By BELINDA BROWN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Striding down the avenues and boulevards of Paris in my early 20s, I regularly found myself receiving verbal advances from men. Working as a model in that cosmopolitan city I suppose it wasn’t surprising that I attracted attention from the opposite sex, whether it was wolf whistles or appreciative comments.

Sometimes I found it flattering, sometimes - like the man who groped me in when I was travelling on the Metro - the attention was most definitely unwanted.

But did it ever occur to me to call the police? Of course not.

This was normal social intercourse and if I felt the men were a nuisance I had the nous tell them to get lost, often in their native language. And I can promise you they all did. Without exception. Even the man on the underground. After I’d whacked him with my handbag and told him loudly to get lost, he did just that. While his behaviour was odious, it was not beyond my wit to deal with it. I certainly didn’t consider it necessary to call in the authorities.

And yet, according to one British police force, because I’d been singled out on account of my sex, that’s exactly what I should have done on all of these occasions.

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Nottinghamshire Police Force, we learnt this week, has become the first in the country to categorise wolf whistling as both misogynistic and a hate crime and urges women who are ‘victims’ of such unwanted attention to muster their courage and report it.

It has grimly decreed: ‘Unwanted physical or verbal contact or engagement is defined as exactly that and so can cover wolf whistling and other similar types of contact. If the victim feels that this has happened because they are a woman then we will record it as a hate crime.’

The definition includes street harassment, verbal abuse, unwanted physical approaches and taking photographs without consent. Also included are using mobile phones to send unwanted messages, unwanted sexual advances and ‘unwanted or uninvited physical or verbal contact or engagement’.

Moreover, the force’s chief constable, Sue Fish, added the weight of her approbation, declaring: ‘I’m delighted that we are leading the way towards tackling misogyny in all its forms.

‘It’s a very important aspect of the overall hate crime work being conducted and one that will make Nottinghamshire a safer place for all women.’

I’m now a middle-aged mother and academic, and in the years since my modelling days, attitudes have changed. Much behaviour that was acceptable even 20-odd years ago is now definitely not, and rightly so in many cases, but, far from welcoming this new initiative, I’m appalled.

It does neither men, or women, a favour but only further entrenches the gulf between the sexes.

For a start, I have to take issue with Ms Fish, and Nottingham Women’s Centre’s manager Melanie Jeffs, who says she is ‘pleased’ that the police ‘recognise the breadth of violence and intimidation that women experience on a daily basis in our communities.’

Do most women actually experience deplorable levels of aggression from men on a daily basis? Should we be making the sweeping assumption that males are inherently all heinous predators? From my own recent experience and those of other women - of all ages - I know I don’t think so.

In any case, I think it’s utterly wrong to assume that men are invariably boorish brutes who fail to get the message when they’re asked to back off. If we cast them as such we’re heading for trouble.

By running to the police and reporting a ‘hate crime’, we run the risk of making the unfortunate chap who happened to wolf whistle a passing girl angry and hostile. Result? Growing animosity between the sexes.

And instead of protecting women, I think Nottinghamshire’s new policy infantilises and patronises us. It is, I believe, deeply demeaning to suggest that we are too weak and enfeebled to deal with a casual remark or an unwanted advance.

Today’s youth must be wary: telling a teenage girl she looks lovely could lead to a reprimand; even a criminal record. Rather than encouraging young men and women to understand each other’s point of view and open up lines of communication this new initiative surely encourages a mentality that shuts down social interaction.

Vitally, we need to stop casting women as helpless and hapless. Instead of telling our daughters to run to the police, we need to encourage them to learn how to deal with these low-level irritations that should barely cause consternation, let alone be catalogued alongside serious assaults. Elevating such trivial annoyances as wolf whistling to ‘hate crimes’ distorts our view of what a real crime is, and who the real criminals are. If you treat something as trivial as wolf whistling as a hate crime then people who are victims of more serious and devastating abuse may struggle to be taken seriously because people will no longer be able to differentiate what’s really unacceptable.

In my grandmother’s era a young man who complimented a woman on her appearance would not have been treated as a pariah. Often it signalled the first tentative stage of courtship.

When I was in my 20s, would I have reported the stranger who invited me out to supper to the police for ‘misogynistic behaviour’ had this new ‘hate crime’ existed then? Of course I wouldn’t. I would have considered it a waste of both my time and that of the constabulary.

Yet today’s youth must be wary: telling a teenage girl she looks lovely could lead to a reprimand; even a criminal record. Rather than encouraging young men and women to understand each other’s point of view and open up lines of communication this new initiative surely encourages a mentality that shuts down social interaction. Youths are often gauche, but criminalising awkward, or misguided, advances doesn’t help them learn what’s appropriate - and what’s not.

Ultimately I believe the streets will become less safe, not more so, if hard-pressed police are so busy investigating the building site Lothario who has whistled at a passing woman that they don’t have time to deal with the rapist. Surely common sense dictates - especially in a time of limited resources - the police would be more profitably engaged in investigating serious offences of violence against women.

And yet we learn that three months of valuable police time – and doubtless thousands of pounds from already strained budgets – have already been frittered away in training Nottinghamshire’s bobbies to recognise the crime of misogyny.

It all seems a ludicrous over-reaction. As a social anthropologist and writer I have considered the insidious way strident feminism - essentially turning the opposite sex into our enemy - has poisoned relationships between men and women. I believe the female chief inspector of police, who instituted this absurd new crime, is enforcing the presumption that the actions of all men should be viewed through the prism of our paranoia: they must be all be demonised.

Consider the case of marketing co-ordinator Poppy Smart, 23, from Worcester. Wolf whistled every day for a month as she past builders on a site, justifiably she found the behaviour so intimidating, humiliating and insulting she felt she had no alternative but to go to the police. And I have great sympathy for her.

Although the West Mercia force investigated Miss Smart’s complaint – she said the wolf whistling was akin to racial harassment – no action was taken. Presumably had the incidents happened in Nottinghamshire the result might have been different. Still I feel an acerbic put-down, or witty remark would have nipped this whole unpleasant business in the bud more effectively than any police report.

Of course I deplore any conduct that becomes irritating or irksome, but being wolf whistled is not the same as being racially abused. Surely the problem here is not really the men’s behaviour. Rather it is the way it is understood. Men find pretty young women attractive, and we want them to find us attractive. They respond more strongly than we do to visual stimuli, and do so in a very visceral way. This does not mean they would threaten us. Simply that they are too busy working on building sites to pick up messages of political correctness.

I suspect there are some countries where men are more circumspect about expressing their appreciation of female beauty.

When I lived in Poland in the 1990s, I was never wolf whistled; possibly because the beauty, slenderness and impeccable grooming of Polish women rather put me to shame. But I also suspect it was because Polish men had been brought up by mothers whose fierce work ethic and self-sacrifice in both supporting and running their families instilled in their sons an ever so slightly fearful respect for both their mothers and women in general.

And if it is respect that we women want, we will not get it by constant complaints, carping and demands for special privileges. Neither will we achieve it if every time a man expresses his appreciation of our beauty, we run to the police.

It seems to me, too, that while women are prepared to emasculate men with these new powers, the same females accord themselves the right to be more predatory themselves.

In this new era of draconian rules and regulations, it is considered perfectly politically correct for a woman to ogle a man’s muscular physique, while he has no right to compliment her on her figure. And who would have a scintilla of respect for a man who rushed to log a complaint against a woman merely because she’d said he looked good? Equality works both ways.

Actually, I think life is infinitely poorer and drearier for these po-faced new directives. Today, in mid-life, I would feel hugely gratified if a stranger – man or woman – told me I looked lovely. Now that I’m older, a wolf whistle would actually make my day.

It is not an insult to be found attractive, actually there is something reassuring and confidence-boosting to be appreciated for our looks.

And while we rightly strive to be women of substance, an appreciation of our appearance need not detract from that.

So I would say to all young women, as I do to my own ten-year-old daughter: accept compliments graciously, but if you are offended have to courage, not to rush off and tell tales, but to confront the person who has caused offence.