I was on Radio Derby this morning (gosh, the glamour) which taught me a few things. First, where Derby was. Well, only vaguely: when I asked, I was told it was “up a bit” which will do. Secondly, the newsworthiness of something that constitutes “a reversal of traditional gender roles”, namely, the fact that women at a college have been told to stop wolf-whistling at builders. If a reversal of traditional gender roles is all it takes to get into the news these days, then I’d best alert the Telegraph to the fact that I spent a few hours putting together an Ikea flatpack a few days ago, whilst the boyfriend did the dishes. What this is really about, is a sense of male entitlement to wolf-whistling, a perceived “right” to comment on women as they walkabout.
I’m, unsurprisingly, not keen on wolf-whistling. Whilst on the radio I started wondering where the phrase actually came from. What a surprise- it sprang from the 50s (and earlier) term for what the OED describes as “A sexually aggressive male; a would-be seducer of women;” so, as I mentioned on radio, the problem with wolf-whistling isn’t just that it is a symbol of men’s continuing insistence on a “right” to treat women as objects, but that the connotations of violence and aggression are implicit in the act.
I can’t count the number of times that upon rolling my eyes at a whistle or shout of “nice tits”, I’m confronted with the same bloke telling me to “f-ing lighten up” and being told I’m a “stupid cow”. I was on a train once, the last train from Birmingham, and was the only woman on the entire train which turned out to be full of drunk football fans. One bloke kept whistling at me, throughout the journey, then started shouting at me because I was ignoring him. I asked him to get out of my personal space, at which point he threatened to kick my head in, and tried to follow me home, at which point the transport police were called.
This situation isn’t unusual, and whilst a wolf-whistle or cat-call in the daylight is intimidating, it’s nothing compared to how it feels at night, when you’re walking around in a culture that constantly reminds and exaggerates the risks to women who dare venture out after dark. The problem with wolf-whistles is that they are a tool of intimidation: they are creepy, designed to make you feel inordinate and “show you who’’s boss”, so let’s call it what it is: harrassment.
