Apparent White Knight here - nice job comfortable life, get smiles back from kids and laughs often and often smiles from Moms. Seriously I think you guys who get those reactions are not getting it because you are male. Some people may in fact be nice folks (or not), and need not be fat ugly or basement dwelling … they just give off vibes that creep people out.
Sorry. But blaming it on your gender is misplaced.
Oh, pobrecito. You poor white man, so oppressed because you creep some women out. Seriously, my heart bleeds for you.
edit: Nice move, by the way, with suggesting that your opponents call everyone who disagrees with them names, prefacing that charge by calling people who disagree with you “apologist White Knights.” I love a little bit of self-parody every now and then.
Actually, I’m gay & women keep trying to pawn their kids off on me. Nice bigoted try, though, Mr. White Knight. Trying to get laid, are we? I don’t need it.
That could not possibly be funnier. You seem to think that the only reason a man would deny getting glared at by women when he smiles at kids is that he’s trying to get laid, and you wonder why people find you creepy? Got it.
You are not just saying you don’t get glared at, you are saying nobody else gets glared at either.
I would in this regard disagree with LOHD. You may not be delusional. But if you are glared at you are being glared at because you, for some reason, come off as a creep. (Some people give off that vibe even if they in fact are not creeps.) Not because of your gender. Male my whole life, just as male as you are, and not glared at once, after many many thousands of casual public interactions with kids I don’t know and who do not know me.
Maybe you just don’t notice?
get lives suggests that he can’t smile at a baby without being glared at like he’s a criminal–not that it happens occasionally, but that it happens every single time. That’s what I think is most likely a delusion.
If he says that once in awhile it happens, I’m far likelier to believe him.
Or don’t have such an imagination? Seriously between the two I’d say imagining a glare is more likely than mistaking a smile for one.
Hmmm though, if a glare glances in grocery store and no one gives a …?
Here’s the reality - many other males living within the same society do not experience glares when they smile at or interact with kids out with their parents. We are not experiencing being treated as threats until proven otherwise.
Three explanations immediately suggest themselves:
We are mistaking glares for smiles. Foolish us.
You are imagining being glared at. Delusional you.
You are being glared at because you come off as a creep and other guys don’t come off that way.
I would posit that the first is least likely and the last most. But you could have paranoid delusions; it is possible.
Oh, that sounds less plausible, unless there’s something odd about how he looks. My husband smiles at children and babies ALL THE TIME, and he says it’s quite rare for anyone to glare at him. It has certainly happened from time to time. But usually, the parents either ignore him or are happy someone is entertaining their kid.
You should have asked her when she was planning on changing so you knew what time to hang out in the women’s locker room.
I’m not really down with the second-wave notion that these stereotypes of women are so deeply, offensively misogynistic, and that the highest calling for a woman is to be a powerful CEO or whatever. Personally, I think some of those characteristics really are more abundant in women, and that it is the opposite of misogynistic to say so. But then, I value a nearly infinite variety of attributes more (as you might guess from my moniker) than the ability to climb over others to reach the rarefied air of the upper echelon of the corporate world.
And of course your post ignores the fact that women have gone from being very marginalized in postsecondary education to getting more degrees than men (first it was bachelors, then masters, and now I think JDs and Ph.D.s have joined the list as well). Calling this state of affairs “the end of men” may be hypberbole, but it’s certainly not your grandfather’s patriarchy by any stretch of the imagination.
Wow, what a tangent. Anyhoo…
I’m a bit troubled by this framing, which puts all the blame for the attitudes of others on the person who is the target of the negative label. Reversing the genders might illustrate why. Let’s say Jane Smith likes to wear short skirts, a preference she has every right to have. Jane expresses frustration that she keeps hearing people mutter “slut” and “whore”, clearly referring to her. Would it be fair to say “well, majority rules, so I guess you just come across as a skanky ho”? Or would we, I hope, say the people making that judgment about her are being unfair, not taking in the totality of her personhood, etc.?
Point is, if a perfectly decent and not actually creepy guy “comes off as a creep”, that strikes me as an unfair judgment by others, not something we should shrug off as his problem.
No the reverse would be if Jane Smith who likes to wear short skirts claims that all any non-elderly woman needs to do is walk down the street and people will mutter that she is a slut or a whore.
The claim is simply untrue, even if the judgment about her is unfair.
Likewise claiming that all any non-elderly man needs to do is smile at a baby and they will be glared at, because they are male and for no other reason, is simply untrue.
In both cases the judgment may be unfair (or not in any particular case). But the judgment is not something based on gender alone nor something that all or even most of the gender have to deal with. And that is the patently false claim being made.
Now Ms. Smith argues that she is entitled to wear short skirts and maybe shirts that show lots of cleavage if she wants to, that guys are assholes to pass those judgments and that those guys need to keep their comments unsaid. And personally I would not argue against her. And maybe mothers should smile (or alternatively avoid eye contact) to every guy equally as well, no matter how much one gives her the creeps compared to all the other men who smile at her kid. That would be the parallel argument … one not being made.
In short, a very crappy analogy.
You are moving the goalposts. I am not discussing the truth value of “all any non-elderly man needs to do is smile at a baby and they will be glared at, because they are male and for no other reason”. That was left back a tangent or two ago. I’m reacting to the statement “you are being glared at because you come off as a creep and other guys don’t come off that way”.
To use a more directly parallel structure, it strikes me as rather similar to telling a bullied high school kid “You are being constantly slammed into lockers because you come off as a pathetic loser and other guys don’t come off that way”.
Now, the victim of the bullying may have been under some illusion that the bullies were picking on every guy who walked by. But disabusing the poor fellow of his illusions in this manner by assuring him that no, it’s just his particular fate because he’s a lower class of being, does not strike me as kind, helpful, or fair.
Is this analogy a little more clear?
That’s clear, but it’s unfair. Slamming someone into lockers and glaring at someone are not the same thing, not even analogous: one’s a crime, the other’s a perfectly acceptable social reaction.
What complicates this case is the general whininess of the MRA movement who adores making self-pitying claims like this one about how horrible teh wimmins treat straight white men. Such claims are common enough around here that it’s difficult to tell whether someone making a similar claim is coming from a contemptible MRA perspective or is genuinely reporting something they’ve noticed in their lives. In considering such claims, I tend to consider what I know about the poster from other interactions with them–I’ll let you read between the lines to figure out how such previous interactions color my opinions of posters in this thread.
In any given circumstance where a woman glares at a man who is smiling at a kid, there are additional factors that would help me decide whether there was any fault in the situation:
-Is the man black, and the woman glares at black men but not white men who smile at her kid?
-Is there any other racial combination that would fit in the above sentence?
-Is the man loitering, hands in pockets, staring at kids and following them into secluded parts of the playground?
-Has the man been staring at one kid for awhile?
-Does the man make eye contact only with the kid, and not with the parent? (I actually wonder if this is part of the problem: it sees to me an unwritten social norm that if you’re gonna greet a child, you look around and find the accompanying adult and exchange a smile with them).
-Does the child approach the man first?
-Does the man look ungroomed in a way that might suggest, fairly or otherwise, mental illness? (I know I’m opening a potential can of worms by suggesting this and don’t know entirely how I feel about it).
There are a lot of other things that would affect my judgment. But if someone says it happens to them all the time, and it almost never happens to me, there’s something going on. I maintain that the likeliest explanation is delusion, possibly MRA-induced delusion.
Huh?
The comment “you are being glared at because you come off as a creep and other guys don’t come off that way” is made explicitly in reaction to the claim that males are glared at just because they are male. That not be something left back a tangent or two ago. It is the claim being disputed.
Should mothers “glare” at anyone? Should they smile at every person who approaches their child, no matter what their internal sense of that person is (even if it be completely off the mark)? Is the lack of smiling and an expression of not appreciating the attention in any way comparable to a bully slamming someone into a locker?
Sorry but the expectation that a mother has to be completely friendly with every person who tries to interact with their kid, no matter what their gut is telling them, is absurd, and an expression of not appreciating the attention is not the same as bullying.
And indeed sometimes a kid who thinks (s)he is always the target of insults is always being insulted and picked on … but if they claim it happens to them always, from everyone, in every environment, the possibility also needs to be considered that they are misinterpreting benign comments as insults.
But again the claim under discussion is “Try being a man. I can’t even smile at cute little babies in public …” … and sorry, if you feel you can’t smile at cute babies either there IS something about you and maybe how you smile that makes mothers feel (I am sure completely without justification) uncomfortable somehow, or you are imagining it. It is not just because you are a man.
Yeahhh… you just injected an awful lot of you and your biases, assumptions, and default ways of thinking into my words while disregarding what I actually said, which brings me back to my very first point. This debate is a waste of time.
Don’t ask me unless you’re actually willing to listen.
Hey not just resumes … people judge and respond to hurricanes differently based on the gender of the name as well. No it is not an Onion article, if only.
Yeah, these stereotypes are so ingrained and automatic that we apply them to natural disasters! (It’s a girl hurricane … how strong could it be?)
Very interesting about the hurricane names. SMH at that one. But I am not totally shocked: I took a course on the sociology of disasters and emergency management, and the demographic group that is by far the most likely to stubbornly “stay in place” rather than evacuate is basically Archie Bunker: white male heads of household in their 40s and 50s. Which is the same kind of peson I’d imagine being statistically more likely to be sexist about hurricane names.
I’ll take Option C: that I believe I’m up on my social norms, and I don’t just go around violating them willy-nilly to tabulate how many parents (not sure why it’s just “mothers” being thrown around here) will object or give me the stinkeye. Maybe if I did, as some kind of experiment, I’d be surprised to find that most of them don’t mind. But I really doubt that. As I mentioned upthread, I’d be uncomfortable with an unknown man smiling at or interacting with my kids, while it wouldn’t faze me in the least if a woman did it. Honestly, I think it’s a little naive *not *to feel this way as a parent.
It’s a “social norm” to look away from babies if you’re a man? Not where I come from. And if you really think that it’s naive not to feel threatened by men smiling at your children, well, I can only say I am sorry for you, and for your children.