I don't really see this as being "political correctness gone mad" which is I agree a pretty annoying as hell meme.
I see it as more of a gleeful exploitation of natural but mostly unfounded fears by low-level authority figures. Like how taking a picture of any public building will get you a little post about police abuse on BoingBoing.
The other day I saw a teenage girl moving down my street while I was driving home from work. The streets were snow covered and slick with ice underneath, and she was on crutches and obviously struggling just to stay upright.
I so badly wanted to offer her a lift, or at least offer my cell phone so she could phone her parents for help, but I didn't even dare approach her. I felt bad but didn't want to be the guy who pulls over to even address a child from his vehicle. Sad indeed.
Too bad this didn't go to a trial. The mall's key piece of evidence against this photo-taking pedo would have been mall-owned security video young children riding trains.
Women couldn't possibly harm our children. Or domestically abuse their significant others. Non-issue.
I don't see anyone here making that argument. Got something you need to get off your chest?
Lonelyhava made this claim, sort of.
No, she didn't. She noted that she gets a free pass because of societal perceptions.
Unfortunately, that's not entirely wrong. Rates of neglect and non-sexual abuse are roughly identical between parents of either gender (I don't know about non-carer relatives and friends), but child sexual abuse stats are pretty heavily skewed towards male-on-child. Its not fair that media moral panics stigmatise men associating with children, in fact its fucking ridiculous, but it doesn't come straight out of nowhere.
As the father of little children, I am more aware of little children doing cute things. When I see them doing cute things, I often smile at them, and when they look at me, I smile and wave or make a goofy face back at them. The children then smile at me, and I go on about my day.
I wonder how many random people out there now suspect I'm a pedophile because I do not awkwardly look away at the ceiling when I realize there's a child within 20 yards of me.
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tuxkamenreally took this picture.Registered Userregular
As the father of little children, I am more aware of little children doing cute things. When I see them doing cute things, I often smile at them, and when they look at me, I smile and wave or make a goofy face back at them. The children then smile at me, and I go on about my day.
I wonder how many random people out there now suspect I'm a pedophile because I do not awkwardly look away at the ceiling when I realize there's a child within 20 yards of me.
They just don't see that that's where you taped the bathtub pictures*.
As the father of little children, I am more aware of little children doing cute things. When I see them doing cute things, I often smile at them, and when they look at me, I smile and wave or make a goofy face back at them. The children then smile at me, and I go on about my day.
I wonder how many random people out there now suspect I'm a pedophile because I do not awkwardly look away at the ceiling when I realize there's a child within 20 yards of me.
I was once pulled over with a friend in the passenger seat, my niece in the back seat, and her dog (they were visiting, I was heading to the store for pop and she wanted candy), and the cop just assumed we abducted her.
When he said "who's child is that" and I started talking he yelled "LET THE CHILD FOR HERSELF", then asked her who's dog it was I had to actual restrain myself from saying "what you don't want the dog to answer for itself?". It was really tense and he threatened to give me a ticket because my car insurance was less than a week from expiring or some such.
Then again this is the same county that made one of my friends a sex offender forever for borking his 16 yo girlfriend when he was 18, his now wife and mother of his kids.
There's a reason most of us do our best to pretend children don't exist, people are paranoid as fuck
Women couldn't possibly harm our children. Or domestically abuse their significant others. Non-issue.
I don't see anyone here making that argument. Got something you need to get off your chest?
Lonelyhava made this claim, sort of.
No, she didn't. She noted that she gets a free pass because of societal perceptions.
Unfortunately, that's not entirely wrong. Rates of neglect and non-sexual abuse are roughly identical between parents of either gender (I don't know about non-carer relatives and friends), but child sexual abuse stats are pretty heavily skewed towards male-on-child. Its not fair that media moral panics stigmatise men associating with children, in fact its fucking ridiculous, but it doesn't come straight out of nowhere.
Cat did you miss the part where the other person said "woosh"?
I make faces at kids on the bus, or say hello if they're in line next to me at the grocery store. I don't think anyone would consider me a pedophile since it's a little difficult to kidnap a child while their guradian is standing right next to them.
This is a blog post that an old friend of mine made a few years ago. I figured it was appropriate.
At the bus stop I realise I have a few minutes to wait, so head over to a nearby market to offload a winning lottery ticket. I won’t be retiring anytime soon, but the $3 I won will be good for a day pass tomorrow. I try to make eyes at the pretty blonde, but she’s busy. I cash out with the other clerk and make my way back to the stop.
Later that day, at the Eugene Station, I head into the market and pick up a couple of jerky sticks and a soda. Truly, the Dinner of Champions. I walk out and take a seat at the EMX platform. To the right of me is a boy who looks like he is six or seven, and to the right of him is a mid-teen girl complaining into her cellphone about something. I assume it’s the boy’s sister. I look ahead listlessly and wait for the bus.
Out of nowhere, the boy turns to me. “I like Jerky” he says loudly.
“Me too.” I reply.
We talk about jerky for a few minutes while the sister talks on, oblivious.
“Do you like the teriyaki kind?” I ask the boy.
“I think so.” He says.
I break a piece off and hand it to him. He shows me his GameBoy. We talk about games, and then he tells me about his Poke’Mon for a while until the EMX arrives.
“Gotta go. See you later, dude.” I tell him.
“See ya.” He replies, and then tugs on his sister’s sleeve.
I get up to put my soda can under the trash before I get on the bus. I don’t think the boy’s sister knew I had even been there. It’s a good thing for the boy that I am not a kidnapper, and it’s a good thing for the sister that the chances of her parents reading this are practically null.
I don’t know what bothers me more, that the girl was so careless watching that little boy, or the fact that we live in a world where she should have to be cautious in the first place.
On the EMX I again get funneled toward the back. I’m checking out a gorgeous brunette when someone toward the middle starts singing Summertime. The bus is packed so I can’t see who it is, but whoever it was she had a pretty nice voice.
When my last stop of the night comes up I get off, and it’s still semi early in the evening. I don’t plan on taking the bus anymore today, so I leave my day pass next to the bench under a pebble.
He told me about what had happened once, he had had a fifteen minute conversation with this kid while his sister/whoever was talking on the phone, and she had absolutely no idea. Obviously if she would have turned back toward the kid fifteen minutes later and he wasn't there she would have said "I just turned away for a second and he was gone" when she was questioned by the police.
We talked about what he said in the post, how he was really pissed that the girl with him wasn't watching the kid, and also how much it sucked that we live in a world where you literally have to watch your kid like a hawk when you're in public. He had a completely innocent conversation with this kid, but to anyone else observing it probably would have looked like he was baiting him.
I don't think that anything that happened in your friend's story was particularly interesting or bad.
People don't watch kids 24/7, and there is no need to. She was seated directly next to a kid old enough to yell for help and hopefully old enough to not go with a strange man for no reason. It's certainly horrifying that kids do get kidnapped or injured or what have you, but the danger you put them in by not holding them in front of your eyes until they turn 18 is far less than the danger you put them in by driving them to school. We don't actually live in a world where you need to be that cautious in that manner. The world maims us through much more mundane means much more often.
I think your friend was just looking for an excuse to get mad at an annoying girl.
The really ridiculous thing is that statistics for children getting abducted by random strangers haven't changed since the 1960's, and yet somehow now it's a big deal.
The reality is, there aren't random people out there looking to kidnap and diddle your kids. It's so rare it's not even worth considering.
The really ridiculous thing is that statistics for children getting abducted by random strangers haven't changed since the 1960's, and yet somehow now it's a big deal.
The reality is, there aren't random people out there looking to kidnap and diddle your kids. It's so rare it's not even worth considering.
Also, I love that your friend used a kind conversation that he had followed by absolutely no harm coming to a child as evidence of this cruel world where letting your kid leave your line of sight for five minutes means they will definitely be molested.
Also, I love that your friend used a kind conversation that he had followed by absolutely no harm coming to a child as evidence of this cruel world where letting your kid leave your line of sight for five minutes means they will definitely be molested.
If only he'd been thinking he could have diddled that kid right then and there!
As the father of little children, I am more aware of little children doing cute things. When I see them doing cute things, I often smile at them, and when they look at me, I smile and wave or make a goofy face back at them. The children then smile at me, and I go on about my day.
I wonder how many random people out there now suspect I'm a pedophile because I do not awkwardly look away at the ceiling when I realize there's a child within 20 yards of me.
In my case, I have noticed recently that some crying babies or very young kids will stop crying when they look at my face. When that happens I give them a smile or stupid face and baby stops crying for a while
. Last time I did that the father suddenly glanced at me, looking to see what I was up too. I stopped my stupid face just in time thinking that the guy might take me for some creep and get angry.
Also, I love that your friend used a kind conversation that he had followed by absolutely no harm coming to a child as evidence of this cruel world where letting your kid leave your line of sight for five minutes means they will definitely be molested.
That's the point though, a kind conversation could have easily been used to lure the kid away. A kid isn't going to cry for help if he doesn't think he's in trouble.
This is exactly how the "Can you help me look for my puppy? He's lost" scam works.
SmokeStacks on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited February 2010
Wow, this story certainly puts a pretty big stab wound in that whole "faith in humanity" thing I have going.
Too bad this didn't go to a trial. The mall's key piece of evidence against this photo-taking pedo would have been mall-owned security video young children riding trains.
Also, I love that your friend used a kind conversation that he had followed by absolutely no harm coming to a child as evidence of this cruel world where letting your kid leave your line of sight for five minutes means they will definitely be molested.
That's the point though, a kind conversation could have easily been used to lure the kid away. A kid isn't going to cry for help if he doesn't think he's in trouble.
This is exactly how the "Can you help me look for my puppy? He's lost" scam works.
That's the point though, none of that happened. In fact, that happening is such a vanishingly small possibility that it's almost insulting to think about it instead of the panoply of actual dangers that exist in the world. Like I said, the drive to school is thousands of times more dangerous than the events you described, yet no one gives a shit because that danger is an acceptable trade-off for convenience. I've known zero people who have been abducted, or even know someone who has. I've known ten who died in car crashes in the past decade.
Well, the .000001% chance that my kid will get abducted by a child molester is more than worth the trade-off of letting him out of my sight for more than 30 seconds. Christ, I spent my childhood wandering around my street and the woods where I could be raped at any time.
I don't think some people remember being children.
Honestly, was anyone a here always within eyeshot of a trusted adult? Was anyone here raped as a child?
I know one person who was molested (sort of) by her uncle, he used to give her baths and record it until he was caught when she found out in school about that thing being a no no.
Outside of incidents involving family or authority figures (which, really, you can't really protect too much against other than watching for warning signs), the only real threat you have to watch out for is online predators.
No, I don't mean the kind that will visit and diddle your child, I mean the vastly more numerous kind that will talk them into photographing their naughty bits and IMing it to them for attention.
I don't see how checking in on a kid more than once every fifteen minutes while you're both in a public area is somehow unreasonable for the guardian of a child.
I understand where you're coming from though. You ever read The Body by Steven King (or see Stand By Me, the movie adaptation)? Four kids tell their parent's they're going out camping as a cover story, but their parents buy it. No supervision, no calls to check in, nothing. They leave one morning and come back late in the next day. Obviously this is fiction, but it represents the period it takes place in.
When we were children it didn't seem like a big deal, but this was before the internet and the miniaturization of the country from a media standpoint. Back then, if some kid on the other side of the country got kidnapped, raped, murdered, and dumped in a ditch somewhere, we never knew. Now, we'll hear about it ten minutes after the body is discovered.
I'm all for getting kids outside with their friends (it's good for 'em), but saying "nothing ever happened when we were kids" isn't a very good argument. All sorts of things happened, we just never heard about them.
204,000 children are abducted by non-family each year, approximately. (0.009% of ~21 million children in the US)
350,000 children are abducted by a family member in violation of custody. (0.01% of ~21 million children)
It isn't a good thing, it's a terrible thing. But it's not exactly a scourge at the moment. Plus, it's far more likely that a family member will abduct a child.
I am not advocating negligence. I am advocating the idea that it is merely another in a series of trade-offs between convenience and safety when you take your eye off your kid for a bit.
204,000 children are abducted by non-family each year, approximately. (0.009% of ~21 million children in the US)
350,000 children are abducted by a family member in violation of custody. (0.01% of ~21 million children)
It isn't a good thing, it's a terrible thing. But it's not exactly a scourge at the moment. Plus, it's far more likely that a family member will abduct a child.
I am not advocating negligence. I am advocating the idea that it is merely another in a series of trade-offs between convenience and safety when you take your eye off your kid for a bit.
Math time; you forgot to multiply by 100 to get a percent.
Isn't it more likely that a family member will harm a child in some way, period?
Pretty much any crime is more likely to be committed by someone you know than the stereotypical stranger lurking in the bushes.
Well this is different than say, mugging. I can't remember the source of my stats so forgive me if I'm wrong, but family members/authority figures/baby sitters are significantly more likely to diddle your kids.
The reasoning is kind of plainly obvious, a pedophile is more likely to diddle in situations where there is easy access to a child and long periods of privacy. It's no more surprising than finding out most thefts from stores are from employees - they are there more often, so if any of them happen to be thieves the temptation just smacks them in the face all day.
The moral is that you shouldn't let your children ever be close friends with any adult, including yourself. Your best bet is to get all the parents in your neighborhood to agree to leave and let the children run the town.
The moral is that you shouldn't let your children ever be close friends with any adult, including yourself. Your best bet is to get all the parents in your neighborhood to agree to leave and let the children run the town.
Uhhh... That hasn't worked out very well in the past.
Those children formed perfect communist societies, truly an inspiration on corruption free governance
"I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where little girls are mind controlled and have sea slugs implanted in them..."
As for the crazy story - more info is needed. Clearly the guard was in the wrong, but who knows what sort of scene the dad caused when confronted. The outcome will probably be banning cellphones in the shopping centere, and more CCTV cameras.
Something is wrong and/or misleading with those statistics.
Firstly 204,000 is about 0.95% of 21million children, not 0.009%. 350,000 would be about 1.7% of 21million.
I find it incredibly unlikely that 2.65% of children are abducted yearly. That is one out of every 37 kids.
The bulk of those statistics is a parent "abducting" the child away from the parent that won legal custody. I doubt there was much "harm" going on the child so much as a disagreement legally over who should have custody. Though, I don't have exact numbers to back that up.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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I see it as more of a gleeful exploitation of natural but mostly unfounded fears by low-level authority figures. Like how taking a picture of any public building will get you a little post about police abuse on BoingBoing.
Lonelyhava made this claim, sort of.
What's up Big Brother?
I so badly wanted to offer her a lift, or at least offer my cell phone so she could phone her parents for help, but I didn't even dare approach her. I felt bad but didn't want to be the guy who pulls over to even address a child from his vehicle. Sad indeed.
Sticks with sharp, spindly thorns.
No, she didn't. She noted that she gets a free pass because of societal perceptions.
Unfortunately, that's not entirely wrong. Rates of neglect and non-sexual abuse are roughly identical between parents of either gender (I don't know about non-carer relatives and friends), but child sexual abuse stats are pretty heavily skewed towards male-on-child. Its not fair that media moral panics stigmatise men associating with children, in fact its fucking ridiculous, but it doesn't come straight out of nowhere.
I wonder how many random people out there now suspect I'm a pedophile because I do not awkwardly look away at the ceiling when I realize there's a child within 20 yards of me.
They just don't see that that's where you taped the bathtub pictures*.
* - you monster.
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I was once pulled over with a friend in the passenger seat, my niece in the back seat, and her dog (they were visiting, I was heading to the store for pop and she wanted candy), and the cop just assumed we abducted her.
When he said "who's child is that" and I started talking he yelled "LET THE CHILD FOR HERSELF", then asked her who's dog it was I had to actual restrain myself from saying "what you don't want the dog to answer for itself?". It was really tense and he threatened to give me a ticket because my car insurance was less than a week from expiring or some such.
Then again this is the same county that made one of my friends a sex offender forever for borking his 16 yo girlfriend when he was 18, his now wife and mother of his kids.
There's a reason most of us do our best to pretend children don't exist, people are paranoid as fuck
Cat did you miss the part where the other person said "woosh"?
I make faces at kids on the bus, or say hello if they're in line next to me at the grocery store. I don't think anyone would consider me a pedophile since it's a little difficult to kidnap a child while their guradian is standing right next to them.
This is a blog post that an old friend of mine made a few years ago. I figured it was appropriate.
He told me about what had happened once, he had had a fifteen minute conversation with this kid while his sister/whoever was talking on the phone, and she had absolutely no idea. Obviously if she would have turned back toward the kid fifteen minutes later and he wasn't there she would have said "I just turned away for a second and he was gone" when she was questioned by the police.
We talked about what he said in the post, how he was really pissed that the girl with him wasn't watching the kid, and also how much it sucked that we live in a world where you literally have to watch your kid like a hawk when you're in public. He had a completely innocent conversation with this kid, but to anyone else observing it probably would have looked like he was baiting him.
People don't watch kids 24/7, and there is no need to. She was seated directly next to a kid old enough to yell for help and hopefully old enough to not go with a strange man for no reason. It's certainly horrifying that kids do get kidnapped or injured or what have you, but the danger you put them in by not holding them in front of your eyes until they turn 18 is far less than the danger you put them in by driving them to school. We don't actually live in a world where you need to be that cautious in that manner. The world maims us through much more mundane means much more often.
I think your friend was just looking for an excuse to get mad at an annoying girl.
The reality is, there aren't random people out there looking to kidnap and diddle your kids. It's so rare it's not even worth considering.
But that's not what the TV says!!!!
If only he'd been thinking he could have diddled that kid right then and there!
Missed opportunity!
In my case, I have noticed recently that some crying babies or very young kids will stop crying when they look at my face. When that happens I give them a smile or stupid face and baby stops crying for a while
. Last time I did that the father suddenly glanced at me, looking to see what I was up too. I stopped my stupid face just in time thinking that the guy might take me for some creep and get angry.
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That's the point though, a kind conversation could have easily been used to lure the kid away. A kid isn't going to cry for help if he doesn't think he's in trouble.
This is exactly how the "Can you help me look for my puppy? He's lost" scam works.
Ah, the "Takes one to know one." offense.
That's the point though, none of that happened. In fact, that happening is such a vanishingly small possibility that it's almost insulting to think about it instead of the panoply of actual dangers that exist in the world. Like I said, the drive to school is thousands of times more dangerous than the events you described, yet no one gives a shit because that danger is an acceptable trade-off for convenience. I've known zero people who have been abducted, or even know someone who has. I've known ten who died in car crashes in the past decade.
Well, the .000001% chance that my kid will get abducted by a child molester is more than worth the trade-off of letting him out of my sight for more than 30 seconds. Christ, I spent my childhood wandering around my street and the woods where I could be raped at any time.
You may as well worry about your child being quantum tunneled into the sun. Sure it could happen, but it shouldn't be top of your list of priorities.
Honestly, was anyone a here always within eyeshot of a trusted adult? Was anyone here raped as a child?
I know one person who was molested (sort of) by her uncle, he used to give her baths and record it until he was caught when she found out in school about that thing being a no no.
Outside of incidents involving family or authority figures (which, really, you can't really protect too much against other than watching for warning signs), the only real threat you have to watch out for is online predators.
No, I don't mean the kind that will visit and diddle your child, I mean the vastly more numerous kind that will talk them into photographing their naughty bits and IMing it to them for attention.
I understand where you're coming from though. You ever read The Body by Steven King (or see Stand By Me, the movie adaptation)? Four kids tell their parent's they're going out camping as a cover story, but their parents buy it. No supervision, no calls to check in, nothing. They leave one morning and come back late in the next day. Obviously this is fiction, but it represents the period it takes place in.
When we were children it didn't seem like a big deal, but this was before the internet and the miniaturization of the country from a media standpoint. Back then, if some kid on the other side of the country got kidnapped, raped, murdered, and dumped in a ditch somewhere, we never knew. Now, we'll hear about it ten minutes after the body is discovered.
I'm all for getting kids outside with their friends (it's good for 'em), but saying "nothing ever happened when we were kids" isn't a very good argument. All sorts of things happened, we just never heard about them.
204,000 children are abducted by non-family each year, approximately. (0.009% of ~21 million children in the US)
350,000 children are abducted by a family member in violation of custody. (0.01% of ~21 million children)
It isn't a good thing, it's a terrible thing. But it's not exactly a scourge at the moment. Plus, it's far more likely that a family member will abduct a child.
I am not advocating negligence. I am advocating the idea that it is merely another in a series of trade-offs between convenience and safety when you take your eye off your kid for a bit.
Firstly 204,000 is about 0.95% of 21million children, not 0.009%. 350,000 would be about 1.7% of 21million.
I find it incredibly unlikely that 2.65% of children are abducted yearly. That is one out of every 37 kids.
Math time; you forgot to multiply by 100 to get a percent.
Well this is different than say, mugging. I can't remember the source of my stats so forgive me if I'm wrong, but family members/authority figures/baby sitters are significantly more likely to diddle your kids.
The reasoning is kind of plainly obvious, a pedophile is more likely to diddle in situations where there is easy access to a child and long periods of privacy. It's no more surprising than finding out most thefts from stores are from employees - they are there more often, so if any of them happen to be thieves the temptation just smacks them in the face all day.
The moral is that you shouldn't let your children ever be close friends with any adult, including yourself. Your best bet is to get all the parents in your neighborhood to agree to leave and let the children run the town.
Uhhh... That hasn't worked out very well in the past.
Just saying.
"I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where little girls are mind controlled and have sea slugs implanted in them..."
As for the crazy story - more info is needed. Clearly the guard was in the wrong, but who knows what sort of scene the dad caused when confronted. The outcome will probably be banning cellphones in the shopping centere, and more CCTV cameras.
The bulk of those statistics is a parent "abducting" the child away from the parent that won legal custody. I doubt there was much "harm" going on the child so much as a disagreement legally over who should have custody. Though, I don't have exact numbers to back that up.
OH MY GOD, WHY ISN'T THE GOVERNMENT DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!?!?!?!? THEY SHOULD DESTROY THE SUN!!!!!!
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