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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

"which of course I had to stop".

I want to go back to a world where I can be affectionate toward children without an implication of something more sinister.

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It’s true though, it’s very risky for men in America to have any kind of interactions with other people’s children.

I’m a father of six. One of my oldest kids’ friends wrote me a great little letter out of the blue. I wrote her a short, heartfelt, and funny (IMO) reply, but after I talked with my wife, we decided I really just could not send it. There are too many risks. She thought the only safe thing to do would be to ignore the girl’s letter. And she’s right. That’s what I ended up doing. But it still makes me sad that that’s where society is these days.

Most of the world outside of North America is still this way.

except new zealand where men can't even be hired as teachers because parents don't trust them. at least that is what i was told by a friend who ran a school there.

think you've been led down a garden path there...this is not true, based on my equally anecdotal takes from family who are teachers there. There is a problem about lack of male teachers in NZ but that is more as a result of men not wanting to be teachers rather than parents not wanting it. Most schools are desperate to get more teachers and the govt as also tried schemes to get more men to teach.

my story is 20 years old. it's possible things are changing. that would be good. it is of course also possible that this was a unique experience of this one school director. but i believe he would have checked with other schools before coming to that conclusion. the key point however is that this sentiment about not letting teachers, especially male teachers be close to students is not just limited to the US but can be found elsewhere.

A father I know took was sitting in the bar of a swimming pool, his daughter swimming. He saw something wrong in the pool, grumbled, and took a picture to request repairs. He now, as a side effect, had a picture of zillions of 12 year old boys and girls in swimsuits. Some mother saw this happen and called him out, then the rumors started, and he ended up critiqued everywhere.

The good news: He still has a job. This took several weeks of negotiating, and he got the biggest possible warning the job could give him. The police is not prosecuting anymore.

Consensus of fathers here is: He's not a pervert, just someone who did not think things trough for a moment. But everyone agreed in him taking an extremely dumb risk. This is Western Europe, BTW.

I would like that as well, however I doubt it will happen because we can't even have honest conversations about blatantly obvious things like that there are pretty clearly different flavors of trans out there and some of them are concerning in some contexts (i.e. the men that get their rocks off wearing women's clothes who will only never do the surgery in the context of being allowed in women's locker rooms as one example). We need more honesty all around, it would make compassion a lot easier for those that need it.

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