MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
City if Buenos Aires criminalises street harassment
The Buenos Aires City Hall Wednesday passed a bill establishing fines of up to 1,000 pesos (around US$ 60) for those who commit sexual harassment in public places. Prevention campaigns have also been announced. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesA fine of 1000 pesos.
Dec 08th, 2016 - 08:28 pm - Link - Report abuse +1Soon to be worth US$1.26
Have you ever made a positive contribution or comment in this website?
Dec 09th, 2016 - 10:45 am - Link - Report abuse -4Just one. Surely there isn't someone in this world that is perfectly useless, but you are making a run for it!
@ TTT
Dec 09th, 2016 - 10:59 am - Link - Report abuse +1Why not make a positive contribution and comment on the story? What do you think of piropos? Do you whistle and call at women? Is it outdated and should have no place in a modern Argentina? Or is it a bit of fun?
Even you would admit I have made a positive contribution (or two) here. Even though I think I make positive contributions just by me appearing here every day, you don't agree.But I do know you and others here believe that I had food for thought comments a long time ago before my mind was utterly corrupted beyond repair by Anglos, EUians, NorthAmoans, and other foreigners with their racism towards me and the Argentine race.
Dec 09th, 2016 - 11:13 am - Link - Report abuse -3If you really want to know, I never liked piropos myself. I find it a bit too obvious, but I also don't think they are that bad as long as they are only words or sounds, I would say a woman should also have the personality to be able to deal with them.
I think they are less troublesome a practice than the European, Australian-Antipodean, and North American practice of binge drinking and then just causing disturbances or accosting women, which is a week-end occurrence all over the north. Binge drinking is a rare phenomenon in Argentina, though drunks obviously exist, but it is more a solitary matter.
@ TTT
Dec 09th, 2016 - 12:36 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You did make some interesting contributions in the early days but you can't blame your more bizarre meltdowns on other people. Honestly, your mind has been corrupted by spending too much time on conspiracy theory sites. Trying to understand the world through the internet is never going to give you perspective.
Do you think the piropos are more of an older generation trait? It is surely not as acceptable now to cat-call at women in the street. I think most women probably ignore them but if someone is of a shy disposition they may find them intimidating. I don't think it is fair to expect all women to 'have the personality' to deal with them. People are different and you don't know their background or circumstances. Perhaps men should have the personality not to objectify women and harass them in the street.
Binge drinking is definitely an unattractive practise but you are generalising and I don't think you can assert that there is no binge-drinking in Argentina. Drinking is a big problem in Argentina and Chile too. I remember that survey about the number of drunk long-distance bus drivers in Argentina. Is that not more dangerous than someone drinking themselves stupid?
Come to the U.K. some time and you will see that your stereotyped view is way off base.
@ Fidel_CasTroll
Dec 09th, 2016 - 01:08 pm - Link - Report abuse -4What did the nasty foreigners do to you that 'broke' your brain?
Oh, and I have never seen Marti make a positive comment either. I wonder if there is any country he doesn't hate?
@ ElaineB
Do you think the drunk men in the UK are as annoying as the sober ones in Argentina? Apparently enough people found the catcalling offensive enough to want to ban it.
I agree it's not fair to expect all women to be able to deal with it. Maybe it doesn't bother some but what about the shy ones as you say or teenage girls?
Perhaps the comment was a little too subtle for Fidelito. I'd ruin it for everyone else if I were to mention the allusion to the effects of inveterate Argentine inflation and the recent announcements of record-low of the ARS vs the USD, as well as the observation that the maximum fine for the transgression in the article is a piddly 1000 ARS or the current equivalent of about US$60, less than a parking ticket in Chicago.
Dec 09th, 2016 - 01:32 pm - Link - Report abuse +2It's unfortunate that Fidelito and many of the other unwashed prefer to think of Argentines as a “race” while the civilised world considers the country to be multi-racial. We can only speculate whether it was Argentina's contact with the Croatians that eventually allowed the country to rise above the practice of living in mud huts and a subsistence diet of grubs and Fernet.
As far as Fidelito's mention of alcohol, which has nothing to do with the original article other than to attempt to distract: Argentina is the second-largest per-capita consumer of alcohol in the entire Western Hemisphere. According to national stats here, alcohol is involved in about 50 percent of the traffic fatalities in this country, which has no shortage of such accidents (although we see that Kirchnerism tried to suppress some of the bad press on the high traffic fatality rates). Even with suspected under-reporting, Argentina's traffic fatality rates require the use of larger pieces of graph paper, at something well over 28 per 100000 if you use the numbers from the national Instituto de Seguridad Vial (though that number gets whitewashed on its way to international reporting and so Argentina offers less than half of the suspected real rate when reporting to the WHO) . Sample international assessment of AR reporting during the Kirchner regime: “...our analysis of the death registration data shows that the police data substantially under-report road traffic deaths in Argentina...” Article “Los Kirchner falsearon las estadisticas de inseguridad vial.”
Wolf whistling was so...last century, does anyone do it these days...?
Dec 09th, 2016 - 01:43 pm - Link - Report abuse -2I'd be quite embarrassed to even think of doing it...
@ ML
Dec 09th, 2016 - 03:07 pm - Link - Report abuse 0You make an interesting point about fudging the statistics. I remember TTT arguing on here that paedophilia was not something that happened in Argentina because he never saw reports about it on the internet therefore it was something that only happened in foreign countries. Of course, it is something that happens everywhere and denying it is tantamount to enabling it. And recently we have seen cases of mass abuse reported in TTT's home town of Mendoza.
@ DT
I would say that it varies and you can't label all men of one country the same. I don't know anyone who goes out and gets fall-down drunk, though it happens for sure. I came across piropos frequently during my time in Argentina though less so in BsAs. Like most SoAm countries one seems to move back in time a decade or so when moving away from the capitals. The Argentine women I spoke with didn't like it at all, though it demeaning and a relic of the machista society they hoped to leave behind. It hit a nerve with them more than foreigners like me who tend to be more confident and don't have to live with it all the time. Though a conversation about the typical piropos was interesting. They varied from being rather poetic, to funny, to disgusting and could easily be considered intimidating.
@ ML
Dec 09th, 2016 - 07:32 pm - Link - Report abuse 0They're talking about quite minor crimes, a $60 fine seems quite reasonable.
But actually that makes me wonder; what do they do about fines etc when a country has high inflation? Do they just increase them every 6 months or so? Or let them inflate away to nothing?
And TobiTroll only calls Argentines a race cos he doesn't want to admit his ancestors were 'evil' Europeans.
@ EB
It's true that there are a lot of people who drink too much in the UK, including me and my friends sometimes (unfortunately). Falling down drunk isn't so common but I have seen it.
The piropos just sound tiresome, do you remember any examples of the funny ones?
@EB
Dec 09th, 2016 - 07:40 pm - Link - Report abuse -1I'm not sure if you'd remember but a few years ago Argentina changed its penal code, juggling the penalties a bit. There was a list of the previous and new penalties, and the eye opener for me was that the punishment for possession of pedophile pornography was completely removed, which made me think of Maximo Gordo at the time. Perhaps in retrospect Chopper spoke advisedly. Abuse is hardwired into the system.
@ imoyaro
Dec 09th, 2016 - 08:16 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Possibly, Maximo and his pals were into all sorts. An overindulgent mother and a disappointed father. He was into drugs from an early age and that can mess with the head.
@ DT
I can't really remember any specific ones, a quick google would probably throw up some examples Think cheesy pick up lines and that about covers the innocuous ones.
Remember, this works both ways,
Dec 09th, 2016 - 08:55 pm - Link - Report abuse -2No cat calling, ladies. Or whatever transition you may be,
who commit sexual harassment in public places.
TWIMC
Dec 09th, 2016 - 08:57 pm - Link - Report abuse -1Fine collection of young Chilean chavs “piropos”...
http://www.quemierdaleo.com/la-ruta-de-la-iluminacion-cuma-los-piropos-mas-flaites-de-la-historia/
;-)
DT, you asked about adjustments in such fines: Here in Argielandia there is an inflation-adjusting unit called a UF (not to be confused with the UF in Chile, where it means Unidad de Fomento while in Argentina UF means Unidad Fija). If I remember correctly one UF in Argentina was based on the price of a litre of nafta, which is the local term for Benzin/benzina/petrol/essence/gasoline. The Argie UF is used as a benchmark for periodically adjusting the amounts of traffic fines. So as the price of a litre of fuel goes up, the fines are raised correspondingly (it used to be based on full-litre price and now it's based on a half-litre of “super-grade” gasoline if memory serves correctly). I think the adjustment is done monthly (?) but it's actually handled by the Argentine Auto Club. When a judge sets a traffic fine for a violator, it may be given in UF and then when the violator pays, there is a conversion of those UF into pesos. I may be in error on some minor details there but I think that is generally how it works for adjusting traffic fines over time.
Dec 09th, 2016 - 09:39 pm - Link - Report abuse +1-----
“...TobiTroll only calls Argentines a race ..” Actually, it's a common issue in Letrine America. Many countries here think of their citizenry as a unique “race” using an archaic notion that differs from that commonly understood by the civilised nations which make lawful distinctions of biologically based race. Where an educated English speaker from a normal country might refer to “the Argentine people” it is quite common in these banana republics to hear “la raza argentina.” Thus when you criticise corruption, incompetence, crime, malfeasance, ineptitude, drug-trafficking, incontinence, and the widespread growth of pathogenic bacteria in yerba-mate gourds in Argentina you can be accused of “racism.” The fact of the matter is that the argies think that their use of English is the same as that of the English-speaking countries, and this discrepancy leads to all manner of misunderstandings.
Oh dear, it seems some only want it one way,
Dec 10th, 2016 - 12:00 pm - Link - Report abuse -1oh well, whatever your preference...lol
@ Think
Dec 10th, 2016 - 02:01 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Haha, Chilean chavs. I still can't work out what half of them mean but the ones I did understand seem pretty crazy.
@ ML
Well I guess that makes sense for traffic fines. Do they use a similar system for other things like tax bands and pensions?
And Trollboy just means Argentine people? That makes more sense, and there's not much difference between being prejudiced against a race or against a particular nationality. But I'm sure he said in the past that he didn't believe in races, or something of the sort.
As for use of English, I guess all countries have their peculiarities. I've heard Indians use some really formal sounding phrases that probably went out of fashion 100 years ago in Britain. It's kind of cool.
@Marti Llazo & ElaineB
Dec 11th, 2016 - 07:34 pm - Link - Report abuse -1Agree with your comments on Fidelito, as well as ElaineB's regarding “piropos”...Fidelito lives in a dome, totally out-of-touch with reality. His notion that the people of Argentina constitute a 'race', is laughable....with a population made up of mainly Italians, and Spaniards, Germans, east Europeans, and of course, what's left of the indigenous population, I don't see how that is a 'race'...but good luck to him in trying to prove his theory...
Sexual harassment, especially in the streets, is probably linked to an inferiority complex, in that the those who resort to it, in their retarded minds, think they are getting some sort of weird instant gratification, even when they are ignored ; they don't have the guts to be anything but anonymous....You see it quite a lot here too, the idiots who think they are the cat's whiskers, saying inappropriate things to a girl as she passes by....it probably works on whores, but they demand payment from the idiots, to put up with them...
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