This makes me so sad.
My grandfather was not actually my grandfather, he was an retired neighbour, whom three year old me decided really needed to be my poppy. He and his wife stayed my grandparents until they passed, ten and thirty eight years later.
If this paranoia existed forty years ago, we would have missed out on so much love and happiness, and as a childless immigrant couple, they would’ve missed out on a family.
Shitty people making the world shittier because they scare us into being shitty too. Ugh!
In regards to women historically NOT being taken seriously when they allege sexual harassment, that’s quite true, but as with any such issue, such as affirmative action, what’s justice for a group can create injustice for individuals. Nothing wrong with pointing that injustice out. Men who haven’t diddled kids or groped women should not pay for men who do. Fortunately, the law is pretty firm on this, but social repercussions are not as impartial. There’s a wide gulf between taking women seriously and assuming guilt. And in the case of children, whether or not you are guilty depends more on whether you’re a stranger or not. If you’re family, chances are the child won’t be believed. If you’re a stranger, the child will be believed. Which is ass backwards because most cases where children recant involve non family members. Kids are far more comfortable making shit up about strangers or teachers they are mad at than their uncle.
I read these threads and just cannot wrap my mind around how men STILL make everything be about themselves. With all the sexual abuse of children, and it is rampant, it is still But What About MEEEEE??? With all the sexual harassment of women, and it is constant and everywhere, it is still But What About MEEEEE?
Let’s see some statistics about how many women and children have falsely accused innocent men whose Whole Lives Are Ruined, as opposed to how many women and children have had to suffer their traumas in silence all their lives because men are believed and women and children aren’t? Who actually had something happen to them but know that there is no justice for them, instead, telling the truth will ruin their lives even further?
You know, data, not anecdotes and paranoia? How about that?
The best you can find on rape and pedophilia is “unfounded accusations” which does not mean untrue. And of course not all convictions are right either, since cases can revolve around who the jury believes in the absence of physical evidence or witnesses. So there’s no reliable data.
You know why men believe it’s all about us? Because it’s us, and everyone has an incentive to worry about their own nightmare scenarios. That’s how human nature works. And women are not innocents here. I can count on my fingers the number of times a child or other woman has accused a man close to them and how often they believed the accuser. I recall a recent Presidential candidate who thought, “What about MEEEEE?” and enabled her husband’s behavior in order to further her ambitions. And who said with a straight face that women should be believed as long as they didn’t accuse her husband.
A large part of it seems to be worrying about things that haven’t happened but you imagine could happen. I’ll agree that it could happen but I think the chances of having your life destroyed because a child falsely accuses you of a sex crime are a lot more remote than you believe. Put it in the “I’d hate to get eaten by a shark” file.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of children who have actually been the victims of sexual crimes. They’ve suffered genuine harm.
When I was in massage school one of the classes was at someone’s house because they were shampooing the carpets at the school. A classmate was kneeling, interacting with the household dog, when said dog licked right up the center of her left breast. Like you, she laughed and pushed the dog back with a mild protest.
“That’s not fair!” I protested. “If I’d done that you’d slap me silly!”
“Damn right!”
I’m surprised that it hasn’t been brought up yet that many women have spent their lives leery of being assaulted. Now men are leery of being accused. It doesn’t make it right, but the parallels are uncanny.
I go to the movies alone when I want to see a particular movie and no one is available to go with me. If someone sits next to me… will that man attempt to touch me? Will he follow me out of the theater? Will he follow me to my car? Will he try to rape me? If he tries to rape me, how badly will he hurt me?
This second-guessing, this paranoid alertness to everyone around you, the worrying about the consequences to your life due to the actions of a stranger, is what women have lived with since… well, since probably forever.
I’m sorry you had to go through that, but perhaps this will make you more aware of how other peoples’ lives are different from yours.
Thinking about the OP’s specific scenario (however unrepresentative it may be), it’s gonna be really really hard for the OP to touch that girl in an inappropriate place, period, and even harder to do it without Daddy noticing that there’s a stranger’s hand in his little girl’s lap.
And thinking more in general, why would some little kid come up with an accusation of ‘bad touching’ out of the blue? If you maintain an appropriate distance and lack of interest in them, you’ll turn into part of the furniture as far as they’re concerned.
I have the impression you’re a large, able-bodied male human being in the prime of life. You seem to have a great deal of confidence in your ability to physically defend yourself if necessary.
Some of the rest of us are smaller, weaker, and more fragile. Such people would be more concerned about our ability to defend ourselves and/or how easily we might be injured. Does that shed any light on the different attitude?
In a room with a bunch of kids is not where a misunderstanding is likely to occur. And the problems don’t usually arise with a child, but rather with parents, especially nowadays, who choose to misinterpret what a child is saying to them. The little girl from next door and I were very close, and her mother trusted us, but I absolutely did not want her going home and saying something like “I sat in his lap a lot when she was gone.” And can you imagine the reaction of the father at the campground if his daughters came back and said “That man over there came into the bathroom while we were in there.”? I’m not at all paranoid about routine encounters with kids, but good sense should always prevail.
We have numerous threads about that. It’s fair for the OP to start a thread about a different aspect of the topic. Not every thread has to be an all-comprehensive, cover-the-issue-from-all-angles discussion.
One of the most amazing contradictions about America is that you have women claiming that their accusations of sexual assault aren’t taken seriously and also that a huge number of sexual assaults or rapes go unaddressed every year, and you also have men paranoid that they’ll be falsely convicted in the court of Scarlet-Letter societal opinion despite being 100% innocent…and *both *sides have considerable weight and evidence to their claims.
Nor is in a room with a bunch of adults, including the kid’s dad sitting three feet away.
I can’t get over MMM letting this ruin his movie. It’s an irrational fear, but I understand irrational fears. Why the heck didn’t you just move seats, MMM? Seems like that woulda let you be the captain of your ship.
It may not have happened to you, but there are many other teachers who have been falsely accused. Read the last 10 paragraphs or so of the article - the article states that there were accusations of abuse in Maryland against teachers on a regular basis, and the majority of such accusations were false.
If terrorist-wary airline passengers are afraid of a bearded Arab man wearing a turban, the onus shouldn’t be on the Arab to switch seats or flights. The issue doesn’t lie with the Arab.
It’s probably worth bearing in mind that the vast, vast majority of men who are accused of sexual assault actually have committed sexual assault. If you aren’t molesting children, your odds of being accused of molesting children are incredibly, spectacularly minimal.