Why do you assume that anyone wants laws passed to prevent people from catcalling or speaking their minds?
You being appalled by the notion that men think they have a right to speak to women. You clearly imply that men do NOT have such a right. That suggests to me that you're in favor of stripping men of the right to free speech in order to bring about the world you desire, a world were men do not have the right to speak to a woman.
. . men felt they had the right to comment on her appearance, to call out to her.
What we are addressing here is a lack of respect for women - an assumption that a woman should be flattered by the attention. When did an expectation of respect and good manners become too much for some people to cope with?
When liberals destroyed
social etiquette.
Chivalry is a two way street. Men had obligations towards women and women towards men:
Hats have rules: a gentleman of course removes his when speaking to a lady on the street, removes it when a lady enters an elevator (unless the elevator is inside an office building or a store); replaces it when he steps off into the corridor. He lifts his hat as a gesture of politeness to strangers and lifts it more emphatically when he performs an outdoor informal (versus an indoor ceremonial) bow.
Nineteen thirty-nine's polite conversation is scripted and therefore ritualized to a much greater extent than ours is. "Under all possible circumstances, the reply to an introduction is 'How do you do?'" ("The taboo of taboos is 'Pleased to meet you.'") When the need arises, one says "I beg your pardon"—never, ever, "Pardon me," which is a barbarism. It goes without saying that first names are to be used only under the proper, restricted circumstances (never among strangers), and that "sir," "madam," or "miss" is an appropriate form of address.
The rituals governing a gentleman's behavior toward ladies are the best developed of all. A gentleman in a private home stands as long as any lady is on her feet. A gentleman is always introduced or presented to a lady, never the other way round, even if "he is an old gentleman of great distinction and the lady a mere slip of a girl." . . . .
Manners didn't matter only to the rich, though. Visiting New York from London in 1938, Cecil Beaton notes that "the general rules of behavior are rigidly adhered to, and Mrs. Post's book on etiquette is as strictly interpreted in Gotham as the Koran in Mecca. Competitions are held whereat children from all parts of New York vie with each other to become the politest child in Manhattan, and demonstrate their courtesy before judges." On one occasion, the winner was a 13-year-old girl from the Lower East Side.
Courtesy wasn't only decorative, either. It was a terse and pregnant form of communication. A small gesture might speak volumes. At a Lower East Side relief station, Mayor La Guardia dropped in unannounced. He was enraged by the lackadaisical bureaucrats he found. A supervisor wandered over to see what the fuss was, and mistook the visitor for another out-of-work troublemaker. The mayor knocked the hat off his head: "Take off your hat when you speak to a citizen." After supervising an on-the-spot reorganization, the mayor stomped off; on his way out, he pointed to the man with the knocked-off hat, declaring: “There’s another S. of a B. who has no job.”
We used to have a culture of order and rules and this applied very much so to relations between the sexes. Liberals destroyed that world. Women are now the equal of men. This is what feminists demanded. OK, you got what you wanted.
Rikurzhen, you seem obsessed with attractiveness and have gone on endlessly in this and other threads about judging people on appearance. Yes, some people are just that shallow. There're generally people who are so insecure that they have to tear others down to feel better about themselves.
In case this is news to you, when people first meet you the first aspect of you that is noticed is your appearance. This aspect is judged, by all of us, and it's judged because it's all the information we have until we develop more. This means that those catcalling men have judged the woman to be attractive and they're expressing their interest in getting to know her better or simply letting her know that they find her attractive. They're not catcalling because they've looked deep into the woman's soul and discerned that she has a terrific personality and warm kindness.
You ranted in another thread that women reporters will never be taken seriously because they're only interested in writing about how something affects women. Are you of the opinion that what women think or how something impacts on their lives is of no consequence?
If women want to be judged as professionals, then act like professionals and leave female solipsism for their personal lives.
Getting back to the video, if men in her workplace constantly made the kinds of comments to this woman that were made in the video as she went about doing her job, she would have grounds for a sexual harassment lawsuit. So if this behaviour constitutes sexual harassment in one situation, why isn't it sexual harassment in this one?
Yes, another instance of women changing a culture that they fought to find acceptance in, the workplace. The reason that this would be considered sexual harassment is because liberals have interjected their totalitarianism into private enterprise and made employers liable for protecting women's feelings. Women have a knack for trying to use government to be their protector while simultaneously claiming to be the equal of men. The reason that catcalling isn't sexual harassment is because the government can't control the speech of free citizens the way an employer can control the speech of his employees.
And just to make the point very clear - the problem here is not the behavior of men, it's the existence of legal codes called sexual harassment laws. If women are the equal of men, then they don't require special laws to protect them. If we are a free society, then we don't need government controlling behavior in the private lives of people. For women who worked in an environment where men made them feel uncomfortable, the women could complain and either the man or the woman would leave. The women who leave will take their talent to a workplace where management frowns on men "harassing" women and this big sorting in the labor marketplace would result in "harassing" workplaces slowly being driven out of business because all of the talented women are now working for "non-harassing" workplaces and making them more efficient and profitable.
What you're suggesting is that sexual harassment law is both legitimate and should be extended to the public venue. Speech is not a crime. Assault is a crime. The solution is not to criminalize speech in public as liberals have criminalized speech in work places. The marketplace was well suited to solving the problem of women needing special protection. There's a reason why women prefer male bosses over female bosses, why both men and women prefer male dominated work environments to female dominated work environments and that's because people can breath easier when they don't have to tip-toe around so many female issues. All male environments have the freest environment - men are free to be who they are without worrying about upsetting some other guy's feelings.
Also, if you're a dick to them, how is your putting them on ignore hurtful to them? Doing them a favor really. 
