I heard a similar analogy, men are in a desert, women in a swamp. In both cases they struggle to find drinkable water.

If women’s compliments towards men were the same as men’s compliments towards women, I think men would also dislike it.

Nah.

Every time I've ever heard of an experiment where indignant women do/say to men the exact same things that they hate getting from men, they're always astonished to see the men's reactions as practically universally positive:

If the goal of the experiment was to make men feel the weird combination of creeped-out and ashamed that comes with everyday objectification, then the experiment failed. Instead, these fellas look flattered and expectant. You can practically see them plotting the nearest route to the cheapest hotel.

There is an old idiom that goes "everything is about sex except sex. That's about power."

Catcalling is about expressing power over someone else body and life. It's a veiled threat, coached in sexual terms. No one doing it actually expects to have sex afterwards. Its about saying "i can force sex on you. I can take control of you. Your life belongs to me."

A lot of the men engaging in it above are doing it because of peer pressure, normalized misogyny and the "thrill" of getting an acknowledgement of that power by scaring women. I dont think most of them want to attack women outright to begin with, but it normalizes mixing sex with violence and dehumanizing woman.

Kind of gross and threatening even as an adult TBH. But yeah, definitely worse as a child.

Live long you absolute potato

I like your username, and you have great taste in Lemmy instances.

When you’re walking alone in the dark all big burly and bearded and just hear a voice calling out sexualizing you it’s scary

The fear is from the group dynamics more than anything else. Gender almost plays no part in it. Age plays almost no part in it. There are several stories about a group of teens attacking a lone adult, and it goes just about as you'd expect. Anyone who is alone and suddenly becomes the focus of attention by a group will (and probably should) become worried, whereas if you're in a group the (that is, your) reaction can be anything from ignoring to playing along because you have less to fear. All of us can imagine the difference between walking in a group or by yourself when getting catcalled. Most of us have probably seen the difference.