A reader, responding to the thread below this reprint, writes:
…talking about false allegations keeping men out of these fields (working with kids) and referencing things like To Catch a Predator and the McMartin / Buckey case to make out like the fear of abuse is totally overblown really hurts, you know? I try not to let things bother me. I’ve had to stop reading certain blogs because of the prominence of thinking that downplays the reality of child sex abuse… For someone to portray what concern that exists now as hysteria makes me feel invisible. For almost every woman I’ve known well enough to have a personal conversation with and almost every female family member, this is a big part of their reality, part of their life story.
I wasn’t able to do much moderating while I was in New York, and perhaps I ought to have weighed in a bit. Whenever I’ve posted about working with youth, and particularly about working with underage teens (see this category archive), men’s rights activists tend to show up in the comment threads. They often show up to give me a “friendly” warning that I risk being hit with a false accusation, or to lament what they see as a broader cultural climate that is deeply distrustful of men who work with young folks. As I said in this post and many others, the collective bad behavior of a great many men (not just a few “bad apples”) has led to a justifiable degree of suspicion on the part not only of the survivors of abuse but on the part of parents, communities, and the broader culture. My two-fold point has always been the same:
a. I welcome the opportunity to “prove myself safe” through a repeated willingness to submit to scrutiny, a scrupulous willingness not to be entirely alone with a minor, and a cheerful and undefensive willingness to answer questions about my actions and my pedagogy from any stakeholder in the community.
b. At the same time, I’m going to be fearless about being warm, loving, and where appropriate (and sometimes, it is very appropriate) physically affectionate with young people of both sexes. Good youth ministry with any group of teens is impossible without an environment in which non-sexual, affirming, touch is available.
Between the Scylla of inappropriateness and the Charybdis of a paranoid obsession with false accusations lies a difficult but entirely chartable safe course. My whole career as a volunteer with youth in many different faith communities is premised on that conviction, and I always make this philosophy clear to those who have brought me in to work with their teens.
See here, here, and here for more.
False accusations probably do happen. But I’m convinced that the number of false accusations pales in comparison to the actual cases of inappropriate behavior or outright abuse that are not reported. Men who care about feminism, about children, about teens, about justice must not buy into the “victim mentality” perpetuated by men’s rights groups. Men’s rights propaganda suggests that men are likely to be “victimized” at every turn by false accusations of molestation or harassment at the hands of paranoid or vindictive women or children. Part of being a good teacher or youth leader, part of being a male feminist, is denouncing the shameful misappropriation of the victim label by the MRAs. And just as importantly, part of being a good teacher and youth leader and male feminist is living a life of public and private integrity that stands up to intense and justifiable scrutiny.
Simply because I am a man, people will assume that I am fundamentally weak. They will assume that I am incapable of exercising self-control. They will worry I have a hidden sexual agenda with them or with their children. Not everyone will assume this, but many will. And because I am a male feminist who has been so forthright about my views on everything from youth ministry to the ills of the porn industry, a not insubstantial number of folks seem to be awaiting my “Eliot Spitzer moment”, when I will be caught doing something fundamentally at odds with my professed values! (You’ll be waiting a while, friends.) I’m not trying to prove my own personal purity for the sake of my ego, of course. Rather, I’m absolutely committed to living out the simple but challenging principle that we can match our words and thoughts and actions, both private and public. We can live lives that are coherent, justice-centered, and whole. Part of living that way, as a man, is not complaining about suspicion, but rather understanding that it is our job to accept with cheer the task of proving ourselves innocent, proving ourselves trustworthy, proving ourselves to be who it is we profess to be.
Glad you followed up on this Hugo. It’s charting the “safe course” that I think flummoxes some people, more towards the end of dealing with your Charybdis. I’d grant that false accusations are considerably less a prevalent concern than unreported or unbelieved abuse, and are considerably less grave and more correctable (a false accusation can be disproven, a victim cannot be “un-abused” or “un-harassed”). As far as being assumed fundamentally weak, that does rankle, though I’d grant that men have far, far to go in facing unfair and unsupported negative assumptions regarding their gender that would match what women have experienced and do experience.
What troubles me is less the outside risk of false accusation and more the constant low-level suspicion and questioning of motive a priori. That mated to questions we have of ourselves, that I mentioned before, as to whether we have anything to contribute and what that might be, along with a plethora of attractive alternatives (focus on making money and the “breadwinner” role if that open to us, or focus on our own pursuits, or whatever), all provide disincentives to get involved.
I saw “A Man for All Seasons”, for the first time in years, a couple of weeks ago. I got drawn back to one quote that somehow seems relevant: “But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If He suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and… then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it’s God’s part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping.”
You have your safe course, and have that mission from faith that the confidence you have something to contribute (”be as Christ”), and the courage to walk that course and stand tack to whatever comes. Not all of us do.
I hear you Tom, and I like the quote. On the other hand, being safe and trustworthy is not exactly standing up to the Crown and the executioner’s blade. The real question is, do we as men trust our own motives? Are we clear for ourselves why we do what we do? Have we got a clear sense of our own boundaries, and what lines we will never cross, come what come may?
Hugo, good questions all. What I wonder about is how one finds the courage or inspiration to bother with much of any of this to begin with, that would cause one to make decisions about volunteering or whatever. Taking the low road, the path of least resistance, is always easier, and probably too common for too many men these days (and maybe leads to a sort of adverse selection, leaving more of those who are following wrong or unexamined motives). Getting into that would probably be massive thread drift, so I’m not asking for an answer. It would be great at some point in the future, though, if you put up a post about that, on what it takes to want to “jump into the pool”.
“False accusations probably do happen.”
Er…”probably”?
“But I’m convinced that the number of false accusations pales in comparison to the actual cases of inappropriate behavior or outright abuse that are NOT reported.”
If you mean to say that the number of false accusations is fewer than the number of true incidents of grossly (or milder but still serious) inappropriate behavior, then I’ll go along with that. But that doesn’t mean that one isn’t a big deal, simply because it occurs less frequently.
“Men who care about feminism, about children, about teens, about justice must not buy into the ‘victim mentality’ perpetuated by men’s rights groups.”
What does feminism have to do with any of this? Women can be falsely accused of inappropriate behavior with a minor just the same as men can.
I tutor high-school students, often in their homes. My company has a policy that a tutor is not to enter the home if there is not a parent or guardian of the student present. The good thing about the policy is that it’s gender-neutral: they don’t single out the male tutors while allowing the female tutors to work in a home without a parent around. It recognizes that, when it comes to both inappropriate activity and false accusations, it can happen with anybody. (If you disagree, you haven’t watched much news in the past few years.)
And, whether you’re male or female, if you’re falsely accused of something, then, yes, you’re a victim of a false accusation. I can’t understand why you feel that’s such a shameful word.
Genuine victims of false accusation are real, bmmg, but rare. And the MRAs are talking, often incessantly, about the way in which men as a group are victimized by a culture that themeselves frequently perpetuate. Feminists, as a group, rarely complain that women are singled out for suspicion as potential predators.
I do see what Hugo is saying, but it is not possible to PROVE innocence. If what he really means is “demonstrate trustworthiness through a preponderance of evidence, ” I would agree that THAT is possible. In school systems I have noticed that there seems to be far more suspicion of gay men than straight men. I think that this suspicion has been escalated by the Catholic priest sex scandals.
I’m not trying to provide an apologetic for the MRAs, but suspicion does tend to produce a negative feedback loop. Those under suspicion often get an attitude and that attitude tends to place them under more suspicion. It can be the genesis of a culture war. When Hugo makes broad statements regarding MRAs (who do make broad statements about feminism) I’m not sure that it actually helps move things forward to a better place.
Question: Should black men stop complaining about “typing” and “cheerfully prove their innocence?”
I think the question of whether you should “cheerfully prove your innocence” depends on the context. It is very different to face a criminal charge than to face whispers or questions from members of your community. With respect to the questions/hesitancy/mild suspicion by community members of a man who does youth work, you can “cheerfully prove your innocence” in the way Hugo describes. You do so simply by sticking to your appropriate behaviors, and not getting all angry and resentful for even being the subject of mild suspicion. Responding to a false criminal accusation is a completely different matter, and I don’t think anyone is suggesting any responsibility to be cheerful about it.
Folks, I write from experience: I have “proved my innocence” time and again in the sense of overcoming suspicion and winning the deserved and well-placed trust from parents and pastors and community members. This ain’t theory, I’ve lived it out over and over again.
“It’s charting the “safe course” that I think flummoxes some people, more towards the end of dealing with your Charybdis.”
If Scylla is destructive and Charybdis merely alienating, can you really blame someone for taking the safest bet (to say nothing of those of us who are paranoid by nature)?
If you are paranoid by nature, Craig, avoiding youth ministry is an excellent idea.
“If you are paranoid by nature, Craig, avoiding youth ministry is an excellent idea.”
Did I imply I was pursuing a ministry position?
That’s not sarcasm; I’m honestly curious what gave you that impression. Surely you aren’t implying that the gist of this post has no ramifications.
“Genuine victims of false accusation are real, bmmg, but rare.”
Well, of course you believe them to be rare; it’s a key foundational element of your argument. They’re not THAT rare, but that isn’t even the point. You have written that you have needed to “overcome suspicion” a number of times in your work with your youth ministry. What if you weren’t able to overcome it? Certainly not because you did something wrong — I’m not implying that you would — but because someone wrongly but persistently believes that you did. What if some authorities treated these accusations against you as if they held water, and you lost your position, or were even indicted? Does it matter if the chances of that happening aren’t above, say, 10%? Isn’t it a big enough deal and worry if it could happen at all?
“And the MRAs are talking, often incessantly, about the way in which men as a group are victimized by a culture that themeselves frequently perpetuate. Feminists, as a group, rarely complain that women are singled out for suspicion as potential predators.”
Of course they don’t complain about it — because women AREN’T singled out in the way men are. That’s the point the MRAs are making: when a woman acts in a similarly inappropriate way with a minor, you have people arguing that “it’s not the same” or that “it’s not harmful” in the way that male-perpetrated inappropriate activity is. And some of these “people” I’m talking about wear black robes.
Bmmg, the evidence suggests that women very infrequently sexually abuse children — not that it never happens, but that it happens far less often than it does with men. I havae no problem being “gender profiled”. I don’t see it as analogous to racial profiling, either. But regardless of whether it is “fair” or not, it is what it is, and in the face of suspicion I can either bemoan it or work to win trust. I know what seems the better course to me.
“Bmmg, the evidence suggests that women very infrequently sexually abuse children…”
Well, we now know that you don’t own a television set…
Why do you not see gender profiling as the same as racial profiling, by the way? If you believe that a certain group of people is responsible for the vast majority of cases of XYZ, and endorse acting accordingly, then how can it matter if the targeted group is men or African-Americans? (Oh, wait, I think I can guess your answer…)
And you can bemoan unfair treatment towards yourself AND work to win trust/clear your name at the same time. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Perhaps, someday, we can begin viewing people as individuals on a case-by-case basis, rather than judge a person based upon under what categories (s)he may happen to fall.
“I have no problem being gender profiles. I don’t see it as analogous to racial profiling, either.”
I do have a problem being profiled. It is the same phenomena.
The average black man is more likely to have a violent criminal record than the average white man, but it is wrong to generalize from this and be suspicious about black men we encounter. The average man is more likely to be a sex offender than the average woman, but it sounds like you think it is just fine and dandy for society to be suspicious of all men because of this.
Black men have a right to be offended if people treat them like criminals. You want men to stop whining about being treated with suspicion - it is really all their fault anyway, and it is their job to demonstrate they are trustworthy.
I think the difference between sexual and racial profiling is the conviction rate. A combination of a low conviction rate for sexual offenders and a large population of victims who know, in the secrets of their hearts, what really happened and whether justice was served– well, that leads to general suspicion of men in certain circumstances. A combination of a high conviction rate for people of color and a comparatively small population of victims, and again they all know what happened and whether justice was served, has led to the rise of a movement against racial profiling.
bmmg, what does your company recommend you do if you arrive at a home where the children are alone? Leave? Wait outside? Does it affect billing? I ask because I also work with children, and although I haven’t encountered that situation, I’d like to be prepared.
Bach-us,
I read what you wrote a few times, and it isn’t clear to me whether you are explaining the dynamics that lead to bigotry or justifying the bigotry.
I don’t think the conviction rate has anything to do with it. There is no reason to suppose that sexual abuse is more prevalent now than it was in past times, and at the same times there is no doubt that the conviction rate has increased, since it wasn’t generally prosecuted at all in the past. An unfortunate side effect of increased convictions is increased bigotry - we ought to be able to have the former without the latter.
I still feel it is unfair and wrong to suppose that I’m a potential predator just because someone else is. I would think that the “gender justice” movement ought to be firmly against such generalizations.
“bmmg, what does your company recommend you do if you arrive at a home where the children are alone? Leave? Wait outside?”
Most likely to wait, because the parents are on their way home, if anything. It usually isn’t a problem, anyway. I’m just pointing out that our system is fairer than those who tell their male camp counselors, for example, that they can’t be alone with a child, but have no such policy with regard to the female camp counselors.
“I still feel it is unfair and wrong to suppose that I’m a potential predator just because someone else is. I would think that the “gender justice” movement ought to be firmly against such generalizations.”
I don’t have the wish or the need to give strange men the absolute benefit of the doubt when it comes to my safety, or the safety of my son. I don’t owe anyone a free pass when it comes to my trust. Trust is earned. Women often need to earn less trust from me because they pose less immediate danger to me physically. Men generally need to earn more trust from me because the cost of a mistake on my part is too damn high.
My husband has PTSD. Before I conceived, we were faced with the possibility of being childless because there is no sane adoption agency that would hand a child over to a person who has PTSD - even if that individual has never evidenced child or spousal abuse. Such abuse is within the spectrum of symptoms that people with PTSD display - not all sufferers display all symptoms. No matter how much we know that it isn’t an issue, the stakes are just too high for an agency to make a mistake.
If I am hesitant to leave my child in the care of a man (or woman) that I don’t know, don’t take it personally. If you are a great guy, that will come out in time. If you are a creep, I’m doing my job by protecting myself and my child.
Kate is absolutely right. No person is automatically assumed to be trustworthy. Each of us have our suspicions which are based on any criteria we choose. Whether its your children or your property or whatever you feel you need to keep safe, you are entitled to base your suspicions and base your trust on whatever criteria you feel is right to protect yourself or to make yourself feel safe. We all do it.
But let’s be honest and call it what it is. It’s stereotyping. It’s bigotry. Maybe you are a mental gymnast and can justify that bigotry if it’s men. Or white men. But not certain racial groups. Or LGBT. Or women as many MRA’s often do.
But it’s really the same. Bigotry doesn’t suddenly become ok because women are being victimized.
I don’t really have the answer to this problem, because I do the same thing. I just see my criteria by which I prejudge people for what it is.
And I’ll say again, the best thing men can do is stop complaining about the stereotype and work to transcend it.
Prejudice is the act of judging someone by their inclusion in a category, rather than on personal merit or actions. If I don’t know you, I can’t judge you on personal merits. For me to get to know you, it takes time and effort on my (and your) part. The negative effects of predjudice is when my lack of knowing you as a person and my understating of your inclusion in a particular class or category leads me to make decisions such as denying you housing, job opportunities, loans, educational opportunities etc. Choosing not to trust people I don’t know isn’t a negative act of prejudice. Refusing to ever get to know someone of a given class or category is a negative act of prejudice.
I think we need to distinguish between institution-level policies and the attitudes of individuals.
Kate’s individual attitude is driven by her past experiences and the personal resources she has at her disposal to deal with a problem situation (eg, being stronger than an attacker, or not).
bmmg is talking about an institution-level policy. A tutoring agency is never going to use force to physically pull an abuser off of a victim/student. They also don’t have a personal history to rely on, and the notion of `trust’ doesn’t seem to fit. (My boss/supervisor might or might not trust me, but not the company I work for.)
So I think it’s reasonable to say that an institution-level policy should be based on objective data in a way that individual attitudes need not be. We don’t expect Kate to go read a bunch of sociology journal articles on abuse rates before deciding whether or not to trust strange men with her children. But we do expect Acme Tutors to at least find someone who can put together a report answering such questions as `Are men more likely to sexually abuse non-family children than women?’ and `How likely is someone with qualities X, Y, and Z to abuse children?’ (where X, Y, and Z are some qualities generally found in tutors).
(bmmg and Hugo — neither of you have pointed to data answering such questions. I’m not sure which is a worse response, Hugo’s bare assertion that bmmg is wrong, or bmmg’s vague appeal to `television’.)
There’s also a third side of things, which is the actual topic of Hugo’s post: what if you’re, not the agent responsible for keeping likely abusers away from potential victims, but instead someone who might be falsely suspected of being an abuser. This side has an entirely different set of questions: What obligations do you have to satisfy the worries of the people watching over your shoulder? How much do you have to worry about false accusations of abuse? How do you build trust with (justifiably or not) suspicious individuals?
Kate,
No argument from me about your policies with your child, especially since you qualify it by saying you’d have the same prudent suspicions about women.
But there are some very specific examples that I think go well over the line here. What do you think of airline policies that say that unaccompanied minors cannot be seated next to men? If I were asked to move because the airline had to sit a child next to me, I would be extremely angry and offended.
“I don’t owe anyone a free pass when it comes to my trust. Trust is earned. Women often need to earn less trust from me because they pose less immediate danger to me physically. Men generally need to earn more trust from me because the cost of a mistake on my part is too damn high.”
Suppose you were a cab driver, which is one of the more dangerous ways to make a living. Should you have the right to make the same risk assessment and generally go out of your way to pick up female passengers rather than male ones?
Noumena,
What exactly is acme tutors supposed to do with the report they obtain? I take it for granted that any accurate report on relative rates of child sexual abuse would say that men are N times more likely than women to sexually abuse children. Is acme tutors then justified if they decide to hire only women tutors? I don’t think so.
And from the perspective of a parent, knowing the same information: when the acme tutor shows up at their door, are they entitled to refuse entry to a male tutor? I don’t think so.
“What obligations do you have to satisfy the worries of the people watching over your shoulder? How much do you have to worry about false accusations of abuse?”
Consider a retail outlet that does some research, and determines that women are N times more likely to shoplift than men, and consider the perspective of a female shopper who is being followed around by a security guard, when male shoppers are largely ignored. Should the women be offended? Or should she welcome the attention, and proudly demonstrate that she is trustworthy?
It is examples like this that convince me that Hugo is just being biased against men. Men, and only men, need to stop whining if they feel they are treated with suspicion as the result of some stereotype.
I think the policy of not seating an unattended minor next to a male is crazy. I think a better policy is frequently checking on a minor to insure that he/she is comfortable and safe. I’ve been made equally uncomfortable by men and women on airplanes - usually because of bizarre behavior/utterances rather than fear of sexual assault.
I think the policy of not having a tutor enter a home if a parent is not in attendance is an excellent one. It is protective for both the tutor and the child. If they aren’t together in an unsupervised situation, there can be no he said/he said problems. I do think that in general, the rate of false accusations is relatively low (based on my totally unscientific personal experience), but it is not unheard of. Children learn how powerful such a claim is, and are not above using such a claim to try to wrest control of a situation.
StF -
I didn’t mean to imply that the questions I posed were the only appropriate ones. I’m not sure whether you were reading what I wrote along those lines or not, but I wanted to make that clear.
In particular, most of the questions you pose have to do with what course of action we (or whoever) should follow, once we know all these various relevant facts. They’re entirely appropriate, and I have ideas about how to answer that question, but they (my answers) are a bit vague and I’m too busy this afternoon to sort them out properly.
The goals of my earlier comment were simply to try and pull apart three aspects of the issue that seem to be inappropriately tangled together in this conversation and to identify a few of the more important differences between those three aspects, eg, the sorts of data and concepts that are relevant.
If I were asked to move because the airline had to sit a child next to me, I would be extremely angry and offended.
Really? I’d be relived. Kids + planes = generally awful (I do kind of hate to generalize, but I just had a pretty bad flight behind a horrible couple and their awful baby … who they didn’t bother to change when it was stanking up the plane … plus once a kid in front of me puked and NO ONE THOUGHT TO GET RID OF THE BARF BAG!!! Though at the end of the day I realize that most obnoxious kids are direct results of parental stupidity … oh, Idiocracy, here we come!).
On the flip side of this, guys, I’m expected to be all into kids just because I’m a woman. The baby comes up to the office and it’s “Oh, Nav, Coworker X is here with her baby!” Like I really care. I mean, I don’t begrudge people their children, I’m glad they’re healthy and happy, but something that is only crapping and eating at the moment and looks sort of like an alien doesn’t really do anything for me. On the other hand, the men in the office stop by, look in, hey X, nice baby, and leave. I have to buy her a present at some dumb office shower or I look like kind of a jackass, but the guys don’t. If I don’t spend ten minutes cooing over the kid I’m strange. No, I don’t have kids, not sure if I will quite yet, but if guys don’t care, it’s normal. If I don’t care, people look at me like I’m damaged. So there’s kind of a flip side to all of this.
Nav,
“but if guys don’t care, it’s normal. If I don’t care, people look at me like I’m damaged.”
I agree 100%. As I wrote here, there are pervasive, unquestioned stereotypes about how man and woman “naturally” respond to, and care for, children. They serve no one, and they do harm to people that don’t fit the mold.