Child abuse and the vilification of men.

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When you say "in fact untrue" it sounds as if you had certainty that the wide majority of abusers are not male. I call humbug unless you link to an actual study that claims the the sexes are tied on this.

We claim that abuse is made predominantly by males, because it is. Things are the way they are and facts work like that. I never expected men to be such sissy crybaby that believe posting accurate stats that make them look wrong is part of a media conspiracy against them, but I guess you learn something new every day.

Like it or not, there is a bias in favor of women in this area. We're seen as the nurturing sex. Fact is, there are quite a lot of women out there that are not nurturing, and a good portion of them do end up having and/or caring for children.

There have been plenty of stories out there from fathers that were verbally attacked by women for being out in public with their children. Taking pictures of their kids on a playground, for instance, is often a risk for them. It's something us women take for granted... nobody is going to come charging at us and demand we delete the pictures while calling us perverts. (and yes, this exact scenario happens DAILY to men)

Statistics only show who's been caught. They are not an accurate representation of child abuse, especially when you consider the fact that less than half of these abused children will ever come forward.

The prevalence of female paedophiles is not the main point of this thread. Even if every report of child abuse was due entirely to a man, that still means like 98% of the male population have no such desires to harm children. Men, just like women, instinctively want to protect children.
The main point is that if I were to see a crying child alone in a street, I would start to look around for a woman to help, because comforting the child puts me at risk of accusations of abduction, I certainly can't pick the kid up and start looking for his/her parents. It screws over the kids too, not just in education, when they start seeing men as potential abductors, rather than someone whom they can rely on to help when they're in trouble. The distrust will linger in their minds, I have no doubt it affects their adult behaviour.
I also think it has an effect on "Nice Guy syndrome" - The nice guys hugely overvalue themselves, because they are raised to believe the worst of men, that they are all violent, rapists, paedophiles given half a chance.

"Posting accurate stats" - The media does not flaunt accurate stats about the worst of female behaviour does it?

Ok, somehow I knew that you were going to say that. Female offenders tend to only account for 4% of the actual convictions but there are studies that suggest they could make up as much as 43% if unreported cases are taken into account. The studies are mentioned in section 4.2 of the following article but I am not in the mood to look for them:

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf

Also keep in mind that peadophilia has low prevalence (below 5%) among the general population, so even if they were vastly more likely to be men, it would still be unjustified to claim that men potential peadophiles.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... g-him.html

For the terrible crimes of not immediately disengaging when a female pupil hugged his legs, letting a pupil sit on his lap and sharing a chair with another this teacher was banned from his profession of 20 years. Another evil rapist caught in the nick of time! *holds out hand for high five*

In high school, we had to do a certain number of volunteer hours before we could graduate. I did most of my hours doing after-school tutoring at the Boys and Girls Club (that whole "professor" personality comes in handy sometimes). I found it very rewarding, and it didn't cut into my social life much because I didn't really have one. So I stayed on after the required hours were completed. There were a few kids I worked with almost every day for a couple years.

One day, right before winter break, a little girl I worked with gave me a hug as she was leaving and told me she'd miss me. Because I hugged her back and said "I'll miss you too" rather than pushing her away and saying "that's inappropriate," I was asked not to come back.

Even typing this now, 13 years later, I'm still bitter that they took what should have been a very sweet moment and tried to turn it into something dirty. And I'm still pissed that those kids (mostly poor, mostly without fathers) were probably left thinking that yet another man abandoned them.

The volunteer coordinator said as I was leaving "You're probably okay" (gee, thanks for saying that I'm probably not a child molester) "but we can't be too careful."

Yes, you damn well can be too careful.

Women aren't necessarily great care givers or mothers...just because they have or had a uterus. But the majority of women who harm kids do it for an entirely different reason then sexual pleasure. Mind you, I said majority...that doesn't mean that at least some women don't get some kind of gratification from harming kids.

I have noticed a trend lately that more women are being accused of sexual misconduct with kids...most seem to prefer kids around 14 years old (mostly young boys). I think part of it is due to public awareness as well as a higher population of people. The greater number of people, the higher number of deviation of behavior (criminal & sexual).

As far as more women harming their children...this is something that's been going on for decades. There was a woman back in the 50s & 60s who had quite a few children. Everyone of them died young. People who knew the mom felt sorry for her...as she had experienced so much tragedy. Her childrens' deaths at the time were blamed on SIDS. But years later when the case was reopened, it was discovered that she killed everyone of her kids. I believe this kind of occurance has been around for a very long time...it's only recently been discovered.

I think it's great that we live in a time where we are so aware of sexual perversions, but at the same time....when people jump to the wrong conclusion of molestation (or worse) when the reality proves other wise, we are just as messed up as anyone who does commit crimes against children. A hug should be just a hug. It shouldn't mean the hugger is looking for sexual arousal by close contact.

I've been hugged by people who meant no harm (just to give comfort or share good feelings), & I've been hugged by perverts. There is a HUGE difference between the 2 types. One is just wrapping arms around another, while the later requires the hugger to grind against the huggee. One feels ok, one makes me feel violated. I guess we need to teach kids what a good hug is...if any hug deviates from that "good" model, then it could be a physical violation. I think most kids, even young ones, would probably be able to distinguish the difference.

Like Bill Maher said, children have become more important than people. I think our over-emphasis on children, just because they're cute and not corrupted by the evvvvvvvillll modern society we have, is actually tearing apart our entire social fabric, as people retreat and socialize with just their families, and ironically, the isolation actually breeds the perverted weirdos they fear so greatly, in a twisted self-fulfilling prophecy.

Seriously though, 0.00001% of men have murdered a child. Those who do always make the news (unless they're in the ghetto), and they are rare cases of people with severe psychological problems. Women are probably 1/2 as likely to sexually abuse children and just as likely to physically and emotionally abuse them.