No, not really. Did you know that there is a difference between men and women?
He will not meet with a woman, even in public, without his wife present. That’s a bit different than not being the only two people in a non-public area.
Tell me, if a woman comes into your office, do you close the door and lock the door behind her?
No reason for a ‘wait what’ throw away line (ever actually 
)
The example does tend to compare the vax situation to society’s treatment of child sex abuse. That’s what comparative examples do. And the weakness again is that anti-vaxers have no virtually leg to stand on. They are being irrational. ‘The mainstream’ is being rational. And whatever marginal exceptions there might be to that rule, just tend to prove it.
In contrast only by repeated assertion, and also narrow focus on the extreme, can one IMO say mainstream society has kept its composure about child sex abuse in recent years. I don’t think it has. There’s significant irrationality on the side of accusation, certainly of suspicion, and suspicion of such acts is highly damaging to people. Rarely has it taken the form of true nightmare scenario’s (like McMartin Preschool), but it’definitely there IMO. Describing the issue just in terms of the ‘irrational’ fear of being accused without considering irrational overreaction to the fear of child sex abuse is not correct IMO. And the vax example tends to put it in those terms.
No way, really? But there is no difference between the way I treat men and the way I treat women. Guess I’m non-sexist that way.
Your store isn’t a public area?
I don’t have an office.
I’m not sure I can do a better job of articulating the differences I see than I’ve already done.
Good for you. We’ve been through this before, so I know that you do not believe that a woman has anything more to fear from a man than a man has to fear from another man, but I do disagree with that, for what would seem to pretty much everyone, fairly obvious reasons.
Front reception is. And unless someone is dropping off or waiting for their dog, it is empty. Past the half door is not a public area.
When you go to mcdonalds, do you barge into the back, claiming that it is a public area?
And that is all that is holding you back?
Okay. Can’t say I’m getting it though.
You acknowledge that you are actually at no significant risk:
But because kids and parents do do other crazy things you still consider the possibility high enough of a concern to take precautions against.
MMM OTOH does not actually believe his concern is great enough to actually change his behavior over but notes that he actually had the thought to consider it as a concern and wondered about his even thinking about it.
Okay. Taking actions over something that rationally you know is not an actual significant risk worth being fearful of is rational, but considering whether or not a fear is worth changing behavior over and deciding that it is not, is irrational, mockable even.
Honestly the only difference I can see is that one your small fear (that you act upon), and one is a small fear not yours and not acted upon.
Back when I did have an office, I asked this: “Do you want to close the door or leave it open?”
Surprisingly to you maybe, but I asked the same question to both men and women.
And no, I would not be afraid of an accusation of anything from someone that was in a room with me alone with the door closed.
And some of us have a sense of fluidity in context. Like my giving a woman walking alone in a parking structure a bigger “bubble” than I would feel I would for another man. The man is less likely to be spooked by me, a short middle aged bald dude with a funny tie, walking ten feet behind him, than a woman might. Defaulting to the most cautious position for all is your take and such is reasonable. Demanding that everyone else do the same however is not reasonable.
Read post 201 again; it’s where I answered the question to the best of my ability.
It’s a weird lecture to give that seems to bear no relation to the real world. The actual situation is more like ‘If you are alone with a passed out woman and start fingering her unconscious body, then get caught by multiple witnesses, you might spend three months in jail for it’. I mean, after seeing what a tiny slap on the wrist Brock Turner got for a sexual assault with witnesses, do you really think he would have gotten ANY punishment if the victim had just accused him of assaulting her without any other witnesses? He’s even appealing that tiny slap on the wrist now!
That was my conclusion as well, or at least something similar: behavior I agree with is rational; behavior I don’t agree with is irrational.
I listed like three or four different reasons. If that’s what you got from all of them, I’m not sure how to say it any differently; it’s absolutely not a correct summary.
The purported difference is in ones opinion of the quality of the reasons. It isn’t as if the OP didn’t offer reasons too. It is simply that you dismiss those reason while you don’t dismiss your own reasons.
In thinking about this I think such situations are more common than I would would like to admit. I’m sure I’ve fallen into that thinking as well.
I’m the father of a four-year-old girl. When taking her to the park (one of those no-adults-allowed-unaccompanied-by-children playgrounds), if she’s happily playing with her friends, I’ll sit on a bench and maybe read a book or something.
More than once, I’ve been asked to leave the park by paranoid mommies who believe every man is just waiting for the chance to abduct their babies. It doesn’t help that I’m significantly older than the typical parent of a four-year-old. I’ve had them demand that I point out my child, and then had the fucking bitches accost my child and tell her to point out her daddy, so they can be satisfied that I’m not a child molester. And, of course, if I make any kind of scene and call them on their bullshit, I’m the bad guy and my poor daughter will no longer be welcome at the playground. Assuming I’m not banned forever.
Everything isn’t always fine. There are stupid people out there. There are bad people who will seize any opportunity to be moralizing, puritanical amateur special cops. I hate them. And they are legion in my neck of the woods. Lots of them. Organic-food eating natural fiber wearing wives of rich men with nothing better to do than inflict themselves on ordinary people.
When the kindly paranoid mommies accost your child and start harassing them like that, maybe you should be the first to call the cops on them. How do you suppose that would play?
Badly.
Ultimately, my daughter would pay the price. I would be ostracized. We’d no longer be welcome in the park. My daughter would lose friends.
In that post the prime reason MMM’s thoughts (not precautions because he decided not to act on them) were “of no purpose” were because “the risk of a false allegation is vanishingly small” … something that as I quoted you understand is the case for false allegations against you too.
Your other reasons for actually taking “a precaution”? “*t comforts others” … if true that your students or others might be fearful of you being alone with a child then that does indeed justify action. And it justifies the inaction by MMM given a lack of a belief that the child in the movie theater or the parent is worried by his presence. But we are talking about justifying the concern about a false accusation. And of course he is being very rational not taking an action that addresses no real risk … actually taking an action in response to a risk that does not meaningfully exist - that would be irrational. Which of you is closer to doing that?
Again I do not fault you your behavior. But it is in fact no more rational than MMM having a fear that he rationally decides to not act upon.
For the record. I kick parents out of the room for portions of early teen visits on and am alone with them for a period of time as a matter of course. Minimally I believe they should have a chance to share concerns with me that they might not feel comfortable discussing in front of mom or dad. I do not believe that parents are worried that I may be a predator as a result and I have never had a fear of false accusation.
That post of yours does however highlight the conflation that has occurred in this between overlapping but different concerns.
There is the question of how rational it is to be afraid of malacious false accusations, and how rational it is to change behavior due to that concern.
There is having no fear of false accusation but being aware that others can be (unjustifiably) uncomfortable or fearful of you, and doing things out of consideration of that fear.
There is the fear that someone will make an accusation not out of malice but out irrational fear and/or misunderstood intent, like the paranoid mothers that Saintly Loser has to cope with.
Obviously they are not the same things but they do overlap. Still, even in overlap we should be cautious to not conflate.
No. The risk of false allegations against an elementary school teacher is orders of magnitude greater than the risk of false allegations against someone sitting next to a child in a movie theater, given that it has happened. Do you disagree? It happens really rarely, but unlike what MMM describes, it happens.
No: I was explaining to sachertorte why my precautions, not my concern, was justified.
You’re changing what’s being compared from what sachertorte asked me about.
In my case, failing to take these precautions would be very likely to lead to a poor outcome: I am required by district policy to take them, and I could lose my job.
I cannot say whether or not there has ever been a case of a false accusation of a stranger molesting a child in a movie theater. Even if not it is impossible to say the risk is zero - just vanishingly small. Has a second grader made a false accusation against a teacher? Middle schoolers and above sure, but a second grader? Maybe. I don’t know. But even if so the risk is so small that worrying about it is not very rational … more rational to be worried about the unknown male near a park as Saintly Loser’s example mothers do. Lightening strikes happen rarely too. How close to zero does a risk need to be before worrying about ceases to be rational?* Now malicious false accusations I know occur with older students, and I am aware of sexual and other misconduct of High School teachers. Not allowing teachers to be alone with High Schoolers would make more sense maybe. Yet pretty much all my kids’ High School teachers have encouraged my kids to take advantage of coming in to see them alone before or after school when they have questions about the material.
You were contrasting your taking precautions as rational to MMM’s as not taking them as not. It seemed strange to me for you to be seeming to say that MMM would have been more rational to have actually taken the precaution. Because while yeah, if parent’s are likely fearful of your being alone with their children then avoiding being alone with them might be rational, and knowing that the father in the theater is not likely fearful of him makes MMM’s choice to not act rational. By this metric his choice to not act is for sure rational, yours I am not so sure.
So down to “its the policy.” Okay. Skip to that. You have no choice in the matter. Don’t bother with the rest then. The question then becomes not your actions but whether the concern that drives the policy applying to second graders is significantly more rational than MMM having a concern about false accusations.
*I think the answer is less a number than whether or not I am the one worried, or someone else is.
At my old church, a 13-year-old girl who worked in our daycare accused a 4-year-old boy of touching her vagina. This was supposed to have happened in a room with an adult present and several other kids, none of whom saw anything.
The 4-year-old’s mom told me that her son was probably just flailing around and, being at that level, his hand collided with that area.
Nothing ever came of this that I know of, but I’d consider the little guy and his family darned lucky.
I had this in mind a few months later when my neighbor lady and I were out walking our dogs. As often happens, the children from the playground came over to pet our canine companions. One of the little humans immediately turned to me, pointed at my neighbor dog, and said “That dog bit me.” My neighbor dog was a 100 lb. Rottweiler. If she had bitten him, we’d know it. So I asked the boy if she had snapped at him. He shook his head. Then, remembering church, I asked if he’d swung his hand around and scratched it against her tooth. He nodded.
Again, nothing came of either of these incidents, but I’m sorry to say that “vanishingly small” is strongly related to “hasn’t happened to me yet.”