Brickbat: Hey, Baby!

Officials in Utrecht, Netherlands, plan to combat women being catcalled and harassed on city streets by catcalling men on city streets. The plan calls for a woman on a video screen to catcall men walking around the city center. City employees will then approach the men and ask them how they felt. The goal, officials said, is to show the men how uncomfortable being catcalled can make women feel.

Comments

[Roberta]

This will backfire when it feels like fun to be catcalled by a big video, which it obviously would.

[SQRLSY One]

Yes, this!

Sociobiologists (starting with Robert Trivers in this case) figured this out "scientifically" some time ago.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/five-blockbuster-evolutionary-insights-and-one-wild-life-on-robert-trivers/

"Parental investment" is what it is all about! Women can make up to 20 or so babies in a lifetime. Men can make thousands! Eggs: Few. Sperm: Many! Putting ethics to the side, men want sex, and lots of it! Women need to pick carefully, when mate-choosing, to pick a man that will help raise the children (a good father). Trivers's thought experiment for his students: Pick some men and women of average attractiveness, and send them to a bar, to brazenly preposition the opposite sex. Who scores first? ... "That which is more rare, is more valuable."

[Ragnarredbeard]

Any woman of average attractiveness, bar or not, can get laid at any time she chooses. The average attractiveness guy has to work a lot harder to get laid.

[SQRLSY One]

Ragnarredbeard scores 100% on the Robert Trivers quiz!!!

[SQRLSY One]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_investment#Mating_orientations ... From there... Women are more likely to have higher long-term mating orientations, and men are more likely to have higher short-term mating orientations.[68]

[mad.casual]

Catcalled by a woman in a video in the Middle Of The Road? Yes please!

[Jimbo BTR]

This will backfire because, men react differently to women considering them attractive compared to the reverse situation. It wouldn't work even if they used a couple of really fat slags to do the catcalling; men just don't react the way women do.

[Trifrozion]

I don't think there are any fat slags in The Netherlands.

[MatthewSlyfield]

We can lone them Rosie O'Donnell.

[Ragnarredbeard]

That's mean. What did the Netherlanders do to you?

[Jimbo BTR]

I'm sure there are plenty of British and American tourists that would fit the bill.

[Moonrocks]

Officials in Utrecht, Netherlands, plan to combat women being catcalled and harassed on city streets by catcalling men on city streets.

Do those officials work for the local tourism board?

[Number 2]

It was a good idea, with the best of intentions. What could possibly go wrong?

[rbike]

Yes, I have been a "victim" of some catcalls in the past. Strange I did not have any issues with it. I actually may have liked it. Who could know?

[Fist of Etiquette]

City employees will then approach the men and ask them how they felt.

Horny.

[mad.casual]

Why don't we go back to my place and I'll show you?

Seriously, I'm probably more dense to being hit on than your average guy and even I can read those signals.

[TJJ2000]

Female Empowerment; It's all about CONTROL over everyone else.....

Humorously women spend hours every morning and have created a whole fake-face huge industry so some HOT guy will catcall them. If only they could use CONTROL to stop those UGLIES from catcalling.

[R Mac]

Yep. It’s not about being catcalled. It’s about who’s doing it.

[sarcasmic]

If she likes him then it's a compliment that might get him laid, and if she doesn't it's criminal harassment that might land him in jail.

[Jerry B.]

"We're insulting you for your own good".

[Don't look at me!]

Related: Two wrongs make a right.

[Yatusabes]

This idea will lead to other “grievances” with regard to claims of profiling, misgendering, use of improper pronouns, LGBTQIA_eieio alphabet people, Feminazis, and more. Good theater, tho’

EZRA MILLER THREATENS COPS WITH HATE CRIME
For Getting Pronouns Wrong

https://www.tmz.com/2022/05/16/ezra-miller-hate-crime-pronouns-hawaii-arrest/

[Boomer]

A plan conceived and implemented completely unencumbered by the thought process...

[Cal Cetín]

Big Brother is watching you...and he thinks you're sexy.

[John F. Carr]

Play some Rod Stewart on the screens. If you want my body and you think I'm sexy come on sugar tell me so...

[mad.casual]

Yeah, when someone says "women catcalling on video", my mind goes to Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders (linked above), not Rod Stewart, NTTAWWT.

[Quicktown Brix]

This will backfire because men have not yet been trained to fix themselves up to be as physically attractive as possible, but be offended by being objectified if someone notices.

[D-Pizzle]

See above. It all depends on who's doing the noticing.

[Quicktown Brix]

Correction accepted

[Agammamon]

It's going to be really annoying for the workers when, after being catcalled by the screen and then approached, these men try to get the pollster's phone number.

[Brandybuck]

My guess is they'll just catcall those pollsters.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Male foot traffic is about to increase significantly in the city center.

[Brandybuck]

Ah, the Netherlands. So progressive and enlightened.

Okay, as a male I got catcalled once. It was uncomfortable. We all know why women don't like it, I didn't like it either. But I would not have catcalled back over a loudspeaker to get revenge.

But that this is a major problem in the Netherlands is just plain weird.

And it's going to backfire on them. Men who catcall don't give a shit. You can't social shame them with a video screen. They'll just up their ante.

[Agammamon]

Wussy.

[Longtobefree]

So after this bit of performance art, the catcalling guys will have the excuse, but the government does it on screen!

[Longtobefree]

Lived experience:
I once worked a contract where the nearest lunch place was just past a construction site. The women I worked with weren't happy with the comments shouted by the guys on the scaffolds. So the next day, after the catcalls, I shouted back "Sorry guys, I'm straight". End of catcalls.

[USA_Jew]

A temp agency once sent my to a construction site where the other male workers whistled at me. I am a proud bisexual man, so I whistled back. I even gave the supervisor the eye. The next day, the supervisor brought in a boom box that he played Spanish love songs on and made a point of helping me lift things. I had to let him down easy. My coworkers never whistled at me again.

[Dillinger]

lol I would dig the attention.

[Cal Cetín]

I wonder who's doing this catcalling of women?

"Youths"?

[Foo_dd]

dumbest idea i think i have ever heard.....

i think this goes to show that often those most convinced something is a problem have absolutely no clue how anything actually works. there is a reason there are men who cat-call women, and there is a reason it is rare for women to do the same back. this little experiment starts with a fundamental failure to grasp what it is they are studying. i'm sure they will be able to craft the poll question appropriately to get the desired result. ("that was pretty odd," will get lumped in with negative "feelings" and they will declare that it just awful to do to a person.)

[mad.casual]

Similar, but OT: Welcome to the Sports Bra: First-of-a-kind bar features only women's sports

“Ultimately, my mission is to expose as many people as possible to women’s sports, give people access,” Nguyen, 42, told NBC News.

I'd agree that Portland is probably the place to try this but pretty much everything else that comes out of your mouth, Nguyen, convinces me you don't know how sports, bars, or sports bars... or men... or women work and your endeavor is doomed to fail. You're going to get about, maybe, 2 yrs. of white Portland Karens virtue signalling to each other until everybody has everybody else's virtues pretty well pegged and they realize there are no heathen men around to lord their virtues over and then, either you're going to turn on the Super Bowl or World Series (because even completely unrelated businesses aren't stupid enough to even schedule meetings during the Super Bowl or World Series games) to get some men to shame, your patronage is going to crater, or both.

[cgr2727]

ESPN, NBC, and all the interwebs have been exposing as many people as possible to women's sports for years now. And still no one watches, not because they're sexist, but because they're just not that good. Sure it's fun watching (for a few minutes) the women's national basketball team dunk on Slovakia or Dumbfuckistan, but given the choice of watching Brady lead Gronkowski into a reception that nearly cracks someone's skull, or watching women's soccer, I know what I'm gonna pick. (Ok, maybe a bad example. Given a choice of having needles pushed into my eyeballs and watching any kind of soccer, I know what I'm gonna pick.)

[mad.casual]

not because they're sexist, but because they're just not that good

I think this is the tip of the iceberg and it's what I meant by "don't understand sports, bars, or sports bars... or men... or women". Men don't participate in sports to demonstrate their dominance over women. If they did, women's participation alongside men would be (more) compulsory. The fact that men are excluded from women's sports is even more indicative of the vacuousness of the (reverse) presumption. Even at that, sports bars don't air the sport by gender, they air by whatever puts asses on barstools. Walk into any sports bar on any Saturday or Sunday afternoon and, as long as there's not a men's golf or pro-baseball game (which would pulls more asses onto barstools) on and they'll gladly turn off the poker or bags tournament and turn college softball or women's volleyball. And, in that vein, want to create a place that's unofficially women-only that women enjoy intrinsically and men are self-selected from and/or shamed/relegated to second-class status, but not attacked, when they show up? Open a wine bar that airs The View, Real Housewives, Below Deck, The Kardashians, Selling Sunset, and whichever vote-by-rose Dating Game/Marriage show is currently most popular. I'm a pretty socially awkward dude and even I understand how this works.

[bboroshaff]

It's so hard to tell the difference between news and satire these days.

[Ragnarredbeard]

These people do not understand the fundamental differences between men and women. Men will love the catcalls, and will probably attempt to encourage more.

[D-Pizzle]

I hope somebody chronicles this endeavor on video.

[John F. Carr]

South Park had the "tunnel of prejudice" which elicited the reaction "this is awesome!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW-MXJUuEgE