It’s easy to understand both (or more) sides of this story, but to me it highlights the social inconvenience of being a member of one of society’s most priveleged demographics, the adult male.</p>
<p>I used to travel on a lot of short business flights on Southwest Airlines, where you don’t have assigned seats. More than once I was confronted with the choice of sitting next to a 100 pound teenage girl or a 200 plus pound guy. It surely would have been more comfortable to sit by the frail girl but, as an adult male, I never felt that was an option. Better to be uncomfortable than risk being seen as “that creepy guy.”</p>
<p>Society has given me countless unfair rewards for being a 6 foot white male, so I can take things like this in stride.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen any signs like that, but I haven’t been to a NYC kids park in years.</p>
<p>I remember a friend telling me her husband was driving home and saw one of his daughter’s friends walking home in the rain. He was going to offer to drive her home, but hesitated because of how it might look. He said he would have done it if his daughter was in the car with him, but all alone? No way.</p>
<p>I can understand insisting that an adult must be accompanied by a child to be in places designed for children. I think it would be suspicious for an adult of either gender to go to “open play” at Gymboree for example unless accompanied by a child. Our local library doesn’t allow unaccompanied adults on the children’s floor unless you can give a reason (e.g. you are a teacher or parent selecting books for your class), but you can’t use the bathrooms or the computers or just sit there. I was at the library once seeing a tutoring client and the child went to the bathroom, at that moment a new librarian came in and asked me to leave. Of course when I explained what I was doing they let me stay. </p>
<p>But, stores? How would you do any Christmas shopping if you couldn’t go in the toy store or the book store? That seems odd. I guess I could see, if he was in a space within the store where kids might go alone, but to kick him out of the store altogether or even the children’s section altogether seems way paranoid.</p>
<p>As a female, I have never been asked to leave any bookstore of children’s store or park or library. It’s sad that things have come to this. Have also never minded where I am seated and whether males or females sit beside me. Sad that men don’t feel comfortable sitting next to a young female without worrying about being labelled “creepy.”</p>
<p>We did warn my dad not to pick up young females, since they could blackmail him by accusing him of making advances or worse. He used to want to pick them up by the HS to avoid having them picked up by someone with mischief on their minds. It IS very sad that men and we as a society have to worry about these things. </p>
<p>I would not hesitate to offer a ride to one of our kids’ friends but I can see how others might hesitate, especially if driving alone.</p>
<p>I don’t go to Barnes and Nobles stores anymore but if it was crowded, I’d go for one of the adult-sized chairs in the childrens section. Never had a problem with it.</p>
<p>I really don’t expect B&N to survive long-term.</p>
<p>Statistics show that 95% of incidents of child molestation are traced back to a family member or someone known to the victim. But we’re worried about a man in B&N…</p>
This doesn’t pertain whatsoever to political correctness… It’s more the anti-rape police doing a very bad job (and by “police,” I mean it in the same way you did, not actual law enforcement). Unless the forced apology was politically correct?</p>
<p>The story’s pretty ridiculous. But the fact that it’s a big deal and that the guy got a public apology shows that what happened to him was considered both exceptional and unacceptable, so I wouldn’t be too worried.</p>
<p>I don’t think the man should have been evicted from the store, certainly. However, if I were the store manager, I would certainly “keep an eye on” any unaccompanied man lurking about the children’s section. I’m sorry, to me it is just sensible caution.</p>
<p>And yes, for the 99.9 percent of men who would never do anything out-of-line, I am sorry it is an issue. But unfortunately, it is.</p>
<p>Our local HS track is open to local citizens for running. I have been asked not to use the track when the girl’s teams are practicing on the field inside the track. I didn’t protest, as there are many other places for me to exercise.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize B&N was a preferred pick-up site for child molesters. Is ignorance of this major threat to children just another pitfall to being an adult male?</p>
<p>Another sad fact of the matter is that it is probably less than 99.9% who would never do anything out of line.</p>
<p>Being an adult male in a position around children or young women is definitely an issue for us men, but I’m sure the suspicion it arouses is nothing near that of “driving while black.”</p>
<p>Amazon’s regular prices beat B&N’s membership prices which is why I dropped my membership years ago.</p>
<p>We have had the problem with sex offenders in the library in the city where my kids went to university - I don’t really think that there was much the library could do.</p>
<p>If this happened to me at a store, I’d never go back and I’d suggest that others do the same.</p>
<p>About 15 years ago my folks came to visit and we went to watch the boys play soccer. Lots of families around. A little girl came up to my dad and said, “I’ll tell you a secret. You’re old.” He smiled and said to her, “I’ll tell you a secret. You’re smart.” About 10 minutes later the girl’s mom marched up to us spitting mad and lit into my dad because her daughter had told her he told her a secret. She would not listen to my explanation of what we perceived as having happened. She was so frightened for her little one. I understood her fear but it was a sad and sobering experience for me. Nothing further transpired. Well, we never took my folks to watch the kids play soccer again, actually.</p>
<p>Hug, that’s so unfortunate. Some people are just so… UGH!</p>
<p>I have coached without children for years and no one ever has an issue with it. My sister is in her mid-late 20s now, single, no kids and coaches. No one has ever said anything to her. Now that we’re too old to be coached, my dad still coaches youth sports and he’s had more than one person say that it’s “weird” that he’s coaching without kids. Are you kidding me? He’s been coaching for 20-some years. He’s also the baseball and basketball league president. He’s not going to stop just because his kids aged out. And frankly, there’s not enough volunteers for him not to coach a few teams.</p>
<p>He’s also the type of person that wouldn’t think twice about picking up one of my friends to drive home if they were walking alone. He’s also the type of person that’s a dad to everyone. Some of my close friends in high school still call on him when they need help with anything- especially those who never had stable home lives. </p>
<p>Now, my boyfriend loves kids and wants to be a caretaker of young children. It’s hard for him to get so much as a babysitting job as a male. </p>
<p>It’s really, really pathetic that we’ve gotten to this level of paranoia here. Whoever said upstream that the vast majority of child molestation occurs by family members/close friends is correct. Same with abductions. Same with abuse.</p>
<p>Oh, and btw, I’m speaking as someone who has had one of those unfortunate incidents happen to them. And the man walked free. And it was someone I knew (not family, a league commissioner). And I would still never raise my children to fear all strangers like that. Makes it hard to distinguish real danger from paranoid danger.</p>
<p>Me, I’m thrilled the guy was escorted out of the children’s section. Why? Because, at a certain age, I was flashed, not once but on two separate occasions, in the children’s section of the Philadelphia Free Library.</p>
<p>Sometimes it walks like a duck, acts like a duck, and is a duck.</p>
<p>I have no idea whether this guy was a molester, but I think it’s a great policy. He could have asked for help finding a book if that was the issue, but if he wants “privacy to make a phone call” he should leave the store entirely.</p>
<p>I regularly volunteered as a chaperon for my S’s math team when he was in middle school at an all boys private and they went to an out of town competition that required spending a night away.</p>
<p>The list of don’t and *really, really don’t *related to being in the presence of these boys, especially in the hotel/motel, was long, very long.</p>
<p>Any of you moms experienced anything like this when chaperoning a girls’ overnight school trip?</p>