No, Actually, I'm Not A Child Molester, Thanks

[WhyNot]

@Ensign Edison

I understand that it works for the two of you, and other survivors, but there are plenty of people who feel that the physical, psychological trauma they went through was in fact hurtful unto itself. Trying to deny that could be as harmful for them as focusing on society’s reaction has been for you.

I agree. As I’ve stated before, my advice is to stop telling people what they should be or must be feeling, and listen to them, and believe them. If a person says it’s not a big deal, it’s possible it’s not a big deal. Telling them over and over again how messed up and damaged they are and are going to be for the rest of their lives only makes them question their own viewpoint (“How fucked up am I that I don’t feel fucked up? I must be a monster!” or “But I like Uncle Larry, I just wish he wouldn’t touch me like that. I must be evil and bad for liking such a bad, bad man.” or even “But that ‘bad touch’ felt kind of good. I must be just as bad as him, because I liked it.”) and eventually you start to believe everyone else that you’re messed up. Plus, it’s a great excuse when you go through that slut phase in college: “But I was MOLESTED! I’m not RESPONSIBLE! I’m ACTING OUT!” Took me 20 years to get over that nonsense and decide that NOT being messed up was permissible, too. I’m allowed to like sex without it being a pathology.

I think the converse - that someone feels it’s a big deal and people tell them to just get over it and it was nothing - is vanishingly rare these days, but just as damaging. It wasn’t right when the societal reaction to abuse was ignoring it, but the pendulum has swung too far the other way when fathers are afraid to change their baby girl’s diapers.

I’m just saying that, literally speaking, bruises heal. Few of us are permanently physically damaged, and I, personally, think more of us are long-term psychologically damaged because of the way we’re treated after abuse than the way we’re treated during.

Bottom line, let people feel what they feel. Hold their hand, offer sympathy. Don’t tell them what they feel.

[OneCentStamp]

@WhyNot

the pendulum has swung too far the other way when fathers are afraid to change their baby girl’s diapers.

We aren’t really afraid. It’s just a convenient escape hatch.

OneCentStamp, father of four and reluctant diaper guy

[Ensign_Edison]

@Hentor the Barbarian

I’m not sure anyone has suggested that there aren’t people who experience significant emotional distress, or that anyone should make an effort to deny that. I do think it’s important to recognize that, like anything, there will be a range of severity of a person’s response to such an event. It can be as harmful to be pushed towards regarding it as a devastating and overwhelming event as it would be to deny that someone should feel devastated and overwhelmed.

Yes, that’s pretty much what I said.

WhyNot’s subsequent post is well stated, and I agree with it.

[Auntbeast]

@OneCentStamp

We aren’t really afraid. It’s just a convenient escape hatch.

OneCentStamp, father of four and reluctant diaper guy

Wow, your wife fell for that? We call diapers “presents for daddy” around these parts, we especially like it when he gts the “special” ones.

[JSexton]

Getting back to the topic (not that the slight hijack wasn’t informative),Hal, is there any reason to think this guy could have some reasons to be suspicious of you in particular? Not that you really are a molester, of course. But could his daughter have said something about you that could be taken out of context that’s making this guy’s scumdar go off?

[AuntiePam]

@WhyNot

What a great post, which is why there’s nothing in the quote – it was all good.

I was molested for several years by my stepfather – no intercourse, “just” kissing and touching. It affected me during that time, because I went to absurd lengths to avoid being alone with him, but the only thing it affected in my later life was how I reacted to him. I never initiated a conversation with him, and when he died (painfully, from pancreatitis), I didn’t care.

A couple of years ago, my daughter asked why I didn’t have any pictures of him on the wall with the other family photos, and I told her. She said she couldn’t believe someone could experience childhood sexual abuse and have a “normal” life.

I didn’t know what to say to her. “It wasn’t that bad” didn’t seem right. I did a Monty Python “I got better!” and she seemed to accept that.

So yeah, thanks for saying what you did. I’ve thought for 40 years that there must be something wrong with me, that I wasn’t more affected by it.

[AuntiePam]

My post was directed to WhyNot, which didn’t come through when I hit Submit. (Should have previewed.)

[Li_l_Pluck]

@Ensign Edison

Now imagine you’re gay.

Yup! Eye-2-eye!

[Antinor01]

@Ensign Edison

Now imagine you’re gay.

Exactly. It isn’t often that I would have occasion to be alone with kids anyway, but knowing that so many people assume that I would be interested in them sexually because I’m gay is truly maddening. This is one area that straight guys and gay guys both get grief, the assumption that we want to fuck anything that moves.

[Hal_Briston]

@JSexton

But could his daughter have said something about you that could be taken out of context that’s making this guy’s scumdar go off?

No, I’d seriously doubt it – she’s only a year old. Both our kids have a vocabulary pretty much limited to sign language for “food”, “drink”, “sleepy” and “diaper”. Although my daughter will happily yell “Elmo!” every time the little red bastard shows up on TV.

[OneCentStamp]

Also, Hal, is there anything about you, outwardly, that might make the average American Joe leery? Not saying that it’s right to judge someone based on any of these attributes, but are you perhaps heavily tattooed/pierced? Shaggy-haired? Mohawked? A bearded hippie-looking type?

[hawksgirl]

@OneCentStamp

Also, Hal, is there anything about you, outwardly, that might make the average American Joe leery? Not saying that it’s right to judge someone based on any of these attributes, but are you perhaps heavily tattooed/pierced? Shaggy-haired? Mohawked? A bearded hippie-looking type?

Do you happen to have facial hair like this?

[malkavia]

@WhyNot

Would I be really, really pissed if it happened to my baby girl? Hell, yes. But I would also tell her immediately that not all men are like that and she will heal and become a full, healthy, loving sexual person in her own time. (And, of course, ditto for my son.) What broke me was people telling me I was broken, not some labial abrasions and a broken hymen.

This does bear repeating. Years ago I read a book called Cunt by Inga Musico. Alot of the book leaned a little too close to Gloria Steinem for my liking, but there was a passage that I’ll never forget.

@Inga Musico

Because of the action of two completely unknown males in the year 1948, I was slapped across the face and grounded to my room for a week in 1974.
A different way of looking at this.
I was raised by a woman who was held down in a park and raped when she was a little girl. While the consequences of this event became, for Liz and me, a Grand Duchess Overtone in our upbringing, the two men who raped our mother have no idea that either of us exist on the planet to have been raised under the shadow of their action.
A further perspective might be:
A man could, feasibly, sacrifice his coffee break raping a woman.
That woman would then spend her entire life dealing with it.
So would her daughters.
So would theirs.

This distribution of power is not acceptable.

While in her book, the idea was that men should not have this level of potential power over women, what I took from it was that we, as adults, have a responsibility to weigh both sides of the coin and practice caution without instilling fear. If we taught our children that every car was a potential coffin on wheels, our children would never embrace driving.

As a child who experienced her share of sexual abuse, I can tell you that I clenched up and felt a little nauseous at the idea of my son being around anyone but myself or my immediate family until I began to realize that never trusting anyone is even more painful than being abused. Always being distrustful and assuming that everyone is a potential abuser is what being “broken” feels like.

As for Hal’s situation, it is quite likely that this military dad was either close to a sexual abuse victim or possibly a victim himself. That doesn’t make his reactions okay by any means, but I think that calling him a psycho and intimating that he may actually be a child abuser is a bit off-kilter.

[Hal_Briston]

@hawksgirl

Do you happen to have facial hair like this?

Oh, lord no…that’s just creepy. Here’s me. Oh, wait.

@malkavia

…it is quite likely that this military dad was either close to a sexual abuse victim or possibly a victim himself.

Now that’s an angle I hadn’t even thought of. Going to have to ponder that one…

[Scotticher]

I know I shouldn’t continue to hijack this thread, but this seems to be a good time to wonder about this. Especially since it has bothered me for a long time.

WHAT is the deal with the problem with gay teachers? I mean, sheesh.

So, a teacher is a gay male. Or she is a lesbian woman. The gay man is attracted to men. The lesbian woman is attracted to women.

HELLO? Heterosexual people are attracted to the opposite gender. So, if it is a problem for a teacher to be attracted to someone of their same gender, and teach children OF that gender to which they are attracted, shouldn’t it also be a problem for heterosexual teachers to be teaching children of the opposite gender? Because, if they are heterosexual? Then they are apparently a danger to the children of the opposite sex…who they are teaching. Because, you know, they are attracted to them. Right? Because the kids are of the gender to which they are attracted.

So…does that mean that we should find out what a teacher’s sexual orientation is before we allow them to teach, and then segregate the classrooms so that only heterosexual males teach boys, and only heterosexual ladies teach girls? That only gay male teachers can teach girls, and only lesbian female teachers can teach boys? Because, after all…if you are attracted to whatever gender? You are a DANGER if you are allowed in the classroom with the gender to which you are attracted. Right? :rolleyes:

For Heaven’s sake…pedophiles are not normal. They might be gay, heterosexual or lesbian. THEIR SEXUAL ORIENTATION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT! THEY ARE PREDATORS, AND THEIR SEXUAL PREFERENCES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WRONG THEY DO TO THEIR VICTIMS! The only thing that is different is that they are victimizing their gender of choice…and it might be one or the other…or both.

A pedophile is a pedophile, plain and simple. A pedophile will find a victim of whatever gender suits them. They are sick. A heterosexual teacher is just as likely to victimize a child of the opposite sex…as a gay teacher is to victimize a child of the same sex. It has nothing to do with who they are attracted to, it has to do with them BEING A PEDOPHILE!

I don’t understand what is so difficult to understand about this, but when I listen to the people around me, or on the news? I appear to be in the minority.

What is the deal? Because, quite frankly? The whole thing ticks me off. BIG TIME.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

Very simple, in the black-and-white world:

1. Gays and lesbians are defined by their (abnormal) sexual desires.

2. Therefore they ARE their (abnormal) sexual desires.

3. Therefore their (abnormal) primary goal in life is to satisfy those (abnormal) sexual desires.

4. Therefore they’ll fuck anything they can get their hands on.

Does that clear it up?

[Swallowed_My_Cellphone]

@Scotticher

So, if it is a problem for a teacher to be attracted to someone of their same gender, and teach children OF that gender to which they are attracted, shouldn’t it also be a problem for heterosexual teachers to be teaching children of the opposite gender?

In fact, in the region where I’m living currently there have been several news stories about the scarcity of young men who are choosing to go to teachers’ college to become primary or secondary school teachers. The fear of being falsely accused for molestation is one of the most significant deterrents for men who consider teaching as a profession.

As a result, schoolboards are now concerned about the lack of male role models in schools and its effects on general, healthy socializing. I’m sure I can find a citation if anyone is interested, although it’s somewhat off-topic of the thread.

[MsWhatsit]

Hal, regarding this whole “maybe the dad was abused himself at some point” angle, of course it’s just conjecture but it would make a certain amount of sense. I know someone who was sexually abused as a young boy, and he feels (as someone mentioned earlier in the thread) that men should not teach in grades lower than high school, that any time a child comes into contact with a man in pretty much any context, that man is highly suspect, and that basically all men are latent child abusers. No amount of reasoning will change his mind on this topic. It happened to him, and so therefore it must be happening to everybody. There is a male teacher at my son and daughter’s preschool, and the person in question told me, “I would be highly fucking suspicious of any asshole putting himself into contact with small children on a daily basis like that.” This attitude makes me sad, but there is no real way to change his mind on this topic, and I have to wonder if it isn’t a common attitude amongst people who were abused as children themselves. Dunno.

[PunditLisa]

@Swallowed My Cellphone

In fact, in the region where I’m living currently there have been several news stories about the scarcity of young men who are choosing to go to teachers’ college to become primary or secondary school teachers. The fear of being falsely accused for molestation is one of the most significant deterrents for men who consider teaching as a profession.

In my experience, there’s always been a female to male ratio imbalance at the primary and secondary levels. I only had three male teachers in my entire 1-8 school (none before 6th grade) growing up and my daughters’ 1-8 school currently has three male teachers.

I’ve always assumed it was due to the crappy pay that teachers get. It’s an okay supplementary income but hardly a stand-alone salary. So a great percentage of teachers tend to be married females. I also think that, generally speaking, women are more patient than men. I can’t imagine many men having the patience it takes to be a kindergarten teacher.

[Malacandra]

@EddyTeddyFreddy

Very simple, in the black-and-white world:

1. Gays and lesbians are defined by their (abnormal) sexual desires.

2. Therefore they ARE their (abnormal) sexual desires.

3. Therefore their (abnormal) primary goal in life is to satisfy those (abnormal) sexual desires.

4. Therefore they’ll fuck anything they can get their hands on.

Does that clear it up?

Alternatively:

[ol]Gays and lesbians are unable to relate sexually to the opposite sex.
[li]This is obviously “broken” because if the entire species were that way, it would die out.[/li][li]Therefore it is plausible that they are “broken” enough to have a propensity for kiddie-fiddling.[/ol][/li]
Fortunately, this is easily refuted: if it can be shown that the proportion of gays of both sexes who interfere with juveniles is no greater than the proportion of straights who do so, the above “explanation” is explaining a phenomenon that does not actually exist. So we might as well look at the figures and draw our conclusions rather than argue the shys and wherefores of an unproven proposition.

Corollary: if the proportion of gays who prey on kids is small enough, who cares if it is greater than the proportion of straights? If my child is safe with 99.9% of gay adults, I’m not very concerned if he would be safe with 99.99% of straights. The risk is acceptably small even if, mathematically, gays are “ten times more likely” to be child-molestors.

All figures above are hypothetical.

Swallowed My Cellphone: I should say it was very much on topic.