I’m sorry your experiences have been so crappy.
I wonder how many, if any, acts of molestation have been averted since it’s become common for people to be so suspicious. It seems like people who actually want to molest children aren’t having trouble finding victims, while innocent people are left to worry whether someone will assume the very worst of an innocent action.
I don’t feel like I’m assumed to be a child molester. Nobody has ever glared at me for looking at their kids, and I haven’t lived a particularly isolated life.
I would definitely feel wierd just watching strangers’ children play, without any other obvious reason for me being there. If I went jogging and ended up resting at the park for awhile while children were running around, nobody would look at me strangely. If I got out of a car and peered over the fence at the same children, it would be wierd.
I’ve come across people on neutral ground, like in the supermarket checkout line or something, and had entire conversations with their children without getting the feeling like I was making anyone nervous. Maybe it’s just my personality.
I have two male friends who are teachers, one elementary school and one high-school. Apart from all of the usual amusing bitching about asshole principals, clueless parents and smart-ass students, I also hear the paranoia about never, ever being alone with a female student. Ever. Always get a female teacher, nurse or staff member to accompany, no matter how trivial or no matter how urgent. Personally, I’m just waiting to hear about something seriously bad happening because help was unnecessarily delayed.
My own story: I was walking down a mall about 10 paces behind a mother and her 2 daughters who were walking side by side. Stores were on our left and mother was on the left, looking in the windows while holding hands with her oldest daugher (about 10 or 11) who in turn was holding the hand of her younger sister (about 7 or 8). Mom sees something shiny in the window and makes a hard-left turn, yanking her oldest daughter into the store with her. Unfortunately, the oldest loses her grip on the youngest who blithely continues on straight-ahead for a few more paces before realizing that her mother and sister had completely disappeared.
Since I had seen what had happened and the girl was beginning to panic, I walked up to her and said something like “don’t worry, your mother just turned into that store” and I pointed out where they had gone. At that moment, the mother comes running up to me and asks me what the hell I was doing. After I explained that I was just telling the girl where her mother was, mom gave me a cold-glare and a sarcastic thank-you before yanking her youngest into the store and giving her a lecture. No doubt about talking to strange men.
I have to say that incident really shocked me and it still bothers me even though it happened 7 or 8 years ago. It’s certainly made me very conscious about giving other people’s children a wide berth when their parents or guardians aren’t around.
Let me be the first to say that, as a 35 year old father of two young girls, I don’t think this has affected me much. I have an almost 2 year old daughter and an almost 6 year old. I pick them up and take care of them at least 4 nights a week while my wife is working and also take them places on the weekend by myself. A few times a year, I keep them for a week or more at a time by myself while my wife travels. I have done so since they were born.
I would be lying if I claimed I never thought about this issue but it is very rarely in the context of me and my daughters. I have just noticed that some men are afraid of these accusations and some of it may be warranted. I march into pre-school and elementary school several times a week with them and never get treated with anything other than respect. I have never noticed the parents of my daughters’ friends treating me oddly either.
I am a somewhat masculine male of larger stature. I can easily see how some other males might set my warning buzzers off when it comes to my daughters but it hasn’t happened yet so I don’t think this is universal. If any of my childrens’ grandparents or close relatives refused to change a diaper under these pretenses, I couldn’t force them to but I would think that the decision was just sad/lazy/delusional although not directed at anyone in particular.
Possibly the most insulted I’ve ever been as a gay man was when I was in a production of The Music Man. The kid who played Winthrop was about 10 but looked about 6 (very small for his age) and each night his mom would come in and help him dress. Because he had a small child’s vocal power he wore a mike and he tucked the battery pack into the seat of his pants. His parents were a high ranking military officer and his wife, who was a professor at the university where I worked.
One night ‘Winthrop’s’ mom was late in coming to the dressing room and it was almost curtain time. Winthrop came up to me (I was one of about 2 or 3 guys in the dressing room) and asked me to help with his mike pack. I put it in the seat of his pants where it always went- which of course is when his mom (again- an educated woman and from a big “enlightened” city so you’d think she wouldn’t leap to such conclusions) walked in, and actually literally gasped and said “Oh no ‘Winthrop’, not him!” (She didn’t call him Winthrop, obviously.)
I’m told that my face drained in about half a second until I was roughly the color of alabaster (and my “white temper” is the dangerous one, not the “red anger” which will flare but be over in seconds). I walked out of the dressing room because I knew I was on the verge of- something not pleasant- and I heard her saying, way too loudly to be really talking to Winthrop [i.e. meant for me to overhear] “I just meant that you know it’s almost curtain time and he’s one of the leads and so he doesn’t… have… time… and all…”. (Point of fact I wasn’t in the first scene at all and neither was Winthrop- we both come in during the second scene [“Oh there’s nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you…”].)
She was always so sweet to me after that incident that a diabetic friend went into a brief coma once around her, but she never apologized. It also wasn’t just me who took umbrage- one of the chorus members from the cast who was also in there and who was a high school jock straighter than the road to hell was I think madder than I was and told everybody who would listen “Do you know what that bitch said while Jon was standing right there and…”. I was really glad to have the confirmation of offense and interpretation.
But ooohhhh yeaahahhh… I resented it. I was icy to her at every function I ever saw her at from then on. I wanted to tell her "You know, your son is 10 and almost a midget… now in 15 or maybe even in 10 years if he grows up and he looks like, say… Elijah Wood [another curly haired small for his age kid who grew up to be a hobbit] and then, when he’s 20ish or so, he asks me to put my hand in his pants… I’ll admit, I might play David Cop-a-feel, but then I kinda think that if a 20 year old is asking a grown man to put his hand in his pants he might sorta be willing to take that risk… but til puberty and then some considerable growing room on the other side of puberty, trust me… there is nothing in your kid’s pants I have any desire to see, feel, or have knowledge of save for perhaps the mike pack itself and that only if I lose my own vocal power, which isn’t bloody likely as I can speak in the middle of a football field and be heard in the frigging BLEACHERS!’
Anyway, sorry for the hijack. More OP, while not child molestation there’s a slightly related accusation that always pissed me off as a man (not as a gay man but just as a man). It’s whenever you hear about a rape trial and it comes into play that the woman was wearing a thong or a tongue stud or tight leather pants and has “been around the block” before or whatever, and the defense is basically arguing “With that outfit and with her past she was asking to be raped” and “no man could really be held responsible for tapping that”. It pisses me off to hear that as a man I’m presumed to have no more self control than a “me want me take!” caveman mounting a captive, and yet there have been accused rapists aquitted on basically this type of defense. (I’ve wondered if a gay man accused [and guilty of] raping or even sexually harassing an attractive straight guy would ever be able to get a sentence reduced or charges dismissed on this- “Well, the alleged victim came into the gay club and he was wearing some hip hugging jeans on what we can all agree is a sweet little ass, and he had on that muscle shirt… of course this guy’s gonna try and tap it.”)
Bothers me a great deal. It’s the Nuclear Weapon of personal attacks and anti-male propoganda. There is no real defense.
I have a seven year old niece and although I’ve taken to babysitting her and her 10 year old brother in the last six months or so, I avoided it in the past because of these kinds of societal ills. It got a lot easier after I was married and divorced, because before then, I was a unmarried male in my 30’s, so of course I had to be suspect. :rolleyes:
I’ve also been very careful since my getting-really-close-to-being-disowned older sister has made the occasional crack along those lines - in the child’s presence. That’s just hurtful and wrong, and as an older gay woman who came out before coming out was common, I expect better of her. Unfortunately, she’s prone to saying exceedingly nasty things out of the blue.
A sad story to relate:
I took a YA Lit class in MLS school and one of the assignments was to observe teens in “their natural setting”-- any place except the mall. (we’ll disregard the treatment of teens as some of Jane Goodall’s chimps and just move on). I did mine at Caribou Coffee, others did a Youth Group church meeting, the movie house etc. The sole male in this class did his at the library. While he was in the YA section, taking notes, 2 librarians approached him and the lone security guard–all separately. They wanted to know what he was doing, lingering in the YA section. He said he felt angry and humiliated and I don’t blame him. He explained it was for a class and he said he wasn’t sure they believed him.
I find that sad as hell. I can only imagine what would go on if we had had to observe little ones. 
Men have a lot to contribute to the raising of children, and not just their own. I think that stranger danger has gone too far in many ways. (and the sick irony is that most kids are hurt by people they know and trust). I don’t know how to change it.
My husband was fantastic with babies. I even resented it–that’s how good he was with them. He could calm, soothe, change, feed, burp, rock, sing etc. He adored the kids as infants and toddlers, and he was an excellent father. Now that they’re older, he has trouble relating to them as teens and he tends to baby the 10 year old. And much to my dismay and our daughter’s disgust, he occasionally makes inappropriate comments (at home) about our daughter’s teen friends*. So, here’s this guy who’s great with babies, but can’t seem to see 17 year old girls as people in their own right and not sex objects (not all the time–he’s not a total jerk). He wouldn’t act on any of those feelings, but strangers aren’t to know that. What if he slips up one day and makes that kind of comment to the girl or anyone else?
For me, his Jekyll/Hyde bit seems to sum it up fairly well. YMMV.
I rarely get that vibe, but I know it’s there. I have 3 kids, including a 3 yo daughter. If I encounter other people’s kids in public, I am usually quick to say something like “I’ve got 3 kids myself” which usually gets all but the psychos to let down their shields a bit.
I do think that sort of paranoia is misguided, because often molesters are somebody known to the family, not strangers.
I think children are delightful, and I enjoy them immensely. I think that everyone, whether parents or not, should be able to enjoy their antics without worrying about such things.
I was in Buenos Aries on business, waiting for an elevator one flight up from the lobby of my hotel, when the door opened to reveal a little girl of about 6 or 7, alone and becoming increasingly panicked, pretty clearly having just become accidentally separated from a parent. She immediately attached herself to me as an adult who could help. Making matters worse, I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. As it happened, there was nobody else there; I’d have eagerly enlisted any woman, or hotel employee, to deal with this.
I got her back to her parents, but I have to say I was really nervous about the whole situation. I walked her down to the lobby on a large staircase, making sure to appear as obvious as possible that I was walking her into the lobby, not towards the front door, pointing her attention towards the elevators so she’d spot her parents quickly (assuming that’s where they were, but it seemed a good guess). They spotted us, she spotted them, and all was well. The parents were smiling and thankful I’d helped their daughter – but honestly, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d grabbed me and called the police.
So yeah, it bothered me that when I first encountered her, I had to consider whether I would be better off just leaving her there distraught and crying and lost, rather than risk helping.
I once got stinkeye from a parent for reading in a public park. You know, because the only shaded benches available faced the play equipment.
Yeah, I resented that a bit. How 'bout you just keep your eye on your kid, instead of fixing your gaze on me while I’m trying to enjoy a little afternoon reading? It’s not like I was wearing a trench-coat or anything, either. Serve you right if the little blighter was carried off by an eagle.
It both bothers me and makes me aware of my actions, but probably in the opposite direction of most here. I go out of my way to ensure I DON’T self censure my actions around kids, my own or others. On Sunday we were at the local pool for my daughter’s birthday party. I was in the kiddie pool with my six year old, three year old, and off and on their older siblings. I was giving them rides back and forth on my back as I swam underwater. Some of the other children in the pool asked for a ride, so I gave them rides too(one decided to steer me with my ponytail, I gave him a warning, and then told him he couldn’t ride anymore when he did it again). We brought squirt guns and pool toys and were sharing them with anyone who wanted to play. One little girl, probably about three, liked nothing more than following me around the pool squirting me in the face, and I squirted/splashed her right back.
In the big pool I had a queue of kids, my own or party invitees, lined up for me to pick them up and toss them. I’d have them curl up in a ball, place one hand under the crook of their knees, the other along their spine, then toss them a yard or so. If they wanted a “big throw” I’d stand up and toss them a couple yards. One kid I’ve never seen before was very excited and thought it looked like fun(which is the impression you get when you see kids squealing with delight as they cannonball from seven feet in the air into four feet of water) and asked if he could have a turn. I tossed him a couple times too.
When I see kids vandalizing play equipment at the playground, I’ll tell them to stop. If I have to seek our their parents, I will. If their parents aren’t around(which happens distressingly often) I’ll tell them to leave or I’ll call the park authorities. In general I try to be a throwback to the times when it was simply good citizenship to exert your adult authority on misbehaving children, or to play with them if they want to be played with. I fight down the “what if someone thinks this is inappropriate” reaction and remain open to interaction with the kids the same way I would with my own, or the way I would like others to treat my kids. I see casual adult interaction as part of a child’s life, even with “strangers” and they shouldn’t be afraid of it. Certain lines can not be crossed(don’t tell them your address, phone number, get in a car, accept candy without first checking with mom/dad, etc.) but aside from those fairly bright lines, adults are people too.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’m not a man, but the assumption that all men have evil intentions towards children makes me furious. My husband is an elementary school teacher, and I do worry that some whack-a-loon or vindictive parent might one day accuse him of soemthing untoward.
A thousand times yes. Sure, there are sick, twisted perverts out there. But 99% of men (and women) aren’t child molestors or rapists.
I had a bad experience at a young age and have been nervous about being around kids since then. As a summer job when I was in college, I had a job cleaning the bathrooms and showers at a campground. Before we started cleaning, we would post a closed sign outside the door and then lock the screen door of the latrine with a hook and eyelet. Almost every time I would get the door latched, someone, usually half drunk, would come and pull on the door and beg to be let in. I would try to get the person to wait, or send him to another latrine.
Well, one afternoon a boy of about 10 years old came and pulled on the door. He saw it was locked and went and told his mom that it was locked. She came up to the screen door and said that her son had to use the bathroom now and that he was a child and could not wait.
“Whatever,” I thought and went and unlatched the door. The boy entered and I relatched the screen door. Mom has a fit. How dare I try to lock her son in the bathroom with me. She was going to see that I lost my job. She believed that I should get out of there right then or she would call the cops. I unlatched the door and told her to get in and make sure he was alright. She had me in her sight the entire time, so she could see that I was no where near her son.
I was more pissed than I have ever been in my life. To this day, if I am around children that I am not related to, I make sure there are other adults present.
SSG Schwartz
Wow, these posts are so sad.
ITA about the extreme over-representation of kidnapping in the media. Here’s the publication you want to look at, with stats. Their site has more info on other kids of crimes against children.
Kids are more likely to be killed by lightning than in a random abduction.
OTOH, I know how afraid moms are. They’re just scared shitless. A guy reading a book next to the playground is going to set off everyone’s alarm bells. Definitely.
That’s why I go to the graveyard if I want to sit outside reading. No kids there. 
ETA: Before you think I’m too weird, some of the old family graveyards at Mt. Hope here in Rochester are absolutely lovely, and have benches built into them. I figure they wouldn’t mind a little quiet company.
Me too. I won’t be alone around a minor female if I can possibly avoid it, period. Even my two nieces.
I’ve told my wife that I’m not comfortable with this and why. She thinks I’m nuts, but many many times I’ve gotten the look from other parents when I’ve been out with my son on a bike ride and sit down in the park and he disappears into a play structure and I’m left alone near other kids. Many many times I’d had kids in the preschool be near me while I waited for my son, and gotten suspicious, nasty looks from moms as they went past while I was doing nothing inappropriate whatsoever, in plain view of the childcare workers.
This really really pisses me off, but I see no alternative than to have nothing to do with children whatsoever unless an adult woman is also present at all times. This makes me sad – I love kids, but I can’t be near them unless I have female supervision and a good reason to be there.
Like I said earlier, it doesn’t have to be that way in terms of male on girl molestation accusations. I have never had a problem with it. I just treat my young daughters as my children without any pretense or remorse. However, I did get quite the scare a few months back. My oldest daughter, then in Kindergarten, was having some trouble adjusting to recess and group activities. Her teacher asked that she meet with a counselor to see if there was anything wrong. My Kindergarten daughter has always been the tom-boy, rough-housing, drama queen. She sneaks up on me when I am not looking and lunges into my lap, wrestles, plays chasing games etc. A few times, she has fallen down, bonked her head or just run around so much she gets worn out and keels over into furniture.
I got a frantic call from my wife that the counselor needed to meet with both of us right away that afternoon. It was one of the few days where I had a strict work obligation and could not do it. Many hissy phone calls ensued. Now, I knew exactly what was going on because I am roughly familiar with the system and I know my daughter. My wife went and said that things were not pleasant but they ended up OK for me. The bad part was that my wife railed on me for days for not dropping everything and rushing to my own heated defense. Fuck that. I never did anything wrong in the first place and I can’t prove a negative in front of three emotional females (my wife, the counselor, and my daughter).
My daughter just likes to play rough with lots of people including her stocky male friends that she beats the crap out of. I can easily see how these things can turn into a witch hunt. I feel that I handle these things well in that I just address them mainly by just acting like I would anyway but I could easily believe that a given male could be screwed over by this ill-informed, communal thought process.
My daughter is 8 years old, tall, blonde, and beautiful. Just a month ago, at her grandma’s house she went outside in her bathing suit to play in a sprinkler in the front yard. I watched through the window as two landscapers Stopped mowing a lawn, got in their truck and drove to just a few doors down to watch my daughter cavorting. This was not let’s-watch-little-kids-at-play-isn’t-this-cute type watching. They were watching her as a sexual object. When I walked outside and towards them, they started the truck and drove past and around the block to start mowing again.
There is a radar that you get if you have children that you love. I don’t beleive in ESP, but I swear it’s true. You just get that sense that innapropriate attention is being focussed on your child, and you look around and you keep looking, and you find the one who is doing it, and you stare at them so that they know that you know.
You watch everybody, because some people are good at hiding it.
I had never understood or even thought about what it would be like to be a woman. I think it must be a little like when I walked home alone in a very bad neighborhood with a lot of money in my pocket. It must be like that all the time. Any man can overpower you and you are looked at as an object of lust. How difficult to trust in such a circumstance.
I worry about my daughter. She gets attention that she should not. The man stopping and staring at her as she plays at Sesame Place or at the pool, even boys somewhat older than her.
At school, a boy stuck his hand down her pants and grabbed her ass against her will. I’ve talked to some female coworkers about this. I’ve talked to my wife about this. I was told that it would be worthless and innapropriate for me to speak to this boy, that the school and the parents would handle it. I talked to him anyway, and I told him that as far as I was concerned, anything that went into my daughter’s pants belonged to me, and that if he touched her again I would break off his hand and take it off with me. As I was saying this, I felt shamed for attacking a little kid over what was probably a misunderstanding, but then I saw the boy’s reaction.
This seven year old boy understood completely. There was no misunderstanding. There was something off with him and he was a predator, and he had been caught. That was all.
Apparently, this is what every girl in the world has to deal with, has to learn about, and has to live with.
Fine. I understand. She will grow and mature and she will make her and learn. But, she does not have the tools nor the ability to even be aware or defend herself from this. She is not a sexual being. She is a child.
There are few things that I know for absolutely certain. I am not a fundamentally religious person but I believe in a God.
Whether or not he is real or a mere psychological artifact of my primitive evolved brain is a moot point. I know for a fact my purpose in his plan.
As far as the welfare of my daughter is concerned I am the Hammer of God.
So…
I couldn’t give two shits how “sad” you think it is that I am more than a little concerned about my daughter’s well-being. The simple fact is that there are monsters out there, forces of evil that would do my daughter and that those forces look and act just like you.
It doesn’t have anything to do with “this country” or paranoia. It is not “sad” or “a shame” and I have no empathy for the smug sadness and feeling of being put upon or falsely suspected, because my daughter’s safety comes before your feelings.
Tough shit. Deal with it.
If you have any clue at all, you should get that warm fuzzy feeling when you get treated this way. I do. It means that you are approaching children that are loved and watched over.
It is a warning sign to those who might not have the best intentions, and it makes them go away and turn their attentions elsewhere. It makes them go away when they know you are watching and suspicious.
I may be at a playground or a pool or an event with lots of children and occasionally I will lock eyes or notice someone else watching their children and watching the people who are watching and interracting with their children in the same way that I am.
It makes me happy.
We watch for monsters because there are monsters.
If this bothers you, or you don’t like it, than you do not understand and I don’t want you around my children anyway.
Wait…what exactly were they accusing you of, and based on what? It’s not really clear from your post.
I have a great relationship with my brothers two daughters, but I’m so glad that the younger one has turned 18. As I told her a few years back, the two of us going to see a movie probably looked to outsiders like an Amber Alert.
I’m a 47 year old man and my wife and I never had any kids - my usual explanation is that they “cut into the toy budget”. But mainly because I figured out that my place in life was as an uncle rather than a father. I figure my job is to teach the babies how to make silly noises. I’ve even been “adopted” by the families of friends as a surrogate uncle, and to help the kids understand just how long the stuff they post on the Net will last and how it could affect their lives in the future.
But I can’t even smile at babies I see on the street without worrying that some parent will misinterpret it. Do you know how difficult it is to refrain from smiling at a baby who is smiling at you?