I was wrongly accused of sexual harassment (and later abused in the same general location) when I was about 4 years-old. In retrospect I wonder if it had a lot to do with my lack of social development.
That kind of thing is always on my mind, but I don’t let it change my behavior. If someone accuses me I’ll have faith in the system, and if some angry dad comes at me I’ll either run away or teach his kid that false accusations have consequences. Namely, it gets your dad hospitalized.
Fortunately, I’ve never been in that situation and hope I never will be. I’m hoping that it’s a struck by lightning type of situation: can happen to anyone, but probably won’t happen to me.
Positive touching is not just a good thing, but essential for proper socialization. I completely understand where you’re coming from, but I’m concerned about how the moral panic around pedophilia is affecting society. It’s basically putting a wall between kids and adults who aren’t related to them, when ironically kids are more likely to be sexually abused by family members than strangers.
See, I think about this sometimes, trying to work out the hypothetical, sort of rehearsing just in case. I’m not really sure how I’d react. Being a Dad myself, I get where an upset father is coming from.
At the same time, I wonder how tightly Dad is wrapped around the kiddo’s finger or if Dad was a bully in his youth or something when I see a dad that refuses to use reason or at least maintain a cool calm demeanor in these situations. Some dads are just on a hair trigger for anger, especially about perceived improprieties towards their (by my observations, almost exclusively always female) family members.
I dunno, I think I’d rather confront a drunk and angry husband over an imagined slight or groping of his wife or girlfriend than a sober and fighting-mad dad.
I know the scenario posited by MMM might seem extreme, but it’s really not. I’ve seen that very thing happen, with only minor differences in detail or setting on more than one occasion.
I’ve read reports from guys on other forums about something that’s happened to them at the big outdoor summer music festivals. They’ll have a beer in their hands and a teen girl will surprise them and grab it out of their hands. When the guy reacts, the girl will warn him with something like “you come near me and I’ll yell rape.” The guys usually just slink away.
Obviously, this was happening before the whole Harvey Weinstein thing (summer festival season was over).
If you are an adult male, just stay away from any children who aren’t your own.
Justice isn’t free. Unless you have a full-time criminal attorney on your household staff, defending yourself in court is going to cost tens of thousands of dollars. And you will probably get fired from your job when your employer hears you’ve been arrested for child sex abuse. By the time the trial is over, even if your employer believes you are totally innocent, your position will have been filled by someone else.
Oh, and hope you can afford bail or you will be sitting in a jail cell for months awaiting trial.
Yeah, false accusations have serious consequences for the accused even if we assume the justice system works as it should.
Still, again, you can’t live your life afraid. And society would actually be ruined and is in the process of being ruined because people have so much fear. Parents already don’t let their kids out of the house before they are teenagers unsupervised in part because they think someone will kidnap them or sodomize them. Parents even get snippy now when a stranger talks to their kids in their presence. Maybe it’s different in smaller towns where everyone knows each other, but the cities and suburbs are becoming even more impersonal places than they used to be, even though we’re much safer now than 30 years ago when parents just told their kids, “Go out and play”.
Would you have had the same reaction if it was a young boy? If not, why not?
Wow, I didn’t expect so much support (aside from Little Nemo, who completely missed the point 
).
I guess adult males are no longer allowed to interact with minors on any level. If I were driving in an unfamiliar town and I craved a Slurpee, I’d better not roll down the window and ask the kids on the corner if there is a 7-11 nearby. A description of me and my vehicle will end up on the local news.
mmm
I guess now every male knows what it’s like to be profiled.
I am amazed as MMM that he’s getting support for this. It strikes me as totally paranoid. But then, I’ve worked with kids for a decade, often the only adult in the room with a bunch of kids. False accusations are one of those things like shark attacks that happen, but not often enough to get worked up over.
Well, in my case I do know what it is like to be accused a little bit.
When I was 12, I was accused as the ringleader (much to my surprise) of a group of boys at church camp one summer that was supposedly planning a panty raid. Had a long group on one sit down talk with the adult camp leadership about that, and never did find out who my accuser was. Since that time, if a female came to me and said I did something that made her mad or uncomfortable I’ve been very quick to get someone else there and then talk to her and explain and if needed apologize.
OTOH I’ve also had my ass and crotch grabbed unwantedly by a girl and was told to brush it off and avoid her if possible.
Dammit, premature posting and missed the edit window (I blame the cat, never leave a computer attended by a cat).
I meant to say that many sexual harassment policies are, or are perceived to be worded or interpreted and applied unevenly, with all the advantages being given to women, putting them on a weird sort of pedestal, and men being automatically assumed to be guilty regardless of what is proven in a court of law and being given a reputation that can follow them the rest of their lives, and if a man files a claim, that he will get the brush off at best, ridiculed and labeled “whiner” or “not a team player” and then shunned at worst.
I’ve been grabbed a few times, I’ve never really understood why it’s supposed to be so traumatizing. It’s certainly unwelcome and those who do it should be warned not to do it or else, but I just don’t get the PTSD issues some people get from it. But I guess everyone’s feelings are different.
Left HAnd, we live in an increasingly paranoid society. There are so many ways in which things are better now than when I was a kid, which is why lack of trust seems so weird to me. Back in the 80s, there was so much more reason to be afraid, and yet we’re more risk averse now. But yeah, you’re shark attack analogy is spot on.
For guys, mostly, I think being grabbed is not the traumatizing part. Its finding that the company policy is worded in a way that makes HIM the one guilty of wrong doing, or that is worded such that the assumption is that women don’t do this or is applied that way, and there is a presumption that a male can never have a work environment that is hostile to him because of a woman.
Happily though, this is starting to change and people now recognize that women are just as capable of predatory behavior as men. Give it another 20 or 30 years and I think things probably will be much more equal between the sexes in a way that is much more fundamental than pay or promotion at work.
Oh, gimme a break.
I’m the father of a 10 year old boy. I’ve obviously had many times when I’ve interacted with his friends, and with random kids on the playground, and equally random schoolmates of his at school functions, like the book fair and holiday craft bazaar last night.
Yeah, there’s some due caution you exercise (e.g. you don’t touch a kid unless it’s unavoidable, you don’t let your eyes linger on any one child who isn’t interacting with your own child, stuff like that) but other than that you act naturally and everything’s fine.
Don’t let your eyes linger? Um, that sounds pretty paranoid, almost like jail survival skills.
I certainly don’t want some girl going over to her father or teacher and saying, “that man is looking at me a lot.” Just seems to me like reasonable caution.
ETA: Hell, even if this hypothetical girl doesn’t say anything, I’d rather not have her feel my gaze to begin with, don’t want her wondering why this old guy is looking at her.
Bah. I do some similar things: when I’m at the playground with my kids, and other kids come to play with them, I communicate through body language that I’m not particularly interested in the other kids. It’s easy to do, it gets the kids focused on each other instead of me, and if there is a paranoid adult around, it’s gonna ease their paranoia.
This article may be good reading for some of y’all:
We’re seeing a super overdue focus on sexual harassment and assault by powerful men. To turn this into an occasion for hand-fluttering worries, “What about MEEEEE???”, frightened of statistically nonexistent scenarios (seriously, show me the articles about men whose lives are ruined by sitting next to a child at a theater), is a disservice to yourself and to others.
IMO, it’s not the ‘being grabbed’ per se that’s the traumatising bit for anyone, it’s the feeling of powerlessness and someone else seizing control over you that’s the actual issue.
I’ve had multiple random babies unexpectedly grab a boob, and they get a laugh and ‘Hey! stop that!’, but it’s the same unwanted physical sensation as when some creepy guy does it. The difference is the power differential; when it’s a baby grabbing me, I’m still in control, when it’s a big drunk guy, I’m probably not.
When working in security, one of my male coworkers got groped by a drunk woman a good 20 years older than him. She got him backed up against a wall, wouldn’t let go of his crotch, and kept repeating that he must be liking it, while a bunch of her friends stood round laughing. He was a 6’+ boxer, but in that situation he was powerless; if he’d tried to punch or physically overpower her, he would certainly have lost his job, and likely have been arrested, he couldn’t do anything but yell at her to stop, which she ignored. No cameras, his word against 5 of them (I came in just after she let go).
I’m not saying he got flashbacks and full-on trauma, but he was really shaken up, and he quit not long after. It didn’t help that the troglodyte of a supervisor (who would have raised hell if it had been female me being grabbed by a man) just laughed and asked how hot she was. If anything, I reckon the fact that he was a big guy and used to being in control made it worse for him.