You know, we had this same argument when that video came out with the model doing nine hours of walking, and getting hammered with catcalls and stalkers. Guys sidling up beside her, etc.
A number of men here insisted that the video had to be faked, because of course, no one in real life would attract that much harassment.
I’ve learn on this Board not to waste time or emotion arguing with idiots.
Ya know, I don’t know any of the people in this thread, and I don’t know who’s a reliable narrator, and who’s not.
That said, I distrust stories posted and reposted on Facebook about how some creepy guy followed someone’s daughter around Wal-Mart or wherever. I’m convinced that many of them are the products of the same kind of diseased imagination that gave us the Satanic ritual abuse panic of a couple of decades ago.
Here’s why:
Being the 60-year-old father of two little girls (now 5.5 and 2.5) has been an eye-opener.
I can’t keep track of how many times I’ve been accosted and challenged in department stores by busybody paranoid women who think I’m some creep kidnapping girls. I really have lost track of the number of times some self-righteous harpy has demanded that I prove my connection to my girls on the playground. I’ll be sitting there on a bench, perhaps with a book, while my girls are zipping around with their little friends, and someone will come up to me and say, in a self-righteous tone, “um, excuse me, adults aren’t permitted in this playground without a child.” And I’ll say, “I know, it’s fine, I’ve got two.” And the busybody will demand that I point them out to her. Because obviously I’m lying and I’m actually there to snatch her little darling. Once, one of these people actually went up to my older daughter, after I’d graciously pointed out my girls, and asked her if I was her daddy. That was so far out of line I would have been justified in calling the cops on her. But the busybody took advantage of the fact that I’m actually a pretty decent guy and didn’t want to cause a disturbance in front of or involving the kids, mine and hers.
Fair enough. Did any of those fire-eyed maids of smoky war offer at you, all hot and bleeding, with a can of beans to the snout?
Or just like talk
I mean, talking sounds bad too
No. Only threatened to call the cops if I didn’t prove to their satisfaction my connection to my children.
Really, I’ve been hit before. I’d rather deal with that than have the cops come and treat me like a child molester in front of my children.
My point is, these stories that circulate about creepy guys are mostly bullshit, the products of the same minds that assume I’m a perv because I’m older than the typical father of toddlers.
I’d say it depends on the story, some of them are obviously nonsense.
You realize most of these stories are first-person accounts, right? Are you suggesting that because of this experience, in several years, you’ll be less likely to believe your daughters if they come home and tell you a similar story?
I’m talking about accounts of some person, who sees someone who looks creepy in the same aisle, claiming that they encountered a sex trafficker or something at Target.
Not, absolutely not, a first-person account by a child of someone actually doing something.
I have answered you very politely. You will now leave my daughters out of this conversation.
Yeah, there ya go. Stories that look too much like urban legends, or maybe have been forwarded so much that any grains of truth got lost in the shuffle, can be safely discounted.
Imagine if a black resident were in a wealthy, mostly-white neighborhood, and were constantly accosted: “Do you belong here? You don’t look like you belong here. This is a gated community; intruders will be reported to police.”
It’s only talk, but that talk has a substantial effect. We wouldn’t brush it off as a case of “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” sort of thing.
Exactly. It’s hardly on the same level (I’m a solidly middle-class white guy), but it has made me very self-conscious when I’m out in public, in spaces mostly occupied by moms of a more typical age, or (less frequently) fathers of a more typical age. I’m always looking around thinking “who’s going to think there’s something funny going on here, and how can I insulate my girls from thinking there’s something peculiar about their family situation?”
That said, I’m pretty sure it’s nothing compared to what a black guy faces in a mostly white area. I’m fortunate to live in a pretty integrated (by race/ethnicity, not economically, unfortunately) area, but a lot of this city isn’t like that.
Those are not the kind of stories we’re talking about here, though, which are first-person accounts by women of men’s creepy behavior which may not clearly break a law but which is unsettling, obnoxious and frightening.
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I’ve found grown-up women to be truthful as well.
Since I asked you very politely, I would expect no less.
My question was about you, not your daughters.
Speaking of my daughter, I plan to pass along Zyada’s excellent thoughts to her, and would encourage others to do so as well.
Most every woman, when she was a young and naive, does, at least once override her own creep detector in the name of fair mindedness. Telling herself it’s unfair to judge some innocent person based on appearance or based on vibe. She sat down beside that guy on the subway, or stepped into an elevator, even though she was getting a distinct creep vibe. Only to get rubbed up against, groped or otherwise creeped on. I think you’ll find women NEVER override it again. They don’t care any more, they’re aware their well being is at stake.
If I’m walking down a deserted street and see you coming, I might cross the street. If your delicate male ego is hurt by that, it’s not my concern.
Anyone insisting the prey should override their intuition, in fairness to the hunter is beyond crazy.
Those are *exactly *the kind of stories we’re talking about here.
As have I. I do not doubt that someone who posts a story on Facebook or somewhere about having narrowly evaded being thrown in a van, or having her children thrown in a van, by sex traffickers, is telling the truth about her perception that she was almost kidnapped. Or her children were almost kidnapped.
And you got no less.
This isn’t the Pit, so I can’t express myself the way I’d like, but nonsense. You implied that I wouldn’t believe my own daughters if they told me about being harrassed/assaulted/whatever. That is personalizing this to an unwarranted degree, and beyond insulting. You were out of line.
I’m not sure who, if anyone, you’re responding to, but, just in case it’s me, I would hope my daughters will *always *trust their instincts, and not go along with anything, or stay in any situation, just 'cause she might think it’s unfair to judge someone.
Well, Saintly, at least now I have a clearer picture of what happens between you and the busybodies at the store and playground. Be well.
This is an incredibly dumb and offensive thing to say. Different things are different. If you genuinely want to represent that you don’t understand the differences here, this discussion is not going to help you understand alternative perspectives. I don’t know how else to say that. These kinds of analogies are anathema to an actual conversation about the real world, because different things are different, and if you want to live in some kind of abstract world of forms where if you find a perceived similarity, it outweighs all difference, then OK. Just don’t expect that to be convincing, because, like, slavery and Jim Crow existed, and they weren’t imposed by women with kids on adult males at the park.
That said, as it happens, I’m a male in my 30s. As such, I’m in a position to state another fact of importance, which is that the problem described by Saintly Loser is (separately from being not even the barest scintilla of a percentage of the problem of prejudice facing American blacks jesus christ do you hear yourself?) is incredibly overstated. Incredibly so. It is not completely imagined, and I certainly would never claim that he hasn’t had the experience he described. But I’m a single, childless, grown man. I interact with people’s kids all the time. It is not a problem worth mentioning.
Look at this fucking thread, guys. Somebody (may have) posted something on Facebook that hyperbolically said beat dudes up if they accost you creepily at Walmart. And here we are going back and forth about whether or not the important thing to focus on here is whether any of that creepy behavior – not specific creepy behavior, ANY of it – actually happened, which is not a thing a thinking person questions in good faith if they’ve ever been out in the world. Because some other things happened a different couple of times to some other guy. And now we’re having a semantic argument about what percentage of OK isn’t it that those things happened.
That’s our position? Creepy behavior doesn’t exist, so let’s change the subject to how we’re victims of the discussion? We can’t a priori just say well, yes, women experience creepy behavior in public? Why are we such fucking babies all the time?
I’m sorry to hear about your experiences with paranoid busybodies. That must suck, and they should rein it in. However, realistically speaking, your experiences with busybodies being paranoid about potential childnappings don’t discredit other people’s experiences with being creeped on by strangers in a Walmart.
Because pedophile kidnappers snatching little children is something that in real life happens very infrequently. So busybodies exercising vigilance against child kidnappings are mostly being paranoid. If some busybody at the playground tells me “I saved some children from being snatched by a pedophile kidnapper today!”, the odds are that her story is bullshit, even if she believes it.
Men creeping on strange women, on the other hand, is something that in real life happens all the time. So when a woman reports that some creepy dude in a Walmart sniffed her hair or masturbated at her or pressed up against her or pinched her ass, the odds are that her story is accurate.
No doubt. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I’m inclined to believe a woman’s, any woman’s, account of something that actually happened to her. My working assumption would be that, unless and until *proven *false, the story is true.
Stories about suspicious-looking people stalking Wal-Marts in the sticks seeking women and children to grab and throw into unmarked vans to sell them into sexual slavery somewhere?
Grain of salt.
You’re 30, not 60. It makes a difference. I am not perceived by most people to be the parent of the two toddlers with me. And you probably don’t live where I live, which is kind of ground zero for this bullshit (along with anti-vaxx bullshit, sadly – maybe they go together). So your experience is going to be different than mine.
As to the comparison with the experience of black people in white neighborhoods, I explicitly rejected that comparison. See my post above.
That’s not our position. Or at least not mine.
My position is that stories that are posted and re-posted on social media about something that is extremely unlikely to be factual (i.e., kidnappings of people in big-box stores) should be taken with a grain of salt.
And also (speaking for myself only) that some people read too many of these stories and see me as a predator when in fact I’m just some dad at the park with his kids. But I guess I look like a creep, because I’m twice as old as the typical parent of a toddler, and, I guess, because I’m kind of weird-looking, being very tall, very thin, very pale, and covered with tattoos and having hair down to my waist. And looking every minute of my age.