Men Are Nasty Predators

At least that's how we are being portrayed more often in our society. Check out this excerpt from a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

The result of all this hyper-carefulness, however, is that men often feel like untouchables. In Cochranville, Pa., Ray Simpson, a bus driver, says that he used to have 30 kids stop at his house on Halloween. But after his divorce, with people knowing he was a man living alone, he had zero visitors. "I felt like crying at the end of the evening," he says.

At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed "suspicious."

In Skokie, Ill., Steve Frederick says the director of his son's day-care center called him in to reprimand him for "inappropriately touching the children." "I was shocked," he says. "Whatever did she mean?" She was referring to him reading stories with his son and other kids on his lap. A parent had panicked when her child mentioned sitting on a man's lap.

This is horrifying. I understand the need to protect our children, but we are getting to a point where we are ostracizing men and depriving children of positive male role models. We can't keep our children in bubbles. We can't assume that every man is a monster out to molest our children. Read this letter to Prudence on Slate (second one down). A mom is concerned about her daughters sleeping over at a friend's house because they will be "sleeping in the same house with another nonfamily man," i.e. their friend's dad, a married man. What is our society coming to?