Well Done, Poppy Smart

Image result for wolf in sheep's clothing + images

Rod Liddle writing in The Sunday Times takes issue with the argument that a 'wolf whistle' is simply a piece of harmless fun, especially when the unsolicited and repeat attention comes from a group of boorish men.

So well done indeed to Poppy Smart for standing up to these morons and involving the police to put an end to their behaviour

A whistle is far from harmless in the company of wolves


By Rod Liddle - The Sunday Times

Apparently, when men get past the age of 50, women stop noticing them. It’s as if we did not exist. There is no flirting, there is no covert glance, there is absolutely no interest whatsoever.

I read this in one of those surveys that had been conducted precisely to make me feel wretched, but it’s true nonetheless. The most we get — I’ve noticed this — is a poorly concealed expression of utter revulsion from some young woman at a checkout till or waiting a table or walking down a street. Not in response to even the faintest overture on my part, I hasten to add. It’s more immediate and visceral — a recoiling from my actual existence.

They take in, ever so quickly, the wrinkles, the jowls, the burgeoning decrepitude and the sad stench of decay. And I think they inwardly gag. Another 15 years — if I live that long — and I’ll be eligible for a sort of condescending kindliness from young women, which I’m greatly looking forward to. Right now, though, I and most fiftysomething men are in a kind of limbo between being viable and being effectively dead. So we get neither interest nor pity.

Fair enough, I think. We have had our moments in the sun, we middle-aged men. And we are lucky, because female interest in men declines with rather more languor than male interest in women.

Women start worrying — justifiably, I’m afraid — at the age of about 30, and by 35 this has become a nagging terror, the realisation that we’re not interested in them any more. I remember long ago a male friend saying to me, of a woman in whom I had a romantic interest, “Hmm. Not sure about her. I think she’s on the turn.” On the turn, like milk left out on a doorstep in warm weather. She was 27 years old.

All this stuff occurred to me when I read about a young woman, Poppy Smart, who had gone to the police to complain about builders subjecting her to wolf whistles and catcalls as she walked to work. Or, more accurately, a little later — when I read the massed bleatings from a bunch of wrinkly old harridans in the press saying that she was quite wrong to have summoned the rozzers.

The theme from these women was all the same: think yourself lucky, love. It’s so awful when the wolf whistles stop, when you walk past a building site and there is nothing but silence, just the background fugue of bland idiocy from Magic FM. No interest of a sexual nature.

Yes, I’m sure it lowers the self-esteem a little, but I’m not convinced that is quite the point. These bellowed remarks are not simply admiration, they carry the undercurrent of a threat and are replete with arrogance, spite and thuggery. They are redolent of the attitude towards women you will see in online pornography — a sneering contempt, hatred disguised as lust. A guttural expression of gender superiority.

Sorry to get all PC and pious on you, but I don’t think women should have to put up with it. No other section of society would — why should young women?

One of the builders who confessed to harassing Smart is a nasty little man called Ian Merrett. According to Merrett, subjecting passing women to unpleasant outbursts of sexual innuendo has “always been part of” the trade. Right, like not turning up for six weeks, lying about estimates, using sub-standard materials and taking six hours for lunch, I suppose. But how would Merrett react if someone infringed his personal space?

Luckily, we know the answer to that question. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison for punching a man called Michael Powell in the face. Powell’s crime was to have had the audacity to “look” at Merrett’s friend. Yes, just look. This all happened on a train — while Merrett’s friend entertained female passengers by taking out his penis and waving it in their faces. That’s the real subtext of this story.

Reading this, are you as inclined to think that those catcalls and wolf whistles were, as Merrett put it, harmless banter? Well done, Poppy Smart.

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