9 ms·

Also a slight bias towards an adult accompanying children and also bias towards female: ie mommies with strollers are generally okay.

by imglorp 11y ago

Someone1234 11y ago
I won't be teaching my kids that men are inherently dangerous/child molesters. But you're welcome to bring them up that way. Any adult is fine. The chance of them being dangerous is incredibly low, regardless of gender. Plus the whole "men are bad" thing just mixes a simple message up, what if they spot a member of staff somewhere but they're male. Do they approach or do they not? What if a man is the only adult around? To be honest the whole "men are dangerous" thing is very much a large part of the core problem. It is stranger danger all over again.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Right. It's basic math. Even if 0.1% of men are going to molest a random kid and it's 0.01% for women, there is a 99.9% chance a random man is not a child molester. It's noise. Similar reasoning applies to why you should ignore all the "X doubles the risk of [some rare Y]" stuff you read in the media.
  - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
    So you're buying a lottery ticket - if you buy it from the female cashier you get a 10x chance of winning. Which cashier do you choose?
    - rmxt 11y ago
      No matter who you choose, when you inevitably lose the lottery, you will still only have lost one dollar either way. When a child chooses to not go to an adult at all because only men are around, they might be facing more dire consequences than simply losing a dollar. A valid response to playing the lottery is "don't play the lotto, 10x chance or not"... for a child, there are some things that only adults are equipped to handle, and a valid response isn't to tell a 5 year old "don't go to a man, but do go to a woman". How might that work out at a football/soccer game?
      - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        The parent clearly said that they suggested a _bias_ towards a female instead of a male and a bias towards a parent. You'd have to judge the advice based on your/the child some very young children clearly wouldn't understand advice based on a hierarchy of responses. I've given this advice to my children giving "mother with children" > "store worker" > "other person with kids" > "policeman or someone in uniform or someone you think looks friendly" as the hierarchy. You're right there is far more than money at stake - isn't that even more reason to push the odds in your favour as much as possible. Perhaps a better analogue is that you can choose between two hospitals for your child's operation who are both very good but one has 10x the mortality rate of the other, you'd express a preference for the hospital with better outcomes regardless of the sex of the surgeons wouldn't you? I don't understand your last sentence?
        Dylan16807 11y ago
        >The parent clearly said that they suggested a _bias_ They're children. Making the message more complicated makes it harder to remember. The muddling is more dangerous than the .1 percent.
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        "You'd have to judge the advice based on your/the child some very young children clearly wouldn't understand advice based on a hierarchy of responses." Wasn't that clear?
        Dylan16807 11y ago
        Overly complex advice they understand is still overly complex advice. Even for an adult it impacts recall.
        jeffwass 11y ago
        I'm curious why you have policeman at the bottom of your hierarchy.
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Except the risk reward outcomes are inverted and time is a factor. Say you're boarding a plane but are running a few minutes late. With a male agent, there is a 99.9% chance they'll give you a break and get on the flight in time. With a female agent, there is a 99.99% chance. What do you do? You go to the first available agent.
      - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        ... with a bias to a female agent. If both are available at the same time you'd choose the female agent or you'd choose political correctness over logic. [FWIW I'm a male who works with kids almost daily and often appear to be discriminated against because of my sex.]
  - Almaviva 11y ago
    Do you wear a seatbelt?
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Statistically, you can expect to get into a car accident once every 18 years. So it's not a low probability event. If your lifetime odds of getting in a car crash were 1% I wouldn't wear a seat belt.
- elbigbad 11y ago
  Woah, this isn't at all what the poster said, or even implied. In any case, men would statistically make up a higher percentage of child molesters, etc. Saying to have a slight bias toward children approaching women than men is a far cry from 'men are bad.'
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    > Woah, this isn't at all what the poster said, or even implied. Yes it was. They said (paraphrasing): Women are ok. Men are not. "Mommies" (i.e. women with kids) are even better, dads are not. If that isn't what they meant, that's fine, but that's definitely what they implied. There's no other way of reading it. > In any case, men would statistically make up a higher percentage of child molesters, etc. Perhaps, but we're talking astronomically small chances here. Plus if you look at those offenses the number of child molesters who molested strangers is even tinier than the number who did it at all. The vast majority assaulted friends or family (which your advice does not protect them from). The risk of a child getting lost and asking a child molester who is willing to kidnap them for help is near a rounding error in unlikeness. All you teaching your kids to distrust men and male role models is doing is screwing them up, it isn't keeping them safe.
    - jemfinch 11y ago
      > They said (paraphrasing): Women are ok. Men are not...There's no other way of reading it. No, they said "bias towards female." Any reading which reads "bias towards x" as "x is ok, !x is not." is a complete violation of both the words and the intent of the statement. Furthermore, biasing towards women doesn't remotely imply "men are bad." It's simply an established fact that women on average are more nurturing and empathetic, and those are qualities one should seek when one needs help.
      - Someone1234 11y ago
        > It's simply an established fact that women on average are more nurturing and empathetic, and those are qualities one should seek when one needs help. I'd argue that most non-developmentally delayed adults are fully equipped to assist a lost or scared child. This might come as a shock to modern society but men are fathers, grandpas, brothers, and uncles to little kids. They know how to interact with them. All you're doing is repeating common gender tropes. There are plenty of women that are about as nurturing as a potato, and plenty of men that are extremely nurturing and comforting. But ultimately that is completely besides the point as we're talking about someone who has to take a little kid's hand and bring them to customer services/store security, we aren't asking them to adopt the child.
- gknoy 11y ago
  As a parent, I see the intent there more as Parent > Non-Parent, rather than woman > man. If your child has a problem, chances are another parent will already have on their mind ways to help, or things they might need (water, band-aid, phone to call mom, change of pants), and at the very least might be inclined to help them more than others might be. They may be more likely to recognize child-related issues ("Bumped your head? let's check your eyes ...") than non-parents, simply because thinking about precautions, worst-case scenarios, and the like are something parents have to consider. I never used to think about how to find the bathroom in a store, for example, as proactively as I now do once I have kids, and never used to carry water and snacks with me wherever I went. Nowadays I effectively carry emergency water, food, wipes, band-aids, and a change of clothes when we go to the park. This is not to say that non-parents are bad to ask for help -- far from it! Merely that kids, who often are already anxious around strangers, may be disarmed a little more easily by the fact that someone else is clearly a parent.

Also a slight bias towards an adult accompanying children and also bias towards female: ie mommies with strollers are generally okay.

by imglorp 11y ago

Also a slight bias towards an adult accompanying children and also bias towards female: ie mommies with strollers are generally okay.

Someone1234 11y ago

I won't be teaching my kids that men are inherently dangerous/child molesters. But you're welcome to bring them up that way. Any adult is fine. The chance of them being dangerous is incredibly low, regardless of gender. Plus the whole "men are bad" thing just mixes a simple message up, what if they spot a member of staff somewhere but they're male. Do they approach or do they not? What if a man is the only adult around? To be honest the whole "men are dangerous" thing is very much a large part of the core problem. It is stranger danger all over again.

rayiner 11y ago
Right. It's basic math. Even if 0.1% of men are going to molest a random kid and it's 0.01% for women, there is a 99.9% chance a random man is not a child molester. It's noise. Similar reasoning applies to why you should ignore all the "X doubles the risk of [some rare Y]" stuff you read in the media.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  So you're buying a lottery ticket - if you buy it from the female cashier you get a 10x chance of winning. Which cashier do you choose?
  - rmxt 11y ago
    No matter who you choose, when you inevitably lose the lottery, you will still only have lost one dollar either way. When a child chooses to not go to an adult at all because only men are around, they might be facing more dire consequences than simply losing a dollar. A valid response to playing the lottery is "don't play the lotto, 10x chance or not"... for a child, there are some things that only adults are equipped to handle, and a valid response isn't to tell a 5 year old "don't go to a man, but do go to a woman". How might that work out at a football/soccer game?
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      The parent clearly said that they suggested a _bias_ towards a female instead of a male and a bias towards a parent. You'd have to judge the advice based on your/the child some very young children clearly wouldn't understand advice based on a hierarchy of responses. I've given this advice to my children giving "mother with children" > "store worker" > "other person with kids" > "policeman or someone in uniform or someone you think looks friendly" as the hierarchy. You're right there is far more than money at stake - isn't that even more reason to push the odds in your favour as much as possible. Perhaps a better analogue is that you can choose between two hospitals for your child's operation who are both very good but one has 10x the mortality rate of the other, you'd express a preference for the hospital with better outcomes regardless of the sex of the surgeons wouldn't you? I don't understand your last sentence?
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        >The parent clearly said that they suggested a _bias_ They're children. Making the message more complicated makes it harder to remember. The muddling is more dangerous than the .1 percent.
        pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        "You'd have to judge the advice based on your/the child some very young children clearly wouldn't understand advice based on a hierarchy of responses." Wasn't that clear?
        Dylan16807 11y ago
        Overly complex advice they understand is still overly complex advice. Even for an adult it impacts recall.
      - jeffwass 11y ago
        I'm curious why you have policeman at the bottom of your hierarchy.
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Except the risk reward outcomes are inverted and time is a factor. Say you're boarding a plane but are running a few minutes late. With a male agent, there is a 99.9% chance they'll give you a break and get on the flight in time. With a female agent, there is a 99.99% chance. What do you do? You go to the first available agent.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      ... with a bias to a female agent. If both are available at the same time you'd choose the female agent or you'd choose political correctness over logic. [FWIW I'm a male who works with kids almost daily and often appear to be discriminated against because of my sex.]
- Almaviva 11y ago
  Do you wear a seatbelt?
  - rayiner 11y ago
    Statistically, you can expect to get into a car accident once every 18 years. So it's not a low probability event. If your lifetime odds of getting in a car crash were 1% I wouldn't wear a seat belt.
elbigbad 11y ago
Woah, this isn't at all what the poster said, or even implied. In any case, men would statistically make up a higher percentage of child molesters, etc. Saying to have a slight bias toward children approaching women than men is a far cry from 'men are bad.'
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > Woah, this isn't at all what the poster said, or even implied. Yes it was. They said (paraphrasing): Women are ok. Men are not. "Mommies" (i.e. women with kids) are even better, dads are not. If that isn't what they meant, that's fine, but that's definitely what they implied. There's no other way of reading it. > In any case, men would statistically make up a higher percentage of child molesters, etc. Perhaps, but we're talking astronomically small chances here. Plus if you look at those offenses the number of child molesters who molested strangers is even tinier than the number who did it at all. The vast majority assaulted friends or family (which your advice does not protect them from). The risk of a child getting lost and asking a child molester who is willing to kidnap them for help is near a rounding error in unlikeness. All you teaching your kids to distrust men and male role models is doing is screwing them up, it isn't keeping them safe.
  - jemfinch 11y ago
    > They said (paraphrasing): Women are ok. Men are not...There's no other way of reading it. No, they said "bias towards female." Any reading which reads "bias towards x" as "x is ok, !x is not." is a complete violation of both the words and the intent of the statement. Furthermore, biasing towards women doesn't remotely imply "men are bad." It's simply an established fact that women on average are more nurturing and empathetic, and those are qualities one should seek when one needs help.
    - Someone1234 11y ago
      > It's simply an established fact that women on average are more nurturing and empathetic, and those are qualities one should seek when one needs help. I'd argue that most non-developmentally delayed adults are fully equipped to assist a lost or scared child. This might come as a shock to modern society but men are fathers, grandpas, brothers, and uncles to little kids. They know how to interact with them. All you're doing is repeating common gender tropes. There are plenty of women that are about as nurturing as a potato, and plenty of men that are extremely nurturing and comforting. But ultimately that is completely besides the point as we're talking about someone who has to take a little kid's hand and bring them to customer services/store security, we aren't asking them to adopt the child.
gknoy 11y ago
As a parent, I see the intent there more as Parent > Non-Parent, rather than woman > man. If your child has a problem, chances are another parent will already have on their mind ways to help, or things they might need (water, band-aid, phone to call mom, change of pants), and at the very least might be inclined to help them more than others might be. They may be more likely to recognize child-related issues ("Bumped your head? let's check your eyes ...") than non-parents, simply because thinking about precautions, worst-case scenarios, and the like are something parents have to consider. I never used to think about how to find the bathroom in a store, for example, as proactively as I now do once I have kids, and never used to carry water and snacks with me wherever I went. Nowadays I effectively carry emergency water, food, wipes, band-aids, and a change of clothes when we go to the park. This is not to say that non-parents are bad to ask for help -- far from it! Merely that kids, who often are already anxious around strangers, may be disarmed a little more easily by the fact that someone else is clearly a parent.