Me Too dead: Girls resume catcalling guys

Related to a recent post on the return of girls getting touchy-feely with strangers in public spaces, I can now add to the social weather report that catcalling from girls has returned as well.

As I was walking back from the used bookstore last night, a car of girls in their late teens let out a chorus of generic horny calls -- "yeeeaaah!" "oooh!" etc. No particular words in any human language, just animalistic vocalizations. No one else was walking around, and they were not just being loud and rowdy in general, since the sounds stopped after they passed on.

While it's not as palpable as brushing against someone, it's still directly addressing them and making your feelings known. In fact, it's a bolder risk to take because it's more public of a signal -- everyone within earshot can perceive you acting all horned up, whereas no one else will be aware if you make stealthy physical contact with someone you walk by.

Even during the most recent heyday of horniness, from 2005 to 2014, getting catcalled was always far more rare than getting brushed against in stores, grinded against in a dance club, and the like. Most girls just don't have that much of an appetite for risk-taking in public.

Just as with the case of physical contact, the last time I remember being catcalled was the summer of 2015, the first year of the vulnerable refractory phase of the 15-year excitement cycle. For the next four years since -- absolute silence.

As it turns out, it was in the same shopping center where the used bookstore is. I had just gotten out of the car and was still whistling whatever song had been on ("Lady in Red," I think). Then all of a sudden, someone from a group of high school girls calls out, "heyyy cockatoooooo..." as they stride on by. She just had to work "cock" in there, the little devil.

Going over previous cycles, I don't remember being catcalled at all in college, during the emo refractory phase of the early 2000s. There's a possible case in late 2004, when I was living in Barcelona: some American girl who thought I didn't know English commented as I walked by, "Now here's one who's got that whole male model thing going on," but I think she meant that Europeans dressed hotter than Americans, not necessarily that she was horny for me.

But during the late 2000s and early 2010s, I got catcalled by my horned up students at the tutoring center, groups of late teens / early 20s girls outside of nightclubs, one of my undergrad friends who was only half-joking in tone ("And here comes the maaaaale of the species," as I entered the dining hall and she had her phone pointed at me to take a video). Even a group of MILF-y types who were camped near the sidewalk during the 4th of July in 2013 (typically older women are less hormonally crazed).

During the '90s, I do vividly recall one instance of quasi-catcall behavior. Seems like 8th grade, either the end of the warm-up phase in '94 or the start of the manic phase in '95. It was spring or summer, whichever year it was, and everyone's car windows were open. I was being driven home from somewhere, and out of nowhere some girl screams out of a moving car that's passing right by us, "Hey [agnostic's full name]! I love you!!!"

I never did find out who that was, their car was moving on too fast to see. She never approached me in school either, probably assuming that I had recognized her but did not reciprocate -- but I couldn't tell who the hell it was! Next time tell the driver to slow down so the target of your catcall can get a clear look at you.

Getting a public call like that is so rare that you never forget it, if you're a guy anyway. It still gnaws away at me that I'll never know who that cute-voiced girl was in the back of that speeding car...

No memories of catcalls from before puberty, during either the early '80s manic phase or the vulnerable late '80s phase.

But now that girls' refractory phase is wearing off, they're going to start catcalling random hot guys in public again. It won't be nearly as common as surreptitious physical contact, but it'll be present as opposed to absent, during the next decade. They're going to get restless and want to re-connect with the opposite sex again, and for some of them it'll hit them so bad they won't care if the rest of the world hears them.

As in the earlier post, the point here is to provide a social weather report. If you're not a random hot guy and won't get catcalled, don't freak out. The fact that girls have resumed catcalling and brushing against guys in public means that they're starting to leave their withdrawn emo phase of "leave me alone," "all male attention is rape," and so on and so forth. They're getting more willing to take risks and put their intentions out there -- so you should be too. They're not going to launch a #MeToo witch hunt any longer.

(Well, that is until the next vulnerable phase, beginning in 2030, but you don't have to worry about that for an entire decade.)