Women Don’t Whistle

In my experience, I can’t recall ever hearing a woman whistle. In fact, I think women hate whistling.

Whistling is used by men because it’s the only sound we can make that can be heard over distance, or loud noise. Before my voice changed back in grade school, I could imitate the coach’s whistle so well, I could call all the kids back to the gym. Women’s voices never deepen to the point where they can’t shriek, so there’s no need for whistling.

Whistling is something men do when they’re lonely, or to pass time while performing menial tasks, such as breaking rocks, fixing plumbing, or chopping wood. Traditionally, menial tasks women do involve the family, and children, which means singing. Totally different approach. Whistling is solitary- a family of whistlers would turn the most kindly neighbors into axe murderers. There is no word for a group of whistlers. And the average man can’t stand to hear another guy whistling; nobody ever tells singing women to put a sock in it. That would be “oppressive”, after all.

It’s entirely possible that women hate whistling because of the “wolf whistle”, the saucy sound used by horny cat-callers on construction sites. You can hear one following the line “if you should see a girl on the street” in Frank Zappa’s “Find Her Finer”, on Zoot Allures.

It’s very difficult to make that whistle sound like a threat, but it’s taken that way nowadays nonetheless. The best way to respond when you think your feelings are being hurt is to hurt someone’s feelings, and that’s exactly what lashing out at “cat-callers” does. No man wants to be lumped in with actual rapists because he was hoping to flatter somebody.

This isn’t to say there’s not a dark history to whistling in America, but does anything worthwhile really lack one? Emmett Till had the gross misfortune of whistling at a white woman while black in 1955 Mississippi, and was brutally beaten and mutilated to death by two troglowhites. I thankfully wasn’t born or present at the time, but I can tell you this without a doubt: Till whistled at that woman because he thought she was pretty. No, I haven’t seen her. I have no idea who she was, or what she looked like. However, I have seen a photograph of Emmett Till at fourteen:

Despite my best efforts, this will probably become the screenshot for this article.

I don’t know about you, but I sure as shit didn’t look that dapper at 14, and if I had, I’d have probably felt good enough about myself to whistle at a pretty lady. That’s what makes the story so terrible, even beyond the racial hatred. It’s the worst-case scenario for an unwanted but sincere compliment. You really think Emmett Till would get dressed up like that to go fuck with white folks? You must be a scream at parties.

The other typical man-whistle is used when something is surprisingly large or expensive, for instance a battleship, home repairs, or another man’s grievous injury. The female equivalent is “WHOA”, or “wuff“, after seeing a house, diamond, horse or penis. I can’t imagine a situation where a woman would whistle at a cock, unless she’d gone insane and mistaken it for an unusual bird.

I live in a city with a substantial lesbian population, and despite their sometimes masculine mien, I can’t picture or recall them whistling, even while performing dirty jobs and chores. Plumbing, home repairs, demolitions, landscaping, you name it- lesbians go in like black ops and work like surgeons. The first house I lived in when I came to Atlanta was bordered on all four sides by lesbian couples. We didn’t need to lock our door.

They don’t whistle, though. Maybe it’s a subconscious choice women make, being that whistling appears to be the stuff of loneliness, miscommunication, and cleaning up after dwarfs.