A couple of those guys were scary aggressive and I’m pretty tough. The one who walked beside her for five minutes... had that been me, my had would’ve been on my gun.
As far as I’m concerned, she proved her point. New Yorkers are jerks.
She was walking with purpose. She did nothing to draw attention to herself. She was dressed normally - not provocatively.
Most of these guys acted like it was pure reflex. No hesitation at all.
No, I don’t agree that the ‘have a nice evening’ would be considered a cat call. But I can also understand being fed up and irritated by that point and not wanting to hear another word out of a man’s mouth by the end of the day.
I think the objection had to be the use of “darling”, it is sometimes used as a term of endearment but I can’t see how it would be in the least bit degrading.
I think it all depends on the context and on the situation; who is saying it and how and why. In most cases I wouldn’t get upset by being called “darling” but again, it might depend on the situation and who is saying it and how. Then again, I grew up in Baltimore were you (both men and women) get used to being called “hon” by just about everyone. In Baltimore they have an annual Honfest with a contest for the best Hon, and then there is The Café Hon. Being called “Hon” is celebrated and one of the things about Baltimore that still makes it “charming” in a way.
For example it might be OK for a waiter or waitress to say, “Can I get you some more coffee “darling” or “hon”, a sales clerk to say “thank you “dear”. It would be OK with me if a man holds a door open for me and I say, “Thank you” and he says, “You’re welcome darling” and smiles; I would likely just smile back.
OTOH, if I’m walking down the street and some strange man starts walking beside me and says something like, “Hey “darling”, where are you going? Why don’t you come with me? I want to take you home and show you what heaven feels like….”, well that would be very creepy and unwelcome. Or if I am at work and I am supervising a man and I give him a directive or I reprimand him for his screw up and he comes back to me with “Whatever “darling”” - he’s not going to be my employee much longer. Or as happened to me years ago at a Radio Shack store, when the salesman told me, “Are you sure that’s the cell phone battery you need “sweetie”. Don’t you want to go home and bring back your husband just to be sure?” Great way to pi$$ off a paying customer.
And I’ll give you an example of something that happened a few months ago at work.
My company had recently hired a department manager, not of my department, nor was he my boss but my peer level supervisor and around the same age as me. Shortly after he started, he walked or rather barged into my office (my door was shut as I was on a conference call) and said, “How are you today, young lady.”
Being called “young lady” or “little lady” as he called me a few other times, in and of its self doesn’t sound offensive and I might typically shrug such a comment off, but it was the way and manner of how he said it (and considering the other things he had said to me and other co-workers – both male and female) it was obvious that it was meant not as a compliment but a put down. The guy from day one had a real arrogance and smugness about himself and talked to and treated everyone he came in contact with as if we were all complete idiots and far below and inferior to him.
Then one day not long after this, he was talking to our HR admin regarding a conference call about a worker’s comp injury claim and she told him it was a “three way” conference call between our benefits manager, the plant manager and the workers comp insurer rep and instead of listening to what she was actually telling him about the call, he zoned in on the phrase “three way” and repeated the phrase “three way” several times, and very suggestively and then asked our HR admin if she enjoyed having a “three way”. He made the conversation sexual where it wasn’t and it made the HR admin who is a very nice and religious person who was only doing her job, very uncomfortable.
He was thankfully shown the door at the end of his 90 day probationary period.