Picture this: you’re walking down the street alone on a Friday night. The streets are busy enough that you don’t feel your normal level of terror at being out after dark as a woman, but naturally you’re doing your usual male threat awareness checks as you go. Suddenly, a man with a megaphone shouts at you from across the street: ‘Damn girl! You look like you return your shopping cart.’
What is your reaction? Genuine laughter? Awkward giggling? Or do you keep walking, eyes straight ahead, pretending you can’t hear anything with the earphones in, that you actually have on mute for safety purposes.
I put this scenario to you for one reason: it’s currently the format of a TikTok trend in which a comedian from Indiana engages what he calls ‘polite catcalling’. The intention, it appears, is to flip the script on your typical sexually aggressive catcalling by shouting genuine, or at least funny, compliments at people in the street.
That being said, not everyone is finding them actually funny. While some love the concept, noting that they’d think differently of catcalling if it wasn’t so inherently intimidating, others are flat out against men shouting at women they don’t know in the street – especially since the catcalls are still flirty in nature, and some absolutely toe the line between light-hearted compliments and sexually suggestive.
Should we ever be popularising a trend where men think it’s acceptable to catcall, whether they perceive them to be genuine, polite catcalls or not? After all, many of the men who engage in catcalling as we currently know it would probably argue that they’re genuinely complimenting women themselves.
The TikToker noted for popularising ‘polite catcalling’ is Benedict Polizzi, known for his appearance on American reality dating show FBoy Island where three women try to identify 24 men as either womanizers (dubbed ‘f*ckboys’) or those seeking serious relationships (dubbed ‘nice guys’). Polizzi competed on the show as, you guessed it, a ‘nice guy’.
His polite catcalling videos are so popular, amassing millions of likes for every video, that he’s now printing his most popular catcalls onto merchandise – one hoodie reads ‘Damn girl… you look like you can parallel park real good’, retailing at $40 (£33).
Now, it seems clear that Polizzi has genuine intentions to spread joy with his polite catcalling videos, but as is the case with the internet it’s caused debate online about whether or not the general message of the trend is actually harmful.
'There is no world in which I want to be yelled at by men on the street – even walking past them get my heckles up, poised for the shot of adrenaline that will come if they say anything to me,' says Marianna, 30 from Harrow. 'It’s a wholly unpleasant experience and really what they actually say to me has no bearings on the feeling of panic and vulnerability the experience causes.
'These men are clearly jumping on the current conversation about sexual harassment and trying to give it a funny or positive spin, in the name of social media "likes", and doesn’t show the women recipients of this "polite catcalling" who didn’t react with laughs and smiles. It completely minimises the experience of street harassment for women, and just because a man is in a silly hat with a megaphone it doesn’t suddenly make the culture of harassment any less sinister.'
Others find it refreshing. ‘I think in certain contexts the trend is harmless,’ says Lily, 27 from Manchester. ‘I don’t think men should ever be shouting anything at women walking alone at night, whether they think it’s funny or not, you just don’t know if that’s going to be triggering for her or make her feel uncomfortable since we deal with a constant slew of harassment daily.
'That being said, if you’re in a busy area and making polite and non-sexual jokes aimed at women in a big group, I’m sure most people would find it quite light-hearted and funny. But you also need to be prepared for someone to turn round and tell you to f*ck off regardless, as is their right if you’re interrupting their night.’
What do you think, can polite catcalling ever actually be a thing?