14 ms·

Eek, A Male

229 points by georgecmu 16y ago

agentultra 16y 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.
Florin_Andrei 16y ago
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 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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.
  - alexophile 16y ago
    I tried that same strategy with sitcoms for a while, but they all just turned into "I Love Lucy"
  - aaronroyer 16y 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.
    - jtbigwoo 16y ago
      I've noticed four avenues marketers usually take and they're all pretty demeaning. Selling to women? -Men are morons who can't understand this product like you can. -These women are better than you because they consume this product Selling to men? -Women are items to be acquired through the use of this product. -These men are better than you because they use this product (or in the case of the Miller Light ad, "Here's what you look like when you don't drink Miller Light.")
gaius 16y ago
3 comments on this, and 200 on some girl whining that (male) geeks "hurt her feelings".
- haploid 16y ago
  Which article are you referring to ?
  - gaius 16y ago
    This one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110756 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110756 Obv there are more comments here now :-)
    - vacri 16y ago
      It's funny how that works - a brand new article not having much commentry. No such thing as confirmation bias, eh?
      - Semiapies 16y ago
        Oh, come on - he gave it a full eight minutes before complaining that some girl got more attention in a thread on her post.
        gaius 16y ago
        Just pointing out that men face real, actual discrimination, whereas actually there is nothing preventing women working IT jobs if they want to.
        Semiapies 16y ago
        Cry us a river, gaius. If things like this article count as "real, actual discrimination", then pretty much every women-in-tech complaint includes tales of "real, actual discrimination".
limist 16y ago
I didn't know the author's gender until the end. Nice to see a woman pointing out misandry.
narrator 16y 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 16y 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sex_abuse_hysteria
axod 16y 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 16y ago
  Well, we don't need to choose. In fact, it seems like each would support the other.
- maxawaytoolong 16y 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 16y 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.
  - oiuhjyftgrdgh 16y 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.
  - axod 16y 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.
mcknz 16y 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 16y 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.
  - mcknz 16y 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 16y 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?
Splines 16y 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.
- gaius 16y ago
  Kidnapping and child abuse are almost always relatives or friends of the family. Strangers, statistically, are very safe.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
InclinedPlane 16y 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 16y 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.
alexophile 16y 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_atrisk_children_26_and_have_a_hard/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e7l16/i_work_with...
- klbarry 16y 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.
juiceandjuice 16y 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 16y ago
What a fucking horrible way to live :-(
jswinghammer 16y 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 16y 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.html http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/17/kids-petition-agains.ht...
meterplech 16y 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/ 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-subway-alone http://www.nysun.com/news/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subwa...
- nollidge 16y 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:_Bullshit!_episodes#Season_6:_2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Penn_%26_Teller:_Bullsh...
nmaio 16y 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 16y ago
  Slippery slope, dude.
trustfundbaby 16y ago
Reminds me of this Reddit post http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/cf8j9/14_year_old_charged_with_abduction_for_helping_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/cf8j9/14_year_old_charg...
jacquesm 16y 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 http://www.wtop.com/?nid=383&sid=2198339
johngalt 16y 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.
jambo 16y 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_policy_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_sex_discrimination_poli...
Dylanlacey 16y 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.

229 points by georgecmu 16y 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.

Florin_Andrei 16y ago

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 16y 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 16y 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 16y 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.
- alexophile 16y ago
  I tried that same strategy with sitcoms for a while, but they all just turned into "I Love Lucy"
- aaronroyer 16y 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.
  - jtbigwoo 16y ago
    I've noticed four avenues marketers usually take and they're all pretty demeaning. Selling to women? -Men are morons who can't understand this product like you can. -These women are better than you because they consume this product Selling to men? -Women are items to be acquired through the use of this product. -These men are better than you because they use this product (or in the case of the Miller Light ad, "Here's what you look like when you don't drink Miller Light.")

gaius 16y ago

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

haploid 16y ago
Which article are you referring to ?
- gaius 16y ago
  This one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110756 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2110756 Obv there are more comments here now :-)
  - vacri 16y ago
    It's funny how that works - a brand new article not having much commentry. No such thing as confirmation bias, eh?
    - Semiapies 16y ago
      Oh, come on - he gave it a full eight minutes before complaining that some girl got more attention in a thread on her post.
      - gaius 16y ago
        Just pointing out that men face real, actual discrimination, whereas actually there is nothing preventing women working IT jobs if they want to.
        Semiapies 16y ago
        Cry us a river, gaius. If things like this article count as "real, actual discrimination", then pretty much every women-in-tech complaint includes tales of "real, actual discrimination".

limist 16y ago

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

narrator 16y 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 16y 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sex_abuse_hysteria

axod 16y 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 16y ago
Well, we don't need to choose. In fact, it seems like each would support the other.
maxawaytoolong 16y 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 16y 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.
- oiuhjyftgrdgh 16y 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.
- axod 16y 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.

mcknz 16y 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 16y 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.
- mcknz 16y 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 16y 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?

Splines 16y 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.

gaius 16y ago
Kidnapping and child abuse are almost always relatives or friends of the family. Strangers, statistically, are very safe.
deleted 16y ago
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deleted 16y ago
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InclinedPlane 16y 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 16y 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.

alexophile 16y 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_atrisk_children_26_and_have_a_hard/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/e7l16/i_work_with...

klbarry 16y 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.

juiceandjuice 16y 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 16y ago

What a fucking horrible way to live :-(

jswinghammer 16y 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 16y 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.html http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/17/kids-petition-agains.ht...

meterplech 16y 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/ 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-subway-alone http://www.nysun.com/news/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-subwa...

nollidge 16y 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:_Bullshit!_episodes#Season_6:_2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Penn_%26_Teller:_Bullsh...

nmaio 16y 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 16y ago
Slippery slope, dude.

trustfundbaby 16y ago

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

jacquesm 16y 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 http://www.wtop.com/?nid=383&sid=2198339

johngalt 16y 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.

jambo 16y 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_policy_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_sex_discrimination_poli...

Dylanlacey 16y 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.