No, it doesn’t.
Which, despite being straight Argument Clinic, is just as complete and thorough a response to your post as your post was to mine.
You’re damn right!
The issue doesn’t lie with the little girl, no matter how much the OP fears her. The little girl should under no circumstances be expected to switch seats.
I once represented a grandfather accused of improper touching of his young granddaughter. By all appearances, he was completely normal, a retired white collar worker who loved his family and liked to work in his garden. It was alleged to have happened while she sat on his lap in his living room, when both of her parents were present. He was charged with a felony, posted bail, and had to go through a public trial. He had a great lawyer 
and was found not guilty. Like any trial, however, it could have gone either way. The prosecution certainly thought he deserved to be convicted.
Now that I think about it, every one of the men I represented who were charged with a child sex crime were related to the alleged victim. Some were guilty. Some were not. I never saw an accusation against a stranger like the OP was concerned about (but I’m sure there have been some such cases). So, perhaps you need to be more paranoid about your own family than strangers in a movie theater.
Wow. I’ve always respected your posts, and this is not what I would have expected from you. He’s not saying men are the real victims at all or that they need protection. He is not negating very real predation against women and children. He is raising a legitimate question about the potentially devastating consequences of false accusations.
*<walks away disillusioned>
*
I agree–as I said, it’s an irrational fear, and ideally he should be able to let it go.
This isn’t a great analogy, but inasmuch as it works at all, he’s the terrorist-wary passenger, and the little girl is the bearded Arab man. There’s no sign whatsoever that anyone in this situation was afraid, except for MMM; he was afraid a little girl was going to ruin his life. It shouldn’t be her responsibility to move because of his irrational fear.
I read the whole article, and was shocked. If these cases are so common, why haven’t I heard of them more often? I certainly keep my ear to the ground about such issues.
Then I saw the byline date: 2000.
Is there a reason why you’re offering a 17-year-old cite for events you believe happen “on a regular basis”?
In any case, the 17-year-old article offers only one specific case, and it’s of children seeking revenge against a specific adult who had humiliated them. That’s hardly germane to a discussion of the irrational fear that sitting next to a child in a theater will ruin your life.
I don’t think a reasonable reaction to seeing a number of men being punished for sexual harassment is to become afraid of living in a society, with all the normal things that it encompasses.
This may be a controversial stance, but if men are becoming frequently worried about being in theaters, subways, streets and offices with women, those men may need to seek out psychotherapy.
If it is just a fleeting thought, then that is different. I think everyone things about weird things occasionally.
I’ll preface by saying that using the specter of false accusations as a means of brushing off accusers is particularly insidious. Accusers being brushed off, false accusations, and actual abuse are all terrible things, but I don’t think they occur at the same frequencies, nor should be weighted the same in our societal reactions.
This is my story. There is no punchline, and nothing bad happens. After swim lessons, I stay with my daughter and play in the pool for an hour or two. She is a poor swimmer and is likely to panic if she goes underwater, and probably won’t be able to self rescue even in shallow water. Because of that, I stay within about 5 seconds of her, and don’t have the option of becoming a phone zombie on the sides of the pool, like many of the parents.
She plays with other kids. I’m close, so I often become part of the play. So I’m being touched (accidentally and purposely) by several boys and girls, who aren’t wearing very much, ranging in age from 3-8. This makes me uncomfortable for many of the reasons talked about in the various touching threads. I try not to touch the other kids partly because I’m uncomfortable touching strangers, and partly for the reasons expressed in this thread.
I don’t think one of the kids is going to accuse me of anything inappropriate, but rather that one of the parents is going to look up from a season 3 episode of Friends, and see some strange guy touching their kid. The parent is not wearing a swim suit, and so can’t just move closer to see what is happening. I’m worried (but not a lot) that some parent in their confusion and loss of control assumes that something inappropriate is happening.
This isn’t completely unjustified, in that within the last year at this facility there was an incident where a disturbed older child was found doing inappropriate things with some very unlucky (wrong place, wrong time) younger children. If people are thinking about that, they may be on edge.
As I said, I’m not hugely concerned about accusations, but mixed with the discomfort of “did that kid’s hand just brush my nipple?” it is something that is in my mind.
Mike Pence was ridiculed recently for saying he follows a similar practice. What we’re going through now is in a way a return to the Puritan past. It’s just applied to acts current society is particularly preoccupied with (child sexual abuse and sexual harassment generally) v what an older society was preoccupied with (pre/extra-marital sex generally). The strong proponents of modern society are always going to say 'yes but we’re so much more enlightened now, how can you possibly draw that comparison, what the f*** is the matter with you?". exaggerating a little. 
I tend to view it more relatively. Societies sometimes go to extremes, and today’s society (either the traditional or progressive sides of the deep cultural divide that is, since we don’t really have one society now) is not immune. And I would also add that traditional morality never accepted child sexual abuse (in moral theory, of course in practice it happened and, perhaps more shamefully, people sometimes looked the other way). Nor actually did it accept sexual harassment either (though again theory v practice, plus anti-traditional types might say traditional society did embrace societal domination by men, and that sexual harassment flows from that).
Anyway there is IMO enough danger to a (properly acting) man’s reputation in today’s ‘vigilant’* environment to be a concern in some cases. Such as considering being a youth leader (sports coach etc), or how you deal with your own young kids’ friends. Going to jail when innocent? OK it might be paranoid to give that much thought. But one tiny pinch of shit in the bucket of water of your reputation, and it’s all toxic. And that’s not IMO such a far fetched risk now if you get involved (in legit activities) w/ other than your own kids. I’d try to get moved away from kids on a plane though anyway. Wouldn’t worry myself sick if I couldn’t.
*sometimes it’s straight up paranoia, other threads here from ‘concerned parents’ have illustrated this wrt child sex abuse.
This is a legit question. I did not change seats because I would have felt foolish for giving in to this thought that had, admittedly, a microscopic chance of coming true.
But microscopic does not equal zero.
Of course the girl had no reason whatsoever to make such a claim. But I wouldn’t bet the farm that it has never happened before.
And for those gathering up the tar and feathers because I had an experience, felt feelings, and dared to share these feelings, you are racing down the wrong alley with blinders on. How anyone can reflexively twist my post into a he-doesn’t-care-about-the-real-victims crusade is beyond me, and demonstrates a remarkable absence of the empathy gene.
The victims are the victims, yes. But to pretend that others are not affected shows a high level of closed-mindedness.
mmm
Amen.
Sure, it’s possible. But you know what has happened? White men have come into theaters and shot dozens of people. You mention this little girl’s father. What race was he? Statistically speaking, he was more of a threat to you than the little girl was. Rationally, you should be less scared of a false accusation from her than of a bullet from him.
And yet that’s not how it played out in your mind. Why is that?
When you have an irrational fear, it’s appropriate to interrogate that fear. Where does it come from? Why are you having it? Interrogating it may lead you to realizing that its basis is faulty. Folks who are giving you shit for your thread are, ideally, helping you investigate the source of this irrational fear.
Probably because, in that scenario, I end up dead but I’m still a good guy.
Anyway, Dorkness, your post was helpful. I guess I need to go see another movie.
mmm
Oftentimes some people try to calm down fears by saying, “What you fear is something unlikely.” When in fact that approach doesn’t help much to calm fears.
Try being a skydiving instructor - suppose you have only one parachute - and you tell your student, “Don’t worry, the odds of your one-and-only parachute failing are about 0.0001%.” That is hardly reassuring, because there is no further recourse available, if it does fail. What would be reassuring is to bring a backup and say, “Even if the main parachute fails, we still have a backup parachute.”
What would help in the OP’s situation is, “Even if what you fear comes to pass, you still have backup measures on your side to help you defend against it.” Unfortunately, that often isn’t the case, not in American society.
And this is why we can’t have a discussion about the issue from any perspective: Enough posts like this, with this dismissive attitude towards real concerns, and everyone thinks everyone else is out to get them.
It’s like some people can’t care about more than one group at a time: If we’re taking that group seriously, we must utterly dismiss the other group. No middle ground, just an idiotic pendulum.
Well said.
Here’s what can make this a tough call. Teens are full of raging hormones. Girls (self included here) are often trying to learn about the powers of flirtation and the rush of power that can come from understanding that one is desired sexually. They might not mean to get themselves in a dangerous situation, but some boys and men automatically read that “practicing” as the real thing and start thinking “Yes, she wants me.” without the filter that says “But she’s a child, does she really know what she is doing?” Adults need to talk to kids to make try to make them aware of the consequences. Adults, and teens really, need to practice the mantra of no touching until you are absolutely sure of both of you.
I’ve been harrassed and molested. The first time was my big brother (who’s gay, BTW) and his buddies who decided that I should get “titty twisters” as I just started to get breasts. A couple of months later, a man dipped his hand into my bikini and squeezed. I had never seen him before; we were walking opposite directions on a path to the beach. I was shocked for days. This kind of behavior was all very, very confusing to me for several years. I even lost my virginity to date rape because I was practicing flirtation and he decided there was more to it. We were both young, and both acting on the expectations we had learned from our parents (clearly very different expectations).
All this greatly affected who I am as an adult. I wish it weren’t so, but I’ve been protecting myself for years and years. Go ahead and sit next to me in the theater though. You’re safe; I don’t play those games. Truly safe. Unless you try something. Then you will not walk away unharmed.
This whole thread, “a perspective I’ve not heard discussed,” is all about a perspective that has been discussed endlessly. When victims speak up, whether it’s rape or child molestation or just inappropriate behavior, very VERY quickly a group of men will start saying “But what about me?” We’ve had people on this board claim to have sexually assaulted people, then say they are the victim. We’ve had people talking about how they would put a camera in their bedroom to prevent false accusations of rape. And of course we have people claiming that women are supposed to be completely vigilant every fucking second of every fucking day to prevent an attack or inappropriate behavior. And we’ve had parallel discussions about how people could get falsely accused of racism and their lives would be destroyed, or falsely accused of sexism and their lives would be destroyed. Yes, this is a discussion we’ve had. And yes, I do very quickly get frustrated at the idea that no one has ever considered the rights, feelings, or innocence of men.
I saw this thread last night, and at the time I did not fully understand the thought process in going from a random movie theater kid and her Dad to “this whole sexual accusation thing” to seeking answers from women. So I didn’t answer. Seemed a bit of a poisoned well actually. If the OP was soliciting thoughts from parents it would have made more sense to the matter at hand, and I’d probably have contributed.
So what you seem to be saying, in a nustshell, is that men should fuck right the hell off and not be allowed to openly discuss the things that worry them. In this instance, the topic is false accusations of sexual predation in various scenarios. This is a perfectly legitimate conversation to have in any environment where the men and women are not kept strictly separated. No one in this thread was trying to dismiss what happens to women. Until you came along and started that conversation it wasn’t even part of the discussion per se.
Thanks for the thread shit.
…it seems to me that jsgoddess is saying exactly what they said, and your pithy paraphrase lacks the nuance and the context of her full reply.
Nope. The topic is about how women coming forward to talk about historical claims of sexual harassment, abuse and rape has made the OP worry about sitting next to a little girl who is with her father in a public movie theatre. He didn’t talk about various scenarios. Just one.
We are in a forum called “Mundane and Pointless Stuff I Must Share.” Everything here is a “legitimate conversation.” jsgoddess feelings about the OP are legitimate: and deserve to be part of the conversation.
What does the whole “sexual accusation thing” have to do with somebody who fears that their “world might be destroyed” because they sat next to a girl in a movie theatre?
How do the people doing the “sexual accusation thing” fix that? Do they stop coming forward? Do they remain silent, as they nearly always have done? Annabella Sciorra slept with a baseball bat beside her bed for twenty years because of what Weinstein did to her. Should she have remained silent because people sometimes falsely accuse? What can Annabella Sciorra do to fix the OP’s problem?
We all know that they can’t do anything about that and they shouldn’t. If they were sexually assaulted, harassed, or raped, then if they should come forward and tell their story if they wish too. Women coming forward and the situation in the OP are unconnected. It is insulting to conflate the two. It is entirely fair to ask and pose the questions the OP is asking. It is entirely not fair to ask those questions in the context of the whole “sexual accusation thing.” Because to do so implies that “the solution” to the OP’s feelings lies with the people making the accusations: and it does not.
The OP asked “Women, what are your thoughts?”
Women expressing their thoughts at the request of the OP is not a “thread shit.”