Is wolf-whistling a sex crime?

It's a bit witchy isn't it, cackling?

Do men cackle when they watch female strippers?

Cackling women?

I think lascivious behaviour is unpleasant in both men and women. Personally I have never wanted to go and see a male stripper, I can't think of anything worse than an evening gathered together with a load of cackling women calling, I find lewdness unpleasant in both men and women. I wouldn't be interested in that sort of an evening, I'd rather stay at home with a good book, perhaps that's just me. That's not to say I don't appreciate looking at a handsome man

Where do you draw the line? I remember walking along once when a man came past on a bicycle and said 'do you want to play with my balls?'.

Normal behaviour? Sexist behaviour? A sign he found me attractive?

I bet there aren't many women who cycle past a man saying, do you want to play with my ......?

Bad manners? Not a crime as harassment is a crime, but not the action of a civilised man. I have a feeling that if he repeated this day in, day out, it would be considered a crime.

I don't know about arse - my husband reckons that when many women see an attractive man their eyes go straight to his crotch.
He thinks for both sexes it's a primitive way of assessing who will make a healthy parent for their children.

Vile sexist behaviour, not sure it would constitute a crime. What about women shouting to a man "I like your arse?" Lets not forget a crowd of women after a few drinks, on say a hen night, don't always behave with decorum. Although I think it would be fair to say that men can walk to work without having to experience verbal hassle from the opposite sex.

Apologies for getting back to the original subject.

If a man shouted, across the road, to a woman, "I like your tits", would that be a sex crime?

There is an awful lot of misunderstanding about the role of sex and sexual differences in most people's minds in general, not just on here. No wonder they say that men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

I had to look up the post that Soontobe referred to a couple posts up, but I will reiterate it. OF COURSE men like to see pretty girls and OF COURSE women like to see handsome men. (and please don't reply that I am implying that either of them only choose goodlookers for partners. I am talking of the first sighting)

It is how they proceed after they have noticed them, and registered that this is someone they would like to know better, that separates them into sheep and goats. We have all met some goats, and we don't want them after our daughters (or our sons) but most of us also acknowledge that even the most faithful and principled of our partners still has the hormones that respond, can still "enjoy the scenery".

If you think about it, without those hormones they would not be responding to us!

Intolerance in itself is not always bad though. Things that we put up with forty or fifty years ago (racism, sexism, domestic violence, child abuse etc.) are no longer tolerated.

In that respect I approve of intolerance.

It is ridiculous petallus but there seems to be an awful lot of intolerance about! That is not a personal comment but a very general one!

No, not judging.
But context helps in everything?
I am probably not expressing myself very well.

Elegran post friday 22.32pm expresses it much better than I can.

kittylester I think women of our generation have, very generally speaking, different attitudes to certain male behaviour than women of a younger generation. This is probably because of the times we grew up in. Male groping, sexism, jokes about mothers-in-law and the good old double standard regarding sexual behaviour were all the norm forty or fifty years ago.

Anyway, you are over-simplifying. Objecting to some aspects of male behaviour is not the same thing as saying all men are bad (that would be ridiculous).

G2 - there is 'straightforward' and 'rude and dismissive of anyone else's opinion/beliefs' -
I am sure most of use know where to draw the line

to get back to the original OP - wolf whistling is not a sex crime, confrontation and aggressive behaviour is.

Who is making the rules on how tolerant we should be petallus? Surely we are as tolerant as we feel! Our feelings are probably dictated by our experiences and I count myself lucky not to have experiences which make me think all men are bad!

In retrospect, I was uncomfortable with the recent pics of the women in bikinis, especially the one who looked as though she had a bit of binding tape going up her whatsit. I didn't express my disquiet though, I probably even made a jokey remark.

We recently had a thread about the difference in attitude to men between gransnet and mumsnet. I wonder if our generation of women are sometimes more tolerant than we should be of untoward male behaviour. Times change!

I only came across pompa on this thread. However, I am not sure that we should be judging people from different threads because it isn't really relevant.

People read posts from their own perspective- it can be quite different from the intention of the poster.

I have realised that we think that everyone knows pompa and his posts. But even a poster who posts as often as he does, is not regualarly read by all posters.
A lot of posters read him within that context, but not all posters "know" him well enough for that.

You clearly didn't read what I wrote about that wondering, GT. It was not a criticism.There was no blame implied or even thought of. I just wondered. I'm at a loss to understand what you find revolting about it when people who work with abuse victims wonder the same thing and do research into the issue to find out, in order to be better able to help those abused. It is not about blaming the victim at all. I think you have completely misunderstood. I also think you misunderstood pompa's remarks but that is your prerogative.

Yes, I have as much self-respect in real life as I do on here.

Part of the problem is that with the written word you don't get the tone and the body language and so it is very easy to misinterpret things.
I have a problem with very literal people because I suddenly become aware of how much I say 'tongue in cheek' and am non plussed when they take it seriously.

Thatbags - your last sentence was beyond pathetic. And the point I was making about yours ( and others) comments on Poppy was about the remarks many of you made as to why she didn't do anything sooner. I think what I found revolting ( to coin a phrase) was a tendency to criticise her rather than look for more sympathetic explanations. And as for my posts being rude -I'm at the receiving end of plenty of those - maybe in some cases I'm just a bit more straightforward than others. Are you as up yourself in RL as you appear to be so often on here?

what is a bodyline testmatch? I have googled and dont understand.

I like djs idea of asking if a post is a personal attack. Since it now appears to have got to complicated for most posters to know what is in the rules and what isnt.