me that my body was something that didn't belong entirely to myself. It made me very cold and I didn't trust men. To this day I don't feel safe outside

Guizzaboi · 2020-12-04T18:05:32+00:00

Primary school, wearing school uniform. Catcalled. Disgusting men.

2020-12-04T16:54:36+00:00

I wonder if this is because I don't do nearly as much walking around.

NretendPame0002 · 2020-12-04T15:53:11+00:00

I never thought about this but it's soo true omg

Title	14-16 was when I got catcalled the most
Author	cicerii
Upvotes	764
Comments	86
Date	December 4, 2020 1:19 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/k6kqkg/1416_was_when_i_got_catcalled_the_most/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/14-16-was-when-i-got-catcalled-the-most.732354 https://theredarchive.com/post/732354

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