ABSTRACT

‘Catcalling’ is a common form of street harassment, often described as sexual harassment from a stranger in a public place. In most cases, it involves a man intruding on a woman’s attention using words, whistles, sounds, or gestures, which essentially define the woman as a sexual object. The purpose of the present study was to explore men’s motivations for catcalling and to investigate the characteristics of men who catcall relative to those who do not. Male participants (N = 258) completed online survey measures of sexism, masculinity/femininity, social dominance, and attitudes towards sexual harassment. We also included a measure exploring motivations for catcalling and reactions that catcallers hope to elicit in their targets. The most frequently reported motivations for catcalling were to flirt with and to express sexual interest in the target, and the most desired reaction from recipients was friendliness. Further, men who reported having engaged in catcalling demonstrated higher levels of hostile sexism, self-ascribed masculinity, social dominance orientation, and tolerance of sexual harassment.

摘要

“猫叫”是街头骚扰的一种常见形式，通常被描述为在公共场所来自陌生人的性骚扰。在大多数情况下，它涉及一个男人使用语言、口哨、声音或手势来吸引女人的注意力，这基本上将女人定义为性对象。本研究的目的是探索男性吹嘘的动机，并调查相对于不吹嘘的男性的特征。男性参与者（N= 258) 完成了关于性别歧视、男性气质/女性气质、社会主导地位和对性骚扰的态度的在线调查测量。我们还包括了一项措施，探索猫叫的动机和猫叫者希望在他们的目标中引起的反应。最常报告的嘲笑动机是与目标调情并表达对目标的性兴趣，而接受者最期望的反应是友好。此外，报告从事过吹毛求疵的男性表现出更高水平的敌对性别歧视、自我归因的阳刚之气、社会支配取向和对性骚扰的容忍度。