Memo From the Thought Police

Posted on | August 31, 2014 | 106 Comments

Years ago, an episode of Seinfeld showed a stand-up sequence in which Jerry Seinfeld discussed catcalling, including one common variation seen in New York City, the “car honk.” A man in a car is sitting at a red light, a good-looking woman crosses the street in the crosswalk ahead of him, and the guy starts honking his horn — “beep!” “beep!” “beep!” — to get the woman’s attention or, at least, to signal his appreciation of her beauty. Obviously, as a mating strategy, this is a hopeless failure. No woman has ever responded to the car honk (or the wolf whistle or any other form of what feminists call “street harassment”) by approaching the harasser and saying, “Hi, you’re very attractive, let me give you my phone number so we can have lunch sometime.” No man with half a brain could imagine that such tactics “work” in terms of attracting females, so why does this atavistic behavior persist?

Jerry Seinfeld concluded his stand-up riff with the punch-line: “These are the best ideas we’ve come up with.”

That line got a huge laugh, because it’s so true: When it comes to figuring out how to get women, guys are generally clueless. Why do you think the “Pick-Up Artist” phenomenon turned into such a cult thing? Because there is a vast potential market of clueless guys, and if some guy claims to have a clue — if he can convince clueless guys that his methods of scoring with women actually work — he’ll become a millionaire. And, as everybody knows, chicks dig millionaires.

Anyway, Molly Powell wrote a column at National Review to say that, within limits, the wolf-whistle/”hey baby” reaction can be regarded as flattering. Left-wingers flipped out at Powell’s contradiction of the Official Feminist Line, and Jazz Shaw writes at Hot Air:

While it’s apparently absolutely verboten to say such things out loud today, there is a difference — particularly for women — between dressing to look good and dressing to look hot. Seriously … does any woman go to the beach wearing a tiny bikini top and a thong because it’s just so comfortable to swim in? Nonsense. You do it because you think you look good and you want people to see that. If you didn’t, there are a wide variety of attractive one piece suits to choose from.
Men like looking at attractive women, and the more they work on dressing up the display, the more likely we are to notice. That’s been true across the history of man. There are clearly lines of decorum which most of us wish would not be crossed, but having the thought police try to turn every pair of males eyes following a shapely pair of legs into a micro-agresssion, rape society assault turns the entire discussion into a parody.

(Hat-tip: Mememorandum.) The issue here, of course, is not to defend or justify boorish behavior. Rather, the issue is feminists (a) trying to turn this into a political crusade, and (b) accusing anyone who disagrees of being an ignorant woman-hating bigot.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

That’s a hate crime now, the moral equivalent of rape. It’s heteronormative patriarchy, which is worse than slavery, genocide and nuclear war. And if you don’t agree, then obviously you haven’t been paying attention in Women’s Studies class.

Category: Feminism

Comments

106 Responses to “Memo From the Thought Police”

WJJ Hoge
August 31st, 2014 @ 4:46 pm

I never got past Rule 5 in Women’s Studies.
Tom
August 31st, 2014 @ 5:05 pm

Frankly, I find a pretty women in a nice one-piece swimsuit much sexier than a girl with everything hanging out. The element of mystery is far sexier than the meat-rack approach so many girls take.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
August 31st, 2014 @ 5:21 pm

There is so little material to work with.
richard mcenroe
August 31st, 2014 @ 5:24 pm

I learned my lesson in wolf whistles, etc. back in my misspent yoot in NYC.

I was walking down a slushy street in January with a friend when an absolutely stunning woman completely not dressed for the weather (and thank you to this day) passed us in the other direction.

I decided to be clever and do a Chuck Jones, Tex Avery doubletake, but as I exaggeratedly swung my head around to look back my foot hit one of those stupid brown metal plates in the sidewalk. I wound up in the front-leaning rest position three feet above the pave and dropped face-first into the slush.

I have also walked into parking meters while in the company of an attractive woman.
Mike G.
August 31st, 2014 @ 5:42 pm

I’m with you.
David R. Graham
August 31st, 2014 @ 5:42 pm

“That’s a hate crime now, the moral equivalent of rape.” Oh hell, they’re just gaslighting. No big.
BurkeanMama
August 31st, 2014 @ 5:47 pm

This is just an another attempt to keep the “war on women” meme alive, so the LIV’s will show in November and voted D. The American left is increasingly become a strange version of Nero. They make up a constant string of fake crisis while the real crisis continue to burn down the world.
Memo From the Thought Police | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
August 31st, 2014 @ 5:51 pm

[…] Memo From the Thought Police. […]
RS
August 31st, 2014 @ 6:10 pm

Agree totally.
Phil_McG
August 31st, 2014 @ 6:40 pm

As a young man, too poor to afford a car, I bought a motorbike. It was just an old battered Honda but I thought I cut a rakish figure, not unlike Lorenzo Llamas from “Renegade”, while riding it.

On my very first ride, as I was taking it home from the man I bought the bike from, I noticed a couple of honeys smiling and waving at me as I passed through a village.

Being young and stupid, I wasn’t wearing any safety gear apart from an open face helmet. And that didn’t stop me from turning to the girls with a big dopey grin on my face, beeping the horn, and waving back at them. Just before I took a sharp turn in the road at 40 mph.

I came to some moments later in a boggy ditch with the bike on top of me and a concerned motorist standing nearby, simultaneously cursing my stupidity and demanding I accompany him to the hospital.

Thankfully the worst injury was to my male pride, and after I confirmed the girls weren’t in sight and reassured my flustered samaritan I was able to shakily drive home at 20 mph. But the incident taught me an important lesson every young man should learn:

Chicks *love* bikers.
Jeanette Victoria
August 31st, 2014 @ 6:44 pm

My dear hubby was biker and looks like one as well. He had young thing follow him home from Starbucks and offer herself to him. LOL he being a devout man was horrified
Zeb Quinn
August 31st, 2014 @ 7:31 pm

In your discussion of women dressing to look good or dressing to look hot there’s one more component: Every bit as much as women dress for men they dress for other women. And I mean straight women dress for straight women. As much as they like to elicit male interest by how they look and dress, they like to elicit envy or even outrage from other women.
K-Bob
August 31st, 2014 @ 7:50 pm

Exactly. As one hot chick I know once told me, “Oh, no, don’t go learning to appreciate women’s shoes. They’ll think your ghey.”
K-Bob
August 31st, 2014 @ 7:54 pm

I knew at a very early age that the kind of women I was interested in were the ones who thought pick-up artists were slimy, and only very gullible women wouldn’t see that.

I always fell for the women who could fix stuff, drive 4WD vehicles, ride horses and motorcycles, navigate on road trips, devise a marketing campaign, or analyze your business model. Not the ones who thought, “this guy thinks I’m pretty!”
Matthew W
August 31st, 2014 @ 7:58 pm

Hey, I’m all for the women’s movement. I love walking behind it.
RS
August 31st, 2014 @ 8:14 pm

Thirty years ago on Labor Day Weekend, I invited a young, brand new European exchange student to go on a multi-day canoe trip in the Missouri Ozarks. Tent camping on gravel bars, fishing, no showers, the works. She was an absolute trooper. We’ve been married 26 years, and in my wallet, I still carry a photo I took of her that weekend. In a very attractive one piece swim suit.
DeadMessenger
August 31st, 2014 @ 9:04 pm

I grew up on a farm with 4 brothers. In my teen years, when I started hanging around with other girls, I’d show up for shopping trips in cut-offs, faded Dolphins jersey and the most used, raggedy pair of boots ever. No makeup, thick calluses on my fingertips from playing guitar, house paint on my face and hands from helping dad paint an outbuilding, stains on my arms from used motor oil, scratches and scrapes all over from bush crashing on my dirt bike.

My girlfriends would look me up and down and say, “You’re never gonna get a boyfriend looking like that.”

Turns out they were wrong.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
August 31st, 2014 @ 10:23 pm

Woman’s Studies from a Rule 5 perspective is very different than Woman’s Studies from a modern academic perspective!
maniakmedic
August 31st, 2014 @ 10:39 pm

Nowadays they’re pretty much right.
DeadMessenger
August 31st, 2014 @ 11:15 pm

They were right back then up to the point where I leaned into the engine compartment of the guy’s car in my cut-offs, helping him swap out his alternator by the side of the road, LOL!

The owner of the garage where I hung out working on my bike had a set of mighty fine looking sons, too, who had an appreciation for a girl who knew her way around an engine.

Guess them days are long gone…
Bob Belvedere
September 1st, 2014 @ 12:03 am

Sure, in the cities and the oh-so ‘sophisticated’ suburbs, but real Red-Blooded American Men still appreciate such women.
maniakmedic
September 1st, 2014 @ 1:20 am

Yep. I’ve found that, overall, guys nowadays are so full of shit when they talk about what they want in a girl (girls are, too, when they talk about guys, so I’m not being one-sided). They talk about how awesome it would be to have a girlfriend/significant other who likes to shoot and play video games and play sports. But when you look at who they date, it’s the high maintenance girls that hate that stuff. And then the guys will complain about how their girlfriends hate going to the range or camping or about how they had to go see some chick flick.
Daniel Freeman
September 1st, 2014 @ 3:06 am

I blame chivalry, Disney and romance culture. The ancient bards’ tales tell both men and women that they can show how awesome they are by putting up with crap. It’s training for how to be a codependent of a narcissist, which is a good way to be miserable, so you need to reject it if you want to be happy.
RS
September 1st, 2014 @ 7:36 am

I loathed “high maintenance” girls in the way back when I was single. Helplessness and whining are not attractive.
maniakmedic
September 1st, 2014 @ 9:13 am

Not being one to play weak myself and having very little patience for stupid mating games, I’ve never been in any danger of being the target of any guy who thinks I need to be rescued. However, the very rare times I’ve been noticed by anybody, I somehow become the target of incredibly weird overweight gamer nerds who seem to assume that I’m desperate enough to take anything since I don’t exactly fit a normal datable girl mold. And not being one to pretend to be something I’m not, I don’t pretend to care about characteristics just to seem less picky or shallow. I’ll even admit I definitely am picky and I probably am shallow. But I’m also loyal to a fault (often to my detriment) and will go very far out of my way for those I consider “my people.” Apparently neither are worth a damn nowadays.

*shrug* It is what it is. The only thing I can do is occasionally vent and then keep trudging along.
maniakmedic
September 1st, 2014 @ 9:15 am

I don’t see the attraction, either, but it seems to be all the rage now.
Neo
September 1st, 2014 @ 9:42 am

Left-wingers flipped out at Powell’s contradiction of the Official Feminist Line …

I think this may explain it …

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending $1.5 million to study the “high public-health significance” of why 75 percent of lesbian women are obese and gay men are not, according to a report in The Washington Times.
Matthew W
September 1st, 2014 @ 10:28 am

I blame the French (and George Bush)
Matthew W
September 1st, 2014 @ 10:32 am

DeadMessenger

:

You are probably the type of female that most men would prefer (despite what Hollywood and Madison Ave tell us)

But can you make a sammich??
K-Bob
September 1st, 2014 @ 10:54 am

Maybe in town. Best to visit the city once per quarter, when you can get in and get out with everything you need for the next three months.
If All You See… » Pirate's Cove
September 1st, 2014 @ 1:01 pm

[…] blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on the thought […]
maniakmedic
September 1st, 2014 @ 1:08 pm

Because nothing says “high public-health significance” like a study that targets 1% of the population at most.
maniakmedic
September 1st, 2014 @ 1:14 pm

Kind of hard to acknowledge the real crises when your own policies are the ones causing them. Better to let the world burn down than to admit you were wrong. Or stupid. Or both.
maniakmedic
September 1st, 2014 @ 1:26 pm

Believe you me, women like to play coy and helpless around men, but deep down every one of us has an inner bitch that would disembowel and flay any woman we saw as a threat to what we deem ours if we gave it free reign. It is scary how spiteful and vicious women can be if they think men aren’t paying attention. I think the only thing that has kept me from becoming a social sacrificial lamb is that I don’t like to play stupid social games anyway, so I don’t. It’s hard to make somebody feel bad about not being part of the group when their desire to be part of the group lies somewhere between zero and nil.
DeadMessenger
September 1st, 2014 @ 3:08 pm

I can make a helluva sammich. With a beer. LOL!
Daniel Freeman
September 1st, 2014 @ 3:29 pm

Because fat lesbians congratulate each other on transgressing cis-het beauty norms — another blow to the Patriarchy’s cultural hegemony! — and fat gay men don’t get laid, so the guys go to the gym and the gals don’t. How do I collect the $1.5 mil?
BostonBridget
September 1st, 2014 @ 4:06 pm

Actually, bikinis can be very practical. Most one-piece swimsuits don’t fit tall women very well (and can be somewhat uncomfortable), and tankinis are apt to get caught in waves. A bandeau bikini with straps that go over the shoulder or around the neck is the least likely to get pulled off in the waves and is relatively comfortable.
maniakmedic
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:00 pm

I’m not one for two piece swimwear, but being relatively tall and having a long torso, I completely agree with your assessment of one piece suits. It’s impossible to find one that doesn’t try to become a thong, so I took to wearing a small pair of shorts with my suit when I go out on the water. Still not the most comfortable thing in the world but at least my butt isn’t hanging out for the world to see.
Clarence Whorley
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:20 pm

My buddy Eric is a black guy from Dallas Texas and we went to college in Massachusetts in a super lily white lefty town. He had one move that worked all the time on the rich girls away from home (but most from NYC or LA or other big cities) and many of the black and Hispanic girls. He would do this ridiculous whistle/cat call/ weird sound and it worked all the time.

The girls made fun of him for it but being college they still hooked up with him all the time.
AD_Rtr_OS
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:20 pm

“…paying attention in Women’s Studies class.”
I fell asleep just after pahking my cah from the anticipated boredom.
Rob Crawford
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:30 pm

The proof is the chasing of designer labels. Guys don’t care who designed your dress, just whether they’ll be taking it off you later.
Rob Crawford
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:31 pm

No, they’re not right.
jhertzli
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:31 pm

I’m somehow reminded of The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan:

Our great Mikado, virtuous man,
When he to rule our land began,
Resolved to try
A plan whereby
Young men might best be steadied.

So he decreed, in words succinct,
That all who flirted, leered or winked
(Unless connubially linked),
Should forthwith be beheaded …
johngardner
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:34 pm

Chivalry lives!
Thucydides_of_Athens
September 1st, 2014 @ 5:51 pm

We can look at “micro aggression and “rape culture” as practiced against middle class college students, or perhaps we can look at macro aggression (domestic violence and murder) and gang rape culture as expressed by groups like ISIS (ISIL or now IS)

Funny how “Women’s Studies” can’t seem to find anything to say about the second set of conditions…..
Maggi Cook
September 1st, 2014 @ 6:02 pm

Crap, I was suppose to be paying attention?
dave72
September 1st, 2014 @ 6:04 pm

One short beep – cool. Three beeps? Not cool.
Nonameworks
September 1st, 2014 @ 6:06 pm

You know what? Years ago when I was a college student I had to go into the City (that’s NYC, to you hicks) for a special event and I took the train in and walked over to the hotel where it was being held. I was dressed really nicely in a custom made coat (professional dressmaker in the family) and an absolutely gorgeous big hat. Honest. (Women really need to get back into the hat thing.)

Walking by the proverbial construction site I got whistled at.

I loved it. Still makes me smile.

So called feminists?

Go suck your lemons.
Corpus Crispy
September 1st, 2014 @ 7:08 pm

I like mysteries, too, but on occasion I prefer non-fiction, sometimes I go for fantasy, and every once and a while I just flip through a magazine for the pictures.
dicentra
September 1st, 2014 @ 7:31 pm

I spent 15 months in South America in my early 20s, when I was much thinner and cuter.

At first, I was highly insulted by the “piropos” (rubies) that men would toss our way as a matter of custom. I was lucky that my Spanish wasn’t good enough to understand anything dirtier than “oye, mamacita, cuánto me gustas,” because sometimes my Colombian companions blanched at what they heard.

After several months, if I passed a group of men and they said nothing, I felt insulted. “What, is there something wrong with how I look today?” I thought.

It’s a matter of what you’re used to, I guess. Getting the wolf whistle can be either annoying or flattering depending on how you take it.

And ladies? They stop whistling after awhile. Enjoy it while you can.