Far From Perfect

Breeder paranoia rears its ugly head yet again.

These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. "I don't want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred," says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.

[snip]

Last month, I wrote about how our culture teaches children to fear men¹. Hundreds of men responded, many lamenting that they've now become fearful of children. They said they avert their eyes when kids are around, or think twice before holding even their own children's hands in public.

Frank McEnulty, a builder in Long Beach, Calif., was once a Boy Scout scoutmaster. "Today, I wouldn't do that job for anything," he says. "All it takes is for one kid to get ticked off at you for something and tell his parents you were acting weird on the campout."

The sympathetic, rational, responsible adult side of me says, "I guess we have Chris Matthews and his ilk to thank for this. Fuckin' laissez-faire boutique-moms... if they gave a flying fuck about their kids, maybe they should consider getting off their asses and doing some fucking parenting! The right thing for you to do would be to supervise your kids and teach them valuable life lessons, but time and again, you useless gene-donors choose what's easy instead of right, and loudly blame everyone but yourselves."

However, the bitter, despondent, put-upon female side of me who wearily wages a neverending war with

• the glass ceiling,
• wage discrepancies,
• sexism,
• misogyny, and
• Madonna/whore mentalities

says, "Wah, wha, wah, 'unfair treatment', waaah... suck it up and deal, ya buncha pansies! We certainly have. Oh, dearie me: automatical-advantaged middle-class males have a whole, actual reason to feel marginalized by modern American society? Good. Join the fuckin' club, masters of privilege. Maybe living on the fringes for a few will give you entitled sonsofbitches some much-needed perspective."

Clearly, I'm conflicted. But I do feel for the innocents. Paranoia and irrantional fear have-- among a slew of other social ills-- cost our society its humanity. As with most things of this nature, I blame the capitalist media for both cultivating and perpetuating this culture of fear.