When A Man Whistle’s At Me

I say that as if it is a regular occurrence. The truth of the matter is it has been quite a few decades since a man has whistled at me. It happens gradually doesn’t it. We age. Men slowly stop looking. My brother in laws wife once said women dress for men when we are young but dress for women as we age. I partly agree. I truly dressed for men when I was young. And frankly when I am not feeling that great about myself nowadays, I do a try a bit harder before I go out. And even in my sixties, I get a warm fuzzy if a man notices me. It doesn’t matter how old I get, I still like to think I can attract a man. Here’s the thing though, in my mind I am still who I was as a young girl. But I am wrong. I may be a little softer and rounder, my hair is graying, I am getting some serious wrinkles in my face and things hurt more. The biggest difference is my mind. I feel more empowered now than I ever did before. That’s saying a lot because I was always fairly sure of myself. 

Instagram is in so many ways such a wonderful thing. I follow people who are like minded and I learn quite a bit. The dark side is, well, just that. Angry, mean people who only seek to hurt. I can hold my own in so many ways but recently I had an experience which left me completely flabbergasted. I ended up blocking the original poster. It was a post where a woman sang a little song while holding her young son on her hip. Basically a rebuttal against a prior post about hating men who whistle at women. This singing mom was going to teach her son to be a better man so his sister could one day feel safe. Where his sister wouldn’t have to fear walking alone at night. Or have to have her keys ready for defence. Just in case. Now in some ways I understand her fears for her daughter. I have two daughters. But I also fear for my son in many ways. He was bullied so much as a young child by girls. All we ever heard from the school was that they liked him. It was cute. It was funny. It was normal for girls to act that way. It was a joke. I made it clear to the principal that he had been given permission to fight back anytime, anyone, ever touched him physically. It happened eventually and he handled it. That same girl left sexually explicit messages on our answering machine when she was fourteen. We had a kids line and she didn’t realize she had left the message on our phone. The parents were contacted and their argument was that they couldn’t control her. It wasn’t that bad, they told us. We then threatened to notify the police and the phone company. It then stopped but she had terrorized my son for years even when he went to a different junior high school. 

So, I don’t wish to make this about boys versus girls. Bullies are bullies. What bothered me most about the instagram post was the division. The post triggered a torrential downpour of man hate. We hear so much these days about misogyny. But did you know there is a word for hating men. It is misandry. Don’t hear a lot about that now do we? So, in my deluded effort to be lighthearted and funny, I posted a comment that said I actually wouldn’t mind if someone whistled at me. As noted above, that’s not something that happens at my age. I certainly did not expect what happened next. The responses to my comment were not just angry and mean. One woman said she was glad I hadn’t been raped yet. YET! Another woman said she hoped I did get raped so I wouldn’t say such stupid things. Let me just say this, in an attempt to save time, every single comment was made by a woman. There was a litany of comments regarding my apparent low self esteem and my need for male attention in order to feel better about myself. It deteriorated into a darker side, me being so pathetic that a man would never want me. I did respond to that by saying I had been married for many years but I was now a widow, so somebody wanted me. The hammer fell when the original “mean girl” replied that he probably wanted to die. To get away from me. Now I am a pretty sane and confident person. As a result, I just did what any like minded person would do. I reported the incident and promptly blocked the original poster. The emotions that I felt weren’t poor me, or sad, or angry. I was stunned. When I looked at the profiles of these people most were young women and many showed pictures of their kids. Some were promoting home business. There were some wanna be influencers. The original hater backed off and deleted comments after I explained to her that she had been reported. I also mentioned that the internet is forever. You can delete a comment but it is there in perpetuity. Well maybe not that long but these social media platforms do employ some pretty smart geek types. If you alert them to something… they will find it. Beware people. Nothing is anonymous. It kind of reminds me of the guy who advertises his business on a vehicle with his phone number and then drives like a dick. I can read. I don’t have to put it on social media but I can bad mouth your company to friends. Tell them how you threw something at my car in your road rage when it was apparent you didn’t understand a zipper merge. Hypothetically speaking of course. Anyways, there has to be a better way to fight misogyny.

Switching to science, I would just like to offer my two cents. A simple illustration from elementary school might help me point out some flaws, or perhaps help people understand this war on men. Or women. Or anyone. A simple pendulum. Grade four. Miss Bud. Science teacher extraordinaire. Maybe not. I don’t remember much else. But I do remember the fascination of the pendulum. Back and forth and back again. The smooth rhythmic motion which eventually slowed and stopped and the weight hung there, motionless. As in life, the pendulum will finally return to the start. The point where nothing disturbs it. It just hangs there. People also want life to stay the same. There is a comfort in so many ways. The pendulum only starts its back and forth motion when it is helped by an outside force. But why does it stop? Partly because of gravity. It pulls the pendulum down and also exerts pressure to keep it going in the back and forth manner. Remember spirograph? We created incredible pictures with multi colour pens and varying circles. But do you remember the swinging spirograph? It was, in effect a pendulum. And those pictures were pure magic. Because we didn’t just set the pen into a boring back and forth motion. No, we started the pendulum out onto a more circular motion of sorts. The magic that followed on the paper was purely due to gravity and its ability to pull the pendulum back in line. But what else was going on there? Every swing back and forth, the pendulum met the friction in the air which placed an opposing force on the pendulum. It started to slow down with each swing. At the end, our picture stopped with a little dot as both forces cause the pen to stop moving. Beautiful

So now you are wondering what any of this has to do with me liking cat callers. Life is like a pendulum. When someone doesn’t like the status quo, they try and initiate change. A movement forms. People jump on the band wagon. And the pendulum swings out as far as possible before it meets a resistance. Others who don’t agree. They stand in the way of the shifting thought process. The push back gets stronger and the pendulums starts to swing back. Then other people join the movement. They don’t just drop the pendulum. They push it so that the force is even greater than the initial movement. If you release a pendulum from the tip of your nose and allow it to move freely, when it returns it will not come close to your nose. But if someone at the opposite end of the pendulums arc pushes the pendulum back, you’d better move. The extra momentum will have that thing hitting you right between the eyes.

Now I have never joined my name to the feminist movement. I once heard someone say it was a good idea but poorly executed. Everybody trying to make it better. Stronger. A force to be reckoned with. Through the years there has been push back. And then there was a greater response from the initial followers of the ideals put forth. And the pendulum swung but the arc was no longer creating a beautiful picture like the spirograph. Because at each turn in this decades long fight, the opposing forces are now flinging the pendulum with greater force than need be. The pen is bouncing across the paper but lifting and dropping in an unruly manner. The beauty is gone and all that is left is an ugly mass of incompete lines in so many colours. There is an angry slashing across the paper just like the anger from both sides of this argument. No one is approaching the problem with love and kindness. Because everyone, on both sides, feels attacked.

Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of ugly things that happen in this world, and yes, it does appear in many ways that women have been shafted. Over and over again. So while I say I am not a feminist, that does not mean I don’t care. Or that I don’t see the issues. But my belief system is one of inclusion. For all. Human rights. Not special interest groups. And frankly if you want to see a better world, your actions speak louder than words. Silence is sometimes your best weapon. I know there are people out there whom will never believe in equality for all. Bible thumping christians who hate other religions. Why? The Jesus I learned about in Sunday School hung out with the so called undesirables. I think love all was his battle cry. And the race thing. If you’re white you have no idea. None. Zero. Men don’t get women and vice versa. The whole sexual revolution has so many up in arms. You can’t know what you don’t now. You can try and understand the other side but you can never really know. So when I talk about silence, I’m saying if someone of a different religion tries to tell you about it, listen. Maybe you’ll learn something. If you try to tell someone about yours, and they argue. Just be silent. If you’re white and a person of colour tries to explain their life and the things they experience. Listen. They aren’t blaming you personally. They are educating you. Making you aware. If you are a person of colour and your try to educate others, if they argue or push back, be silent. Your energy is best spent elsewhere. As for the divide between men and women, a little less talking and a little more listening can go a long way. On both sides. And if someone has the incredible courage to share with the world who they are inside, as opposed to what you see on the outside, let them. And if you can’t, please don’t hurt them. They are new to this just as you are. They aren’t trying to change you. Rather they are asking you to accept them.

There will always be assholes in the world. It just is. I think about the young angry women who were so mean to me that day on Instagram. Their anger and hate towards not just men, but me as well. Just because I don’t hate those same men. I know in their hearts they believe they are right. But honestly their actions show a very horrible side. I think about that woman with her son in her arms. How she was going to raise him right. To be a protector of women. For his sister. But who is going to protect her son? Against the angry women. He will see her actions. Hear her words. He will know the hate she feels towards someone like him. Her actions aren’t just on Instagram. These women will tell these stories from Instagram. Their sons and their daughters will both hear the words. But they will not hear the same message.

And so I guess what I think I’ve learned through that encounter is this. I still want men to whistle. I do want to be admired and found attractive both physically and mentally. I can’t help but feel a flutter when I get all decked out and I catch the eye of a man. “Cause in my mind I’ve still got it even if the mirror doesn’t agree much these days. I don’t want to hate the opposite sex. I love one of them very much. But the number one takeaway from that entire experience is this! I still got it. Men are just too afraid to whistle. That’s my story. I’ll go to my grave believing that. History can teach us so much. The 1960’s was a decade of rebellion against “the man”. A catch phrase for all that was wrong in the world. Sometimes if we really do some soul searching, we will learn that the enemy isn’t some magical made up group out there. Like “the man”. Often we can find it inside ourselves if we just are honest. Stop the blame game. Do better.