Cat Callin'

   Okay, here's a thing: cat calling. Does honking your car horn at random ladies qualify as cat calling? There's not really any calling even involved, its just a mechanical operation. It is the most reduced form of hitting on someone. In fact, car honking is not even about the other person. Its a power thing, and this is old news but it still happens so... yeah.
   When I was in my early teens I remember being flattered and feeling kind of excited when someone honked their horn at me while I walked through the street, better yet when someone leaned out their window to yell some incomprehensible thing at me as they drove by. I felt like it was about me. It wasn't about me. It wasn't about me when I was sixteen and its not about me now.
   When someone honks their horn or hurls drive-by pickup lines at someone else its about the person performing the act, and no one else. There is a reaction but there is no response, nor is the response anticipated. Nobody ever gets out of their car to be like, "Oh hey, in case you didn't hear me, I think your ass looks bomb in those jeans".
   Half the time when I've been heckled from a moving vehicle, my face is not even a thing. Its usually dark out, and all it has to do with is recognizing a female form and dominating that person with one-sided verbal expressions. It has nothing to do with anything except power. Its all fun and games for the person yelling, all the while it draws attention to the female form being objectified. For a woman walking alone at night, that is often not a good thing. When you holler shit at a girl for the sake of your own whatever, what you do is draw attention to her in a way that diminishes her physical power not only to you and her, but to those around her as well and you don't know who those people are, and what that woman's situation is. I'm not suggesting that this kind of objectification only happens to women, but on the level of physical prowess, I think it's important to recognize the gender difference.
   Bottom line: what may seem harmless and even a rite of passage, can be detrimental and borderline frightening in the worst (but totally forseeable) circumstances.