Eek, A Male

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073752925629440.html

by georgecmu • 16 years ago

229 165 16 years ago

online.wsj.com

All the newspapers and TV stations and social media and whatnot create an environment very different from the one we evolved with. This is not the small tribe living in the savanna anymore, yet we react to news exactly the same way.

Hence all the bizarre attitudes like the one described in this article.

ry0ohki• 16 years ago

It's like the "mass animal deaths" stuff at the beginning of the year. Despite all statistics saying it's normal, it suddenly feels like a real problem because the news is covering it. 24/7 news is probably the worst thing to come from the 20th century.

PaulHoule• 16 years ago

My child went to an excellent day care center that got targeted for harassment because it had male workers. The place got inspected by the state and ultimately got a clean bill of health, but it cost them money and caused a lot of worry for them and parents who had children there.

I spoke with the director and we both agreed that children spend too much time with women in school and day care. One of the reasons many young boys don't click with school is that they don't get male role models. Children who don't have a "man in the house" might get all the way to high school before they meet any male role models at all.

zdw• 16 years ago

Additionally, it's considered OK to slam men in media, where it isn't right to do it to women.

The next time you see a commercial that makes use of gender roles, swap the genders and see if the commercial would still be suitable. Most don't hold up to this scrutiny.

alexophile3• 16 years ago

I tried that same strategy with sitcoms for a while, but they all just turned into "I Love Lucy"

aaronroyer• 16 years ago

I agree that the phenomenon is undeniable. Commercial after commercial shows a bumbling, silly, or wrongheaded male creating a problem that an eye-rolling female armed with the advertised product is able to solve.

I used to find this mildly annoying. I thought that surely our society is sufficiently advanced that we might accept roughly equal occurrences of each gender as the goats in these commercials without it seeming disparaging to women.

But thinking this made me realize: having men as the goats is not disparaging to men, either. Now I choose to attribute the phenomenon to the conventional wisdom that men are generally less self-conscious than women. I believe there is some anecdotal evidence for this but have no idea whether it is actually true. What I do believe is that marketers perceive this to be the case and making commercials that make men look stupid will alienate fewer people in the audience, since humiliating somebody that a male viewer identifies with is, theoretically, less disquieting.

The same applies to sitcoms and movies.

ja27• 16 years ago

I spent several years working with elementary-aged kids in our church. For one whole year, it was me and another dad with a class of a dozen or so 5 year olds. (We're all background-checked, for what little that's worth. We also have child protection guidelines to follow - foremost of which is to never be alone with a kid and no other adult.)

It was amazing to see the reactions of moms dropping off their kids when they realized it was just us. Only once did I get asked "is there going to be a mom here with you?" but I know it was in a lot of their minds. But I never had one refuse to leave their kid with us. Over the years I've had plenty of moms eventually tell me how glad they were to see men working with kids.

I did get a chance for 2 years to run more "boy-friendly" activities at church. We did mock camp-outs, blanket forts, went outside for classes whenever the weather and sunlight allowed, and even had campfires outside during what otherwise would have been time spent sitting around a table trying to pay attention. Boys don't work well indoors trying to sit still and pay attention. They really do absorb more if they're outside and their hands are busy.

I even got to work with a special-needs girl that was horribly abused by her birth parents. (I'd happily beat her birth parents within an inch of their lives and worse if I ever met them.) In two years she went from screaming fits if an adult even accidently touched her arm to the point that she'd walk up and hug me. I was honored to be a small part of her recovery.

theycallmemorty• 16 years ago

The Child Protection Policy at my church requires a male and female leader in every situation.

Its a shame that this is where our society is going and that being 'beyond reproach' means remaining one step ahead.

kmfrk• 16 years ago

A friend of mine worked in the day care centre at my old (Western-European) school (ages 6--10 years), and he told me that, for guys, letting children sit on your lap was strictly verboten.

Pardon my French, but what the fuck has the world come to? It really makes me sad how little solidarity there is in today's world where people become more insulated and afraid of each other for no rational reason. I love being very physical when I'm social, regardless of how well I know some people, and I am seriously worried about the day that the paedophilia thought police (PTPD) knocks on my door.

- - -

It boggles my mind how so many things are going backwards as time moves forwards, even though you'd think the opposite would happen. In ten years' time, will Santa Claus be abhorred as a paedophile, or will Coca Cola have to cave to public pressure and feature Ms Claus instead, so children can still sit in the Christmas and share their adorable, naïve wishes?

If we ever get an equivalent to Mad Men that takes place in the 10s, I'm sure people will balk at things like these and wonder what the hell we were thinking. Or maybe things will have become much worse by then.

gaius5• 16 years ago

3 comments on this, and 200 on some girl whining that (male) geeks "hurt her feelings".

haploid3• 16 years ago

Which article are you referring to ?

gaius5• 16 years ago

This one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110756

Obv there are more comments here now :-)

spitfire• 16 years ago

Link to that? I must have missed it.

Semiapies3• 16 years ago

And in two hours, this one will have twice as many comments as that post got over the course of days.

Pedophile-paranoia is a real problem, but let's be clear - if there's anything that will rile HN posters, it's the idea that some straight, white guy somewhere might get a raw deal.

AlexandrB• 16 years ago

Could just be that the other story actually related to the software industry - it's Hacker news after all. Why the persecution complex?

limist• 16 years ago

I didn't know the author's gender until the end. Nice to see a woman pointing out misandry.

narrator• 16 years ago

I remember when this all got started in the early 90s. The 80s were pretty mellow but then I think the Polly Klass murder in California was a watershed moment where the politicians and the news media just went for it with the insane anti-male paranoid stuff. All the school policies changed and everything got excessively locked down and paranoid.

sueders100• 16 years ago

The 80s weren't completely serene either though. That's when the whole day care sex abuse hysteria really picked up steam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sex_abuse_hysteria

axod12• 16 years ago

If I had to choose one of the following, to improve society:

  a). More women in tech
  b). More men in childcare/teaching

It'd be 'b' without a doubt. As said elsewhere, the complete lack of any male role models at a large number of schools is astonishing and very worrying. Is it any wonder girls are performing better than boys these days, as the number of male teachers has decreased to almost none?

Great to finally see an article like this one.

joe_the_user• 16 years ago

Well, we don't need to choose.

In fact, it seems like each would support the other.

maxawaytoolong2• 16 years ago

Does it really make any difference? I grew up in an anachronistic small town and had at least 50% male teachers from 1st grade on up. I can't say I paid attention to any of my teachers, male or female. If anything, I thought the male teachers were much bigger idiots and losers than the female teachers. In no way did I view them as "role models."

flatline• 16 years ago

It could make a difference. If fewer women are interested in technical/scientific fields, and we have all or predominately female teachers, the education (and enthusiasm) in technical fields will be lacking. There's no reason that trend in gender interests cannot change but at the present there is an imbalance.

oiuhjyftgrdgh6• 16 years ago

Suppose you are black kid in the inner city and none of your teachers are black, cos they might be criminals or a muslim kid and none of your teachers are brown (terrorists) - you might have some doubts about whether you can be a teacher or whether school is for you.

axod12• 16 years ago

I think a lot of it is subconsciously consumed. Also if you were lucky to have a good male role model at home - father/older siblings, then perhaps male teachers weren't important to you.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that boys learn best when taught by men, and girls learn best when taught by women. Male and female brains are very different, and we think differently about problems.

So if your school has 80% women teachers, then the girls are going to do better on average than the boys in that school, which is concerning.

kenjackson14• 16 years ago

I have to admit I'd go the complete opposite. I do know there are great male teachers, but in environments where the male teacher might be alone with children I am hesitant. The data bears this out, as does personal experience.

With that said male coaches or piano teachers or tutors I have no problem with, since those generally take place in plainsight of parents.

I know that really sucks for the good ones, and most are. But there are enough bad ones that the risk seems too great.

rgraham• 16 years ago

Citation? What evidence shows that there are enough bad ones? Cherry picked news stories by for-profit media?

What if all the good ones packed up and left when they were treated like predators-to-be?

callahad2• 16 years ago

> The data bears this out

I'd really appreciate a citation on that.

alex_c3• 16 years ago

Two immediate thoughts:

1) Any similar argument about women and another profession would instantly be met with cries of sexism.

2) This is a great example of the types of unsubstantiated mass hysteria that seem to be more and more common. I find it really depressing, not least of which because I can't think of a solution.

ryanwaggoner• 16 years ago

Not that your position is logical, but if it was, it seems like you'd have the opposite position: teachers might be alone with groups of children, but probably not with a single child, one-on-one.

But piano teachers and other tutors seem like they'd often be alone one-on-one with a child. I was always dropped off by my parents (or rode my bike across town) for those kinds of things. Do parents today really cart their children around and sit and watch them every second? Geez.

To be clear, in no way am I advocating that paranoia against male piano teachers or tutors is justified.

vacri4• 16 years ago

The moon is made of cheese and Atlantis is located just off Greenland. The data bears this out.

I'll provide a citation for my claims if you provide one for yours. The plural of anecdote is not data.

oiuhjyftgrdgh6• 16 years ago

Most abuse is by family members/friends.

So rather than trusting your husband to drop your kids off in the SUV and worrying about the gym teacher - you would be safer letting them walk with strangers.

sarkozy13• 16 years ago

More men are not needed in childcare/teaching because women are naturally - from birth - better at the type of empathy and communication that is required in those fields.

It's the same reason that women excel in technology management roles (while generally being inferior in technical roles because of inadequate training or aptitude, exceptional cases like Marissa Mayer excepted).

Even a woman with average communication/empathy skills relative to other women (emphasis on 'empathy' - because this is what really separates men from women in communication) is often far better at management/planning than 99.99% of male technologists.

varjag2• 16 years ago

I guess that's why most of the successful tech CEOs are female.

axod12• 16 years ago

In the 'olden' days, we used to have discipline in schools. So male teachers were extremely useful to have. Bad pupils used to get told off, disciplined, and snapped into line.

Now, naughty kids get 'diagnosed' and given a cool label, get a 'teachers assistant' assigned to them - effectively praised for being naughty.

I agree with your point about women excelling at empathy and communication, but I'd say the movement away from male teachers has also been due to the removal of discipline in schools, and a movement toward empathising with bad behavior rather than correcting it.

haploid3• 16 years ago

Downvote the heretic!

Unpopular opinions will not be tolerated!

Oh, HN, you never fail to disappoint.

boons• 16 years ago

Are you saying women are, on average more empathethic/ have better communication skills, or women are innately 'guaranteed' to be better in these areas?

Any man with the skills needed to perform well in childcare(especially) and teaching jobs are discouraged from taking those jobs, as any woman would 'naturally' be better in such roles (not to mention the significant 'pedo scare' barrier). This is the sort of latent discrimination that forces people away from the jobs they are best suited to.

mcknz2• 16 years ago

A BBC story from 2006? Stories from her friends? That's the best she's got? Would be nice to see a real article on this topic with actual analysis and data.

Of course it's stupid to label all men as possible predators, but there's another side to it: when a single pedophile can damage literally hundreds of children, who wouldn't have cause for concern?

The challenge is to find the level of concern that is reasonable and warranted, but this article can't be bothered with gray areas.

scottkrager• 16 years ago

I think this is a situation where the votes this story is getting ARE the data.

I imagine many men voting this story up have noticed this trend in their own lives.

It's not hard data, but it shows a trend.

Heck just yesterday I rode an elevator up with 2 parents and their maybe 3 year old kid. The kid had been out in the rain and I made a comment directly to the child about the rain. The parents looked pissed just because I was talking to their kid.

I was just trying to make awkward elevator conversation a little less awkward.

mcknz2• 16 years ago

I don't disagree with the notion that people overreact to men around kids, but I think the article itself is just a lazy appeal to emotion, and not very well argued.

sqrt17• 16 years ago

The BBC story from 2006 seems to be the one older story in there, while at least the first two examples were in the news recently. If this is not enough to make it a "real article with actual analysis and data", most of the stuff that makes soccer moms uneasy to see their kids with random males wouldn't make the cut either.

It's extremely stupid to label all men as possible pedophile, and it's even really stupid to ascribe - to each and every pedophile - the faculty (let alone willingness) to be a predator.

Most children who are abused are abused by close relatives, so (as unpopular as that is) keep a close eye on other family members and your kids' buddies' parents, with a reasonable amount of concern. Teaching your children to fear all and every stranger, or any male adult, will deal considerable psychological damage to them; when a single well-meaning caregiver can damage literally hundreds of children in that way, who wouldn't have cause for concern?

aplusbi2• 16 years ago

While I agree about the lack of supporting evidence for her claims, nothing in the article suggested to me that she isn't concerned about pedophiles, nor do I think this article was really near a gray area at all.

>Of course it's stupid to label all men as possible predators, but there's another side to it: when a single pedophile can damage literally hundreds of children, who wouldn't have cause for concern?

Concern about pedophiles isn't the other side to this. It's related in so far as our concern about pedophiles has turned into a concern about men in general. The only way it could be the other side would be if the majority of pedophiles are men (probably true) AND if a significant amount of men are pedophiles (I don't think I need to cite any references to say this is absolutely false).

It's pretty easy to have concern about pedophiles without having concern about men working with children. In fact, we already have systems in place for this - all teachers are screened before they are hired, for example.

Splines• 16 years ago

Sadly, it's difficult to compare the hand-wavy benefit (letting children interact with men) with the real cost of having something happen to your child.

As a parent, I'm of the opinion that the media blows kidnappings and the like way out of proportion. Even then, it's difficult to look at the data objectively, because it's your children.

gaius5• 16 years ago

Kidnapping and child abuse are almost always relatives or friends of the family. Strangers, statistically, are very safe.

InclinedPlane• 16 years ago

The media deserves a good chunk of blame for this phenomenon. They have inflamed society's fears into paranoia by hyping and over-reporting exceptional events, giving the false impression that child predators are anywhere and everywhere.

Meanwhile, children are far more likely to be physically or sexually abused or kidnapped by close relatives. But that story is less compelling from a media perspective so the public is less exposed to it.

defroost• 16 years ago

I agree. I also think that like many things, this kind of paranoia regarding pedophilia is taken the the extreme in the US. I've spent time in several European countries, Greece for example, where it is perfectly OK for an adult man to pat someone else's child on the head without the mother pulling the kid close.

alexophile3• 16 years ago

[I originally posted this on a reddit discussion, link's at the bottom]

  One day, my friend Bryan was charged with the daunting task of getting Ellie, one of the older and more difficult students, to read out of a children's book for a distinct and measurable amount of time.

After some cajoling, pleading, and maybe even trickery, the two were finally sitting down at a table with myself and another student. To keep Ellie in control long enough to read more than a sentance was a complicated maneuver, but the best way (this was relayed by the teacher-coordinator person) involved being really close with him and loosely holding him in place. I don't know much about Ellie's potential conditions or history, but this makes some sort of sense. Suffice it to say, they were close, but in a totally appropriate manner (I was in a position to guage, because I was basically staring in awe the entire time)

But a few minutes in, Ellie decides he's done reading for the day. And for one reason or another, he jumps up out of the bench seat, pointing an accusatory finger at his tutor. His English wasn't super clear, and he wasn't being very loud (thank god), but I did catch "touch" and "special area."

The two of us are frozen in horror. What can you say but "I... b... no..."? Ellie maintains this outrage long enough to really get some good satisfaction out of the looks on our faces, and then he relents and just starts laughing at us.

What if someone walking by had heard? We were in a partially exposed church basement kind of area, so it's not unheard of for random people to be walking by - and the cry of abuse stirs the indignation better than most anything else - so there was a really good chance that something really awful was about to happen.

But it didn't.

So the question was, what do you do now? We tried to impress upon him never to do something like that again, but he clearly didn't grasp the full potential force of his actions. We were like 20 at the time, and ill-equipped to deal with children on this level, so we probably should have relayed the event to an adult of some sort, but we were too worried about how it would be perceived, so we just moved on.

Neither of us stopped volunteering because of the incident, but I'll never forget the sinking dread of that instant, that's for sure.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e7l16/i_work_with...

klbarry• 16 years ago

I think some children at least understand fully the power it gives them, and for some troubled children it is a tool to lash out.

axod12• 16 years ago

It's surely more pointing out the absurdity of adults being so petrified of terrorists/pedophiles/etc Basically everything the media tries to make us scared of.

maxawaytoolong2• 16 years ago

Kids aren't stupid and they are mischevious. Little kids in Brooklyn already mess around with older people by yelling "pedo" at them. I've seen more than one dark British comedy where this is a repeated joke. When adults get too neurotic about stuff kids end up using it against them.

lkrubner• 16 years ago

By far, the most gruesome example of this was the Salem Witch Trials, which lead to the deaths of 51 innocent people. This was a clear case of children sensing fear in adults and using it against them. The driving force of the murders (for they really were murders) was a few girls in their early teens. Past a certain point, the judge and some of the town elders almost certainly knew that the girls were lying, but none of the adults could afford to appear to be soft about confronting the Devil. Each adult needed to appear, to the other adults, as if they were taking a strong stand against Satan, and the young girls sensed this tension, and manipulated it in gruesome ways.

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

I'll never forget when my two oldest kids (now in their 20s) went to one of those early head-start kind of places when they were a kid.

One week the lesson was on inappropriate touching. I know this because both kids spent the next month inappropriately touching everybody they met -- with some very humorous results.

Of all the things that have changed in the last 40 years or so, this thing we've done where we've trained everybody to be afraid of each other is probably the worst. Every day parents are bombarded by statistically highly-unlikely events that they take to be commonplace. It's made an awful impact on the fabric of society. Very sad.

oiuhjyftgrdgh6• 16 years ago

There was a campaign like that in the UK - the kids were given dolls with somewhat impressive external genitals. If the kids touched the genitals that was evidence that they were being abused.

Apart from the fact that dolls of adults with penises are rather unusual and likely to produce an odd reaction - the same logic suggests my nieces are being abused by the lion from Lion king.

simias• 16 years ago

All the french people in the audience will remember the Outreau trial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outreau_trial ) where several innocent people spent years in prison and one commited suicide, all that based on the lies of two persons and bogus psychiatric expertise of the children. The media also took a big part in this debacle. I think it really made people realize something here, I don't think this could happen again anytime soon. I hope you won't have to live something like that in the US to make things change.

People should be presumed innocent unless proven guilty, not the other way around. The modern western society would have us think otherwise (and not only for child molesting, see CCTV, airport screenings, ...).

stonemetal3• 16 years ago

We were like 20 at the time, and ill-equipped to deal with children on this level, so we probably should have relayed the event to an adult of some sort

At 20 you are an adult of some sort, and have been for some time. The only problem I see in the story is you don't act like it.

chc• 16 years ago

You are an adult of some sort at 20, but for most people, that sort is "barely."

dennisgorelik2• 16 years ago

That's how society gets rid of future kids (AKA "solving problem of overpopulation"). The more dangerous it is to deal with kids (because of potential legal consequences), the less people want to deal with kids. End result: childcare (formal and informal) is getting more expensive, potential parents have less children or don't have children at all.

dennisgorelik2• 16 years ago

That's how society gets rid of future kids (AKA "solving problem of overpopulation").

The more dangerous it is to deal with kids (because of potential legal consequences), the less people want to deal with kids.

End result: childcare (formal and informal) is getting more expensive, potential parents have less children or don't have children at all.

juiceandjuice• 16 years ago

I went to the Exploratorium by myself on Sunday. I figured people would probably assume I wasn't there by myself. But I couldn't help thinking about this Asiz Ansari joke where he's talking to a kid at a museum, and finds out they have a lot of things in common, including Call of Duty on xbox, theories about LOST and stuff, and then the kid's dad leaves him there with his new "friend"

yason• 16 years ago

What a fucking horrible way to live :-(

jswinghammer• 16 years ago

I teach first grade Sunday School at my church and I definitely noticed that parents were uncomfortable with me being alone with the kids for a few weeks. This in spite of the fact that I'm a leader in our church and I knew a lot of the parents outside of this setting. I also had to have a background check before being allowed to help out.

It was pretty annoying but the parents got over it when they saw that their kids loved having me there. This is in part because I always seem to end up discussing Star Wars or video games with the boys for at least part of the time.

What's funny (and sad) is that this attitude spills over into family life. My brother won't kiss my oldest daughter on the lips despite her insistence that he do so (she has some pretty strong opinions). His response was that "I don't do that with kids."

follower• 16 years ago

That last comment made me think of this sentence from a student's recent petition to reverse a school's "No hugging" policy:

"Interpersonal touch is not inherently sexual, and to treat it as such is to make it so."

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/17/kids-petition-agains.ht...

meterplech• 16 years ago

Lenore Skenazy is actually the leader of an entire movement around kids being able to do more of what they want (hence the book: Free Range Kids). You can check out the blog here: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

Also, she caused quite a stir a few years ago for letting her 9 year old kid ride the subway alone. Her story about it is here: http://www.nysun.com/news/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subwa...

nollidge• 16 years ago

Skenazy was also featured in an episode (608) of Penn & Teller's Bullshit about the topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Penn_%26_Teller:_Bullsh...

nmaio• 16 years ago

Male nanny here.

Anyway, I was an education major and one my male professors would always stress to the males in the class that they should be extremely cautious when dealing with children (don't hold their hands, etc):

The professor started out teaching first grade, and one time, a boy in his class came out of the bathroom with his pants down because he couldn't get them back up. Before the boy could even ask for help, the professor ran down the hallway to the nearest classroom with a female teacher to have her pull up the boys pants.

I'm not offended by the way it is though. Like how at the Iowa daycare center where the one male aide can't even be in the room while diapers are being changed. I was taught to stay far away from those types of situations and to be honest, if it makes someone feel better that I'm not in there - that's fine by me.

TheSOB88• 16 years ago

Slippery slope, dude.

trustfundbaby• 16 years ago

Reminds me of this Reddit post http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/cf8j9/14_year_old_charg...

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Nothing to be proud of here, but very recently a huge child pornography case was uncovered in a dutch day care center where a guy molested and filmed the molesting of upwards of 80 children together with his partner.

The case is extreme both in scope, gravity of the offenses, duration and in the position of trust the perpetrators were in and it will take a long long time for that to blow over again.

'Eek A Male' is very much a response heard around daycare centers here.

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=383&sid=2198339

johngalt2• 16 years ago

This also extends to other areas as well.

If a man is furiously yelling and striking a woman in public the police will be called on the man. If a woman is yelling and furiously slapping a man, the police will be called on the man.

Consider that: 1. Men receive stiffer sentences for the same crime.

2. Men are routinely ruined by family court, because of the instant trump card that an abuse accusation brings. Additionally they have few options when they are the victim of abuse.

_ouxp• 16 years ago

This one really bugged me: "Three airlines, British Airways, Qantas and Air New Zealand, have attracted criticism for controversial seating policies which discriminate against adult male passengers on the basis of their gender." Fortunately BA has changed its policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_sex_discrimination_poli...

agentultra• 16 years ago

It bothers me.

I used to assist teaching a Saturday morning martial arts class for kids. The change-rooms were communal; nothing unusual and I never thought anything of it. Then I was told that it made the parents uncomfortable and I had to change in the office. Suddenly I felt embarrassed and shameful.

Then I was shocked that I had felt such feelings. I don't experience much, if any, discrimination in my life. I really empathize with those who do. It's terrible.

Dylanlacey2• 16 years ago

I get a weird mix of this.

I'm a scout leader in Australia, where Scouts is non-denominational, non-discriminatory and mixed gender. I'm a Venturer leader, the 14 - 18 year olds, and I'm gay.

These things ARE linked. I'm a Venturer leader because it was this or being a Joey leader, which is the under 10's, and I just CBF dealing with that noise, because I'm also gay, which makes parents immediately suspicious. 'Cause, you know, once a little bit of a pervert, NATURALLY a complete monster. Just like how litterbugs all become worse then Pol Pot.

So, on the one hand I avoided one sort of leadership. On the other, I'm wanted because I'm a male, I can relate to the younger dudes. At camps we have a leader of both sexes not because there are touching fears, but because kids need someone of either gender to talk too if they need it, to make them comfortable.

Eek, A Male

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