Men's Rights Redditors: Don't help kids in distress, because a "hambeast" might accuse you of molesting her "crotchdumpling."

@katz:

I know it seems rude if someone doesn’t acknowledge that you were trying to do something nice for zir, but the thing is that you’ve forced zir into a small-scale social contract that zie didn’t agree to.

This. I never make a big deal about this to my friends/family–actually, I’m not sure if I’ve ever even talked to anyone about it IRL–but this is half of why I dislike the whole door ritual. (Except for holding the door open for the person behind you so it doesn’t hit them in the face; that’s just basic politeness and situational awareness.)

Most of the time, when guys I already know do the whole flouncy, “Oh, HERE, let me get the door for you to show you just how resoundingly gentlemanly I am” dance, I’m not so much freaked out as I am flatly annoyed. I’m just an introverted human trying to get through a door, dude. Why did we have to make it into a big social event?

This sort of reminds me of an acquaintance of mine who claims that he no longer holds doors open for women because they complain that it is creepy and offensive, or something. Now he is afraid holding doors will somehow escalate to false rape accusations.

But, gize, I once had an elderly woman yell at me because I reached between her shopping cart and the dairy case while getting a carton of milk. Clear ageism!! Now, I never go anywhere near old people or dairy because they’ll say I pushed them down and stole their false teeth!!
/logic

Well it’s good to know how many MRA’s are just garden variety cowards.

My brother has loved kids, particularly babies, all his life. He’s vocal and very enthusiastic about it, he waves, greets, makes funny faces and chats with every kid that comes by his way. This has been a problem or gone wrong exactly zero times in forty odd years right here in the United Misandric States of America. Granted he talks to the parent or guardian first, doesn’t say weird shit, doesn’t try (or want) to photograph them or doesn’t do any other red flag waving behavior I can think of.

So, I’m going to call bullshit on the “any man who intersects with strangers’ children will be accused of pedophilia” MRA storyline, particularly since I never heard it before I became aware of general online MRA bullshit this year.

freemage,
Maybe it is classist, but those class qualifiers were part of my point and I’m not speculating. I’m talking about where I live and have lived. I’m talking about men I meet semi-regularly and some of the men I am related to. I’m telling you exactly what I see and hear in my neck of the woods. If it’s classist of me to talk about people who live where I live and go where I go, then I’m classist and I’m sorry. I’m a working class, trashy, woman who could well be their cousin, daughter or sister.

My point is that the Randian manchildren come here thinking that their beliefs are fresh, academic and evolved beyond the understanding of mere feminists who are inferior to them. When really they’re just spouting the same load of crap grimy, low down, stars and bars flag wavers have been spouting since before they had grimy stars and bars to wave.

That’s part of my culture and my heritage and I feel like I can be disgusted and ashamed of it if I want to.

Some of those guys make more money than anyone in my household ever will. This isn’t about money. It’s about a certain culture with a certain history. They go to jail for DUIs on the weekends like that’s just a thing manly men do and say, “Listen here, b*tch” when they want to set a woman straight. They assure me, “All women love that shit”. Yet, I never see them in the presence of girlfriends or wives. Women do not flock to them, if they did, they wouldn’t be talking to me. They seem to always either be divorced or getting that way. They are always “cutting loose” and indulging themselves when they aren’t at work and never seem happy. Some of them admit to hoping to die before they get old and they live like they mean it. Does that sound familiar?

Yes, I look on them with pity and remorse (If my accident of birth had been slightly different, might I have been one of them? Maybe.) but also disgust and a healthy dose of fear. Those guys rape, beat and occasionally kill people. Whatever factors conspired to make these people the way they are unfortunate, but it’s hard to feel sorry for someone when they are dropping the “n” word, explaining the finer points of shutting up mouthy b*tches and your wondering if he left his gun in the truck or if he has it in his waste band or back pocket. (It’s a conceal and carry state with three firearms for every human being.)

That’s not every redneck and there are certainly nicer elements to hang out with around here. But the guys I described are very real. They’ve been around for generations and they sound alot like MRA glibertarians who come here to show off how smart, superior and enlightened they think they are.

My point, which I may have made badly and with unrestrained snootiness is that the ideas manpsphereians rally around and spread did not come from academic studies, research or a greater understanding of science. Its just the kind of garden variety attitudes and justifications for bigotry that guys who look like they stepped out of a John Grisham movie just before they got shot by Samuel L Jackson routinely display.

I get thinking “rude!” if you hold a door for someone and they don’t acknowledge it with a quick “cheers” or whatever, but taking it so personally that you post an angry sexist Facebook rant is, dare I say it, being entirely over-sensitive.

I thank anyone holding a door for me, and I hold doors for people – if they don’t acknowledge it I just say “You’re welcome!” loudly enough for them to hear it, and forget about it. But very few people I hold doors for don’t acknowledge it.

Well, except kitties, of course. But one doesn’t expect acknowledgement from one’s overlords.

As for the OP – yeah, I call “cool story, bro” on those two tales. Except not cool, you paranoid little fuckwits.

I told on a relative of mine when his gf told me, glowing, that that had been “trying really hard” to have a baby together. He’s had a vasectomy years before they’d met. He smirked and told me to to shut up, but it was too late. The cat was out of the bag. He had lied to her to get regular, condom free, enthusiastic sex and to make her believe he was committed to her.
I’m such a party pooper.

Did she dump that lousy shitstain, Lea?

@ cassandrakitty – a few times, when my children were that age, strangers grabbed them for me like you describe. One man even pulled my son by the hand back to where I was restraining my daughter (he’d got away from me and tried to skip into a busy street) and gently berated him about not scaring his mama so much. I thanked him profusely, and did not even think about screaming “pedophile”. I’m not sure what planet these MRA’s live on, but it sounds really nasty.

Kitteh,

No. She never did. She was a piece of work too. She didn’t leave, she did get eventually get even. It was a match made in hell.

@samantha:

Do these “guys” (assuming that they are human ) realize that their hands–off- in- all- ways policy is illegal? In the US, good Samaritan laws are in effect in most, if not all, states. If a crime is being committed and you are a witness to it, you must call the police. It is advised that you not get involved in a crime, as that would put you in danger, but if someone identifies you as a person who witnessed a crime in progress and you did NOT call the police, or try to, you could be in serious trouble.

This is not true. In fact, in the US it is exactly the opposite: there is NO obligation whatsoever to call the police if you witness a crime, even if doing so puts you in zero danger. That’s why many states have laws saying that certain people – like teachers – are ‘mandatory reporters’ of child abuse. That is, we have laws here that must specifically say that certain groups of people have a legal obligation to report certain kinds of crimes that they know about.

There is a pretty famous case that I won’t link to, from several years back, of a dude who walked into the bathroom of a Las Vegas casino and saw someone in the process of raping and murdering a little girl. Dude did nothing because he was an asshole and figured it was not his problem, and despite public outcry, legally, he was right. There was a bit of an attempt afterward to try to implement laws forcing people to report crimes but it’s a very complicated thing: how do we judge whether somebody is ‘in danger’ if they report a crime? Do we punish crime victims who don’t report what happened to them? Do we really want a nation of people calling 911 every time they think the neighbors are lighting a joint?

Now, the US does have “Good Samaritan” laws, but those do not require you to help anyway. Those are laws that shield “Good Samaritans” from certain kinds of civil liability, the idea being that we don’t want people to refrain from trying to save lives out of fear that they might get sued later.

Obviously a lot of projection going on.
Men with pedophile desires get paranoid that people can tell what’s going on in their heads when they interact with children. They worry about parents freaking out at them because those parents would be justified in worrying about their child interacting with the pedophile.

MRA’s get pissed of at the depiction of pedophiles in popular media, as they get pissed off anytime men are the bad guy, left out whatever, no matter how trivial. Creates a safe place for pedophiles (didn’t Paul Elam even once say that fathers molesting their kids was good or something), trend of discussion maybe even started by pedophiles.

Echo chamber results in men who aren’t pedophiles worrying that parents will think they are because of the fake stories of people freaking out at adults interacting with their children (or maybe stories of pedophiles telling stories in such a way which doesn’t show how they were being a creep.)

The prevalence of this kind of paranoia amongst MRA’s demonstrates that they gotta have a bunch amongst them.

This is not true. In fact, in the US it is exactly the opposite: there is NO obligation whatsoever to call the police if you witness a crime, even if doing so puts you in zero danger.

@mythago

Really? That is odd. I ran a BBS for a long time and there were 2 police officers – both women – who were members. I asked them about that after I saw an episode of 20/20, the news magazine that is/was on ABC for many years. The episode was about “Good Samaritan” laws and both the show and the officers maintained that in most states, there ARE laws that state that if you witness a crime in progress – someone being raped or killed or something – you were legally obligated to report it to the police. NOT that you should intervene, since that would be putting your own life in jeopardy, but that you had to report it. I checked that with my husband this morning before I wrote that and he agreed.

I suppose we could both be mis-remembering what we heard – or perhaps it is only in some areas – so I will look it up. Thanks for the heads up.

Ok, it turns out this child rescuing conundrum didn’t originate in r/MR because the misters were discussing a pretty awful Australian newspaper op ed piece. The female author condemns a (very hysterical) woman for creep-shaming a (very nice) man, who has no children with him, for taking pictures at a children’s park playground. I feel bad for sympathizing with the irrational creep-shamer, since our terrible man-hating ways ruin everything for men and society in general.

The comments range from off-putting to genuinely terrible, with a healthy amount of angry anti-feminism. Is The Courier Mail right wing paper? I’d like to think #NotAllOrEvenMostAussiesAreLikeThat.

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/weve-become-too-paranoid-about-men-in-the-company-of-children/story-e6freon6-1226978135516?nk=b46249a32b1119042bf34179d6c6b37e

Yep. A sign saying you can’t come into the park unless you have kids with you. What have we become? Paranoid.

I’m all for the likes of Rolf Harris being forced to stop playing with their wobble boards. Sex offenders should be kept far away from children and its proper that they incur the full wrath of the law.

However, not all men that talk to children or enjoy the company of children are “grooming” them.

We wonder why so few males go into teaching? Go figure. Who’d want to spend the rest of their career being questioned as to the real motivation for working in the teaching profession?

Here’s a conundrum. If you’re an adult male and you walk past a kid who’s just fallen over, do you stop to help the child and potentially get accused of molestation, or do you ignore your inherent niceness and walk on by like a callous bastard?