What's Fair for the Goose is Fair for the Gander
Reading over the comments to my last post about the Oprah sexual predator offender list really opened my eyes to the sad state of how adults (mainly men) fear involving themselves with kids due to being accused of child molestation. This fear is very real, given the current milieu in America where being called a sexual molester seems to strip one of all normal due process rights. In a world where kids, particularly boys, are in desperate need of male role models, this loss of male influence is dire.
Here is a petition for the one strike law from a few years ago that Oprah now proposes today. I love the comment on this petition from a Betty Keyes in California: "Anyone who would put there hands or anything on a child should get death. Why should the tax payers pay for garbage like that. They don't belong on our streets, hurting our children. period!" All right Betty! Lets hear it for compassionate women!
Seriously, given this line of reasoning, one could say that the 58% of perpretrators against children who are women (found by the National Clearing House for the Maltreatment of Children published this year) should be given the same penalty--life in prison or worse. Where is Oprah's show about female child abusers who should get life in prison? I haven't seen it yet. Maybe I should suggest it on her website.
Reading over the comments to my last post about the Oprah sexual predator offender list really opened my eyes to the sad state of how adults (mainly men) fear involving themselves with kids due to being accused of child molestation. This fear is very real, given the current milieu in America where being called a sexual molester seems to strip one of all normal due process rights. In a world where kids, particularly boys, are in desperate need of male role models, this loss of male influence is dire.
Here is a petition for the one strike law from a few years ago that Oprah now proposes today. I love the comment on this petition from a Betty Keyes in California: "Anyone who would put there hands or anything on a child should get death. Why should the tax payers pay for garbage like that. They don't belong on our streets, hurting our children. period!" All right Betty! Lets hear it for compassionate women!
Seriously, given this line of reasoning, one could say that the 58% of perpretrators against children who are women (found by the National Clearing House for the Maltreatment of Children published this year) should be given the same penalty--life in prison or worse. Where is Oprah's show about female child abusers who should get life in prison? I haven't seen it yet. Maybe I should suggest it on her website.
posted by Helen at 1:30 PM
14 Comments:
Dr. Helen,
I applaud that you openly discuss this issue. I suspect Oprah's 'list' and recommendations will eventually be seen as regrettable, resulting in several unintended consequences. And I file this under the ever-increasing "Misandrist" title.
American misandry defines males as predators or pre-predators per se. I am a married guy in my forties, and I have been acutely aware of these rules for quite some time. My own daughter does not know that I nearly recoiled whenever she hugged me in public, which was often, especially as she approached teenage years. My coldness surely did not benefit her, but people glare at you for holding hands with a child older than six.
Like a prior writer, my coaching days are done when my son finishes eighth grade. I'm not a great coach, but fair and concerned with teaching everyone how to play. It's not a terribly popular job, coaching. Oprah's list means I either quit or have two parents "observe" at every practice. Since I doubt anyone will actually stay to watch (me, it appears) much as no one has time to coach either, the program might fade away. Or worse, it gets run by dads-who-play-their son-first (not me; my son is as bad at b-ball as I was).
Can you explain why our culture seems to have drifted away from viewing predators as aberrations to seeing all men as predators? Or how we fix it? I mean, geez, just a few months ago I came upon a lost and wandering 3-year-old child at a store, and in finding mom I was greeted not with thanks but with a baleful glare, and she snatched the boy away from my arm, like she had just rescued him.
Sorry to whine, but this is a recurring and very sore theme. And I am worried about the kind of world my sons are growing up in, where crying wolf is easy and without negative consequences. It's like the bogus methods of The McMartin Preschool Trial, that modern day witch hunt, cast upon the whole of society.
This has been building for a very long time.
When I first began using the internet (back when IRC was the big thing and WWW was something Porky Pig would say) I was repeatedly cautioned by my father to beware of older men on the internet.
Not meeting them, just talking to men older than myself.
As I grew older and moved out on my own, he cautioned me about talking to younger men-lest I be accused of being a pervert or worse.
My father was not a young man, so I'm forced to wonder how long this has been building to this point?
Good example in today's WaPo. A male teacher is accused of attempting forcible sodomy on a student in the classroom, charged, tried, acquitted -- and then fired.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/09/AR2005100901506.html
Thanks anonymous, good example of how even a false allegation of child abuse can damage one's career and livelihood.
I went to the National Clear House web site and what bothered me is that they are lumping children who suffer from neglect in with children who are sexual abused and/or murdered. This isn't to say child neglect isn't a problem, but it's very much like lumping violent crime statistics in with shoplifting. In this case child neglect cases are a whopping 60% of the cases! Sexual abuse is 10%.
(What's scary is that when my youngest son was just walking, he would take off and explore. Once he got two blocks away. The police officer that saw and returned him said we were lucky Officer X hadn't found him since he would have made our live's hell.)
I want to thank you for bringing attention to these issues. I am a Lutheran minister and have to struggle with this constantly. I am a husband and a father. The children in my congregation love their pastor and I love them. Often, after church on Sundays or holidays, the little ones come up and want to hug me. I always feel a little bit frightened by that. Of course, I want to embrace the children and let them know how much they are loved, but it would destroy me if I, a pastor, were ever accused of any such impropriety. So I try to be extra careful. It's a pity, really.
I wonder if this paedophobia is another of the reasons for the low fertility rate?
I just finally have to marvel, out loud, in public, at the present superiority of Islam in in matters of reproduction. Between careerist women and men afraid having children around them, the generality of us find something better to do than have children, at least in any great number. Meanwhile, in those grotesque muslim societies, where the women are thoroughly oppressed and the men are so self-confident they're sure they're on a mission from God, the demographic figures are coming up roses. Muslim orders--superstitious, illiberal, poor, nasty, brutish, and shortlived--are repugnant, but at least they work at the rudimentary but urgent level of mere reproduction.
As a member of this civilization, and white and male, I hope things get worse--a lot worse. I think the political and cultural left are somehow or other the driving force behind all this. I would just love to see them without any affluence, privileges, etc., and I would be willing to suffer for it just to see this.
Could Western Civ be destroyed if this transpired? Perhaps, and nothing lasts forever. But then again "no pain, no gain."
To Allicent:
You are right--I think men and women who work with kids fear being charged with abuse. I had a five year old--yes, five! come into my office for an evaluation recently. After being told that he would be doing some testing with me, he grabbed a nearby desk phone and called 911 to tell them I was abusing him. I just shrugged, however, and told him when he was done, he could come in the office. He put the phone down and came in--I honestly did not care if the police were called--frankly, I figured jail for me just meant three hots and a cot and medical bills paid for. Seriously, the boy was so used to adults being scared of him that he thought he could get away with anything. The fact that I did not act intimidated seemed to calm him down.
ummmm....
the comment may reflect hysteria but there is no evidence that she is referring only to MALE perps. her comments are gender neutral, as is the "One Strike" suggestion.
i'm not saying that there isn't a different public perception about male and female sexual perps, but your links are no proof one way or another.
I read the Washington Post article and the ending about a teacher who committed suicide over a false accusation is really sad:
I look at the guy," Perino said, squinting out the window at nothing in particular, "and I bet you he was a good teacher and tried hard to help his kids."
As an adult male I:
Avoid any contact with children outside my family;
Would never be a chaperone;
Am never alone with someone else's child;
Would never babysit someone else's child;
No longer teach Sunday School;
And would have serious trouble marrying a woman with small kids.
To take it even further I also never am alone with a women at my place of employment, never speak to women there about personal things, and never speak to certain (attractive, single) women.
希望大家都會非常非常幸福~
「朵朵小語‧優美的眷戀在這個世界上，最重要的一件事，就是好好愛自己。好好愛自己，你的眼睛才能看見天空的美麗，耳朵才能聽見山水的清音。好好愛自己，你才能體會所有美好的東西，所有的文字與音符才能像清泉一樣注入你的心靈。好好愛自己，你才有愛人的能力，也才有讓別人愛上你的魅力。而愛自己的第一步，就是切斷讓自己覺得黏膩的過去，以無沾無滯的輕快心情，大步走向前去。愛自己的第二步，則是隨時保持孩子般的好奇，願意接受未知的指引；也隨時可以拋卻不再需要的行囊，一路雲淡風輕。親愛的，你是天地之間獨一無二的旅人，在陽光與月光的交替之中瀟灑獨行.................
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