Throughout my teenage years, my 20s, 30s, and, yes, even in my 40s and 50s (although not as often!), I’ve received wolf-whistles as I walked through the streets, going about my day, minding my own business.
I’ve also experienced men moving seats and sitting next to me, uninvited, on a train, or bus, and deliberately rubbing against me on a crowded Tube carriage.
And then comes the interrogations regarding status. Little, incisive, questions, pretending to be interested, but really trying to establish if I’m single, or not.
I’m not showing off. As a teenager I found it excruciating being verbally spotlighted by loud-mouthed, raucous blokes – nearly always scaffolders, it has to be said – as I walked along local roads. Apologies if you’re a polite, gentleman scaffolder, but I haven’t come across one of you in all my dealings with them.
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Yet, despite the humiliating spotlighting and the feeling you’re being turned into some sort of street whore in other people’s eyes, I see the almost well-meant humour in their actions. It’s a game of laughs for them. It’s unbearable and demeaning, though, for the woman/girl in their sights, who’s been singled out for verbal sexual harassment and gawped at by onlookers as though she’s the problem.
I’m not sure, though, if Home Secretary Priti Patel’s rumoured plan to make wolf-whistling a criminal offence isn’t a bit of a step too far.
I, like many other women, would welcome an end to it, but I’m not sure if some poor bloke who doesn’t know any different should be criminalised for what he sees as ’aving a larf with his workmates, or “appreciating” a good-looking woman. It’s a very fine line. And the line needs careful drawing, which is why I fear the Home Secretary’s heavy, school-teacherly touch may not be the best way to deal with it.
This stuff should begin in school, where girls and boys are generally educated together and form non-sexual bonds. I recall some of my best friends at secondary school were boys – platonic relationships based on humour and various sports.
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In fact, my first pro-football experience was a Southampton game at The Dell, with my friend Derek, who was yanked out of the stand as he celebrated a goal. He wasn’t doing anything different to anyone else but he was black, and in the unreconstructed 1970s that was still an issue for ignorant people.
So wolf-whistling, outlawed? We’ve come a long way, but I don’t think it’s a criminal offence. It’s demeaning, or it’s a bit of a thrill, depending on your point of view.
What we can’t do is start criminalising people for non-aggressive actions. Even though those actions can be humiliating.
