My latest blog post for the Los Angeles Times:

[A]s Kimberly Fairchild, a psychology professor at Manhattan College, told CNN in 2008, catcalling “encourages women to look at themselves as body parts instead of as full, whole, intelligent human beings” and can cause women to fear for their safety. “When a man catcalls you, you don’t know if it will end at that point or if it could escalate to assault,” she said.

Really? It usually “ends at the point” at which the attractive woman has finished walking by. Remember that those guys are actually on the job, or maybe taking a lunch break. They don’t have time for “assault.” They have to work for a living.

There’s an obvious element of class snobbery in all this feminist hand-wringing over catcalling. Blue-collar construction workers and white-collar lawyers might be thinking the same thing when they see a pretty girl in a short skirt on a busy sidewalk — men are intensely visually oriented in their sexual responses — but it’s not part of college-educated male culture to wolf-whistle. The anti-catcalling movement is essentially a way of looking down on men who work with their hands.