snowy

My brother loves kids and I am constantly having to warn him to back off in public situations where little kids are concerned. Women do not appreciate having strange men approach them about thier children, and yes, while it may be a stereotype or upholding a stereotype, the fact is that it is a situation that makes a woman uncomfortable. My brother can be very overeager around children and I keep telling him to calm down and stop acting like a kid himself--this REALLY makes people think there's something wrong with him. I've had to explain to him time and time again why him approaching children makes their mothers uncomfortable, but I don't think he's ever going to understand it or fully grasp why that is...and the fact that my brother IS a little weird makes it even worse.

If a guy's not a complete stranger I'd have no problem with him being around my (future) kids. It's the complete strangers I would worry about--even though I should be worrying about those close to me--those who might be hiding their true intentions.

I think it's sad that we have to be paranoid of men in this way. Very sad indeed.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Gilda

Child molestation is a type of sexual assault.

Are you disputing that a large majority of sexual assaults and/or child molestations are comitted by males?

I just did a search of the Megan's law database, using my own zip code and half a dozen others, and here's what I found.

In my zip code, one female registered sex offender, more than 80 males.

Jumping around a bit we get: 2 females, over 100 males. 0 females, 70+ males. 1 female, more than 100 males.

Male sex offenders outnumber females in my quick little survey by a factor of between 50 and 100 to 1.

In Los Angeles County about 1 female for every five to six pages of males.

I don't see how there can be any dispute that men commit these crimes much more often than women, and that, by your own admission based on raveneye's statistics, men are more likely to choose stranger abduction as their method of aquiring a victim.

It's unreasonable to be suspicious of a man trying to sell you insurance or who's looking after your child's safety at a party; I agree completely on those. Being cautious of a strange man around a group of kids in a park is also, I think, an understandable reaction.

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raveneye

Again, this kind of reaction varies tremendously from place to place. In northern Germany or coastal Croatia, for example, most people would laugh and think you're joking or crazy or just sick if the reason you're cautious is that you think the man might be a child molester. If you're cautious because you think he might be trying to steal her purse, then that would probably be seen as a more reasonable reaction. Or in Croatia if the reason was that you thought he was a Serb, then that would be an patently obvious reason for concern . . . . .

In any case, doing a male/female convict comparison test is logically not relevant to determining how rational it is to be cautious of males but not females. If you want to know whether A is a risk in and of itself, you don't ask what the risk of B is, and compare the two. You need to know the risk of A itself, absolutely. For example, you don't say "I'm not going to swim in pool A because it's 10x dirtier than pool B" when pool A has only 10 sand grains and B has one sand grain in it. If you don't swim in the pool, it's because it's too dirty absolutely, not in comparison to some other pool. Or you don't say "I'm not going to bother driving safely in town because it's 10x more likely that I die on the freeway than in town." (just making up numbers here)

Similarly, if someone decides not to be vigilant about females as child molesters, then the logical reason would be because the absolute risk from females alone is too small to worry about, not because the risk from males is 10x higher, which is completely irrelevant because it's a female standing there, not a male. And the critical point here is that nobody knows even within an order of magnitude what the absolute risk is. So any decision one makes is without any concrete support whatsoever.

Here's a little thought experiment. We know that the overall rates of child molestation vary tremendously from place to place. Let's say that in state A the overall rate is 10x what it is in state B, but that the relative male/female perp ratio is 10 in both states. If all you're relying on is your comparison test, then you would have to conclude in both states to be vigilant of males but not females. That's because it's 10x more likely that a male be a perp than a female. But look: in state A the absolute female perp rate is the same as the absolute male perp rate in state B! Therefore to be logically consistent you need to be just as concerned about females in state A as you are about males in state B. But is anybody going to react like that? No. The vast majority of people are going to do the same male/female comparison test as you did and conclude in both states to be vigilant of men but not women.

That's why this reaction is irrational. There is utterly no known absolute risk to base it on, so people take the psychological path of least resistance and suspect men because they already know that men are "more likely than women" to be sexual predators. Suspecting women for most people creates too much cognitive dissonance, so it's avoided regardless of the absolute risk from women.

And finally, the comparison test is reducible to absurdity: if you eliminate women by making a male/female comparison, why stop there? Why not eliminate white men by noting that, within men, there are a disproportionate number of black and hispanic convicts? And why not also eliminate rich men, because there is a disproportionate number of poor convicts? It's logically the same: you're eliminating women because there are a disproportionate number of male convicts, so why stop there?

So if one is basing one's behavior on convict comparison tests alone, then to be logically consistent, the conclusion,

should be altered to read:

And of course that is exactly how most people do react in reality, in general, for exactly the reasons that you give for focusing on men but not women.

Astrocloud

Actually, it is an interesting DISPARITY that the arrest record of males is so high with regards to molesters -yet the voice of the victims indicate that females share a large proportion of the offences committed. What I am suggesting is that women are probably not being subjected to the same level of enforcement and/or judicial scrutiny as males.

And yes, I believe that there is a difference in the level of scum that preys upon women versus the ones that prey upon children.

Gilda

In terms of absolute numbers:

There are 86 registered male sex offenders in my zip code. There is one female.

I don't see any need to discriminate at this point between child molesters and other sex offenders, because it's perfectly reasonable not to want anyone who's ever been convicted of any sex crime around children, and I certainly don't want them around me.

If I see a person I don't recognize around the group of kids playing on the playground equipment in the courtyard of my condo complex, I'm going to take note of that, keep an eye on him or her, and probably introduce myself and ask a couple of friendly questions. If it's someone who belongs there, say a new resident, or a cousin or uncle, I've just met a new neighbor. If it's someone who doesn't belong there, I've made it known to him or her that he or she is being watched. I've had three people take off as I was walking up to them as they watched the kids playing.

I do this regardless of the sex of the person, because I don't see any reason for someone who doesn't live here, regardless of sex, to be on our playground.

But I also stand by my belief, based on the evidence, that it's a reasonable reaction to be more suspicious of men than of women, especially when it comes to stranger abductions.

__________________
I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert

Cimarron29414

In many states, an 18-year-old male who gets caught having sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend is convicted and becomes a registered sex offender by her angry father. The point is that the label "sex offender" is very broad and covers a lot of areas where young, dumb males get into trouble and girls get off scott-free. So, you need to look at the conviction of the offender to determine the risk. This is usually public record. For example, there is a sex offender down the street from me that was convicted of "sexual assault against a person under the age of 14."

Frankly, Raveneye logically destroyed everyone's argument. Discrimination is discrimination, no matter how you justify it.

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raveneye

The absolute numbers I'm referring to would be 86/M, 1/F, and 86/M - 1/F, where M and F are the total male and female adults present at any given time within that zip code. And to the 86 and 1 you'd have to add the number of men and women respectively who are offenders but were never convicted; that number certainly is larger for women than men.

All right, let's look at that belief. The total number of stranger abductions of children in the U.S. last year was 50. Tragically, all of those (to my recollection) either are unsolved or ended in the child's death. So the absolute probability that an American child was abducted by a stranger last year was about 1 in a million. (Incidentally, this number hasn't changed appreciably in the last 50 years, except to drop somewhat in the last few years.)

So: how worried/concerned/cautious/suspicious should we be about stranger abductions? Well, the number of "worry points" for this risk is 1 in a million, or 0.000001 on a scale from 0 to 1. Now let's assume that all 50 of those abductions were by males (I don't know what the actual number was). Now let's assume that the probability that a strange female abducts a child is 1 in 100 million (just pulling the number out of the air). That's 0.00000001 worry points.

So now the question becomes: how much more worried should we be about men than women on the basis of the child abduction risk? That's simply the absolute difference between the worry points for the two sexes. What's that number? It's 0.000001 - 0.00000001, or about 0.000001. So the amount by which we should be more worried about men than we are about women is 0.000001. My point: this number is absolutely, utterly infinitesimal. This number is so small that it is not possible to even perceive. How are you going to be 0.000001 more cautious?

The bottom line is that the probability that either sex abduct the child is infinitesimal. That means, mathematically, that the difference between the two probabilities is also equally infinitesimal, so the difference in caution should also be equally infinitesimal. It's a funny thing about tiny numbers: you can multiply them by 2, 3, 4, 5, 100 and they are still tiny!

So when you have these tiny risks, it is absolutely, utterly irrational to discriminate among people based on them, whether the discrimination is among blacks, whites, hispanics, socioeconomic groups, or males/females, or whatever. That's because within each group the absolute risk is tiny, so the differences also are tiny. The rational thing is to treat everyone identically when it comes to these risks.

Unfortunately, although this argument has been around for at least 50 years, since the burgeoning of the civil rights movement in the U.S., people still don't seem to grasp it. Or they seem to grasp it when it applies to discrimination against blacks, but not when it applied to discrimination against men in general, which is half the human population. It's a curious little piece of insanity in American psychology.

So I would say that this belief, that it's a reasonable reaction to be more suspicious of men than of women when it comes to stranger abductions, is based on a fundamental misconception about relative risk.

And I'll point out here that I'm not putting myself above anyone else here; I have pretty much the same unconscious biases as everybody. But for me, when I see myself acting on them, it pisses me off, or maybe even makes me feel ashamed of myself, makes me want to become a better person. I think we (emphasis on Americans in particular) do have a lot of evolving to do in the area of basic trust in our fellow man.

Gilda

50 stranger abductions in a year? You're off by a factor of close to 1,000.

58,200 non-family abductions in 1999. Of those, most were someone known to the child, but 37%, or more than 20,000 were stranger abductions. 75% were by males, 25% by females.

Evidence not that we shouldn't be wary of either sex, but that we should be wary of unknown adults of both sexes around children. And because more men than women are perpetrators, by a large margin, it's understandable that people are more wary of strange men than strange women.

I agree with the point of the OP. It is more difficult to be male as regards this issue than it is to be female. It sucks that people are suspicious of men trying to protect their children or sell them insurance. I understand and agree with that. Further, as I said, when I see a person I don't know, of either sex, on our complex playground around the kids, I'll approach that person regardless of sex. It's harmless, and if that person has reason to be there, they have nothing to fear and no reason to be offended.

I agree that it's foolish to automatically trust all women and distrust all men. But given the disproportionate number of men who commit these crimes, I understand distrusting strange men more than strange women around children.

Also, I don't grant any stranger my trust. Trust must be earned, not given out freely.

__________________
I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert

raveneye

As the article points out in the first paragraph, there were 115 stereotypical kidnappings in 1999, which was closer to the definition of abduction that I was using, and closer to the definition that most people seem to use when they use the term informally. If you broaden the definition to include any instance when the child is briefly detained, then of course you're going to increase the number practically without limit.

I understand it too, I'm just pointing out that it is completely and utterly irrational.

Astrocloud

When the KKK looks to justify their prejudice against minorities -they frequently point to police statistics. Why then is it "ok" to justify a prejudice against males by claiming that a higher percentage of them commit crimes?

OPgary

[B]I can unerstand both sides. However women shouldn't be surprised when men start becoming anti-child. For myself, I have little to do with kids, never around them alone, and in fact, the places I go are private places. We do our best to keep out children except for meal times, and then they have to be with their parents.

tacobaal

i have noticed this aswell im 20, dont look like a gangster or anything by any means; if im walking down the street and there happens to be a mother and a child walking towards me, the mother will most often pull there kid to the other side of them.

i mean its not like im going to take your kid you can calm down, im just walking honest.

compleatly unrelated to the kid thing, i was in walmart the other day and i was looking around for hair removal stuff, and i ended up in the "female only section" with all the makeup and whatnot, the sales peroson there basicly got mad at me for being in there because i wasent "the type of person that should be in that section" being a guy sucks sometimes :S

Nimetic

I think that whichever stats one uses - it seems true that men are a greater threat. Probably not as much a threat as some claim and maybe less dangerous than reversing SUVs, but still more a threat than women.

What I want to say though is that I'm happy for people to be suspicious of me. I think there's a difference between being wary (suspicous) and pre-judging though, and too many parents lean toward the latter without any evidence.

When kids are concerned - I am sure that there are many more guys with protective instincts than harmful intentions. What I see is an offensive attitude (occasionally) from parents in situations where there is no danger (ie in public) and where being wary would suffice.

raveneye

I would agree with this, and go further to say when race is brought into the equation, going beyond "wary" has profound social consequences.

For example, "blacks" are currently the most segregated racial/ethnic group in the U.S. The main reason is that whites believe that crime rates are higher in neighborhoods where young black men live, so white families do not move into these neighborhoods.

And the crimes that whites are most afraid of are of course sex crimes: rape, sexual assault, pedophilia. However, the reality is that the proportion of blacks living in a neighborhood is an extremely poor predictor of the incidence of such crimes. Nevertheless, the absolute best predictor of a white person's subjective belief of a neighborhood's crime rate is the proportion of young black men in the neighborhood. It's a far better predictor than the crime rate itself.

So, we have extreme segregation into white and black neighborhoods, regardless of income and educational levels. Even extremely liberal people who would be appalled at the suggestion that they are racist or sexist will not move into "black" neighborhoods because they have convinced themselves (wrongly) that such neighborhoods have higher crime rates because of the young black men living there.

Again, this is irrational behavior because the differences in crime rates due to race alone are infinitesimal. As are the differences in crime rates due to gender alone. Since people seem to be more willing to justify anti-male discrimination based on crime rates than they are to justify racial discrimination based on crime rates, it would seem that willingness allows a back-door entry to racism: it's OK to discriminate against a black man as long as it's not because he's black, but rather because he's a man. But that's very convenient because the difference in crime rates between black/white are very similar to those between men/women, so the gender discrimination provides an excuse for all the usual kinds of racial discrimination and fear. When it comes to sex crimes, for most people the visceral part of the brain takes over and the logical part goes out the window.

Sometimes I think that 90% of the injustice in the world is due to fundamentally irrational fears . . . .