We're Looking A Little Too Hard For Criminals, AKA Men
There's this notion, more and more, that if you're male, you must be guilty.
Guilty...of what?
Not to worry -- they'll find something.
If you're a man, some seemingly innocuous thing you've done is surely criminal. Not because it is. Because they need something you've done to be criminal and because they'll just call you guilty first and work it out later. Um, maybe.
Maybe this sounds like paranoid craziness, but, from the news stories I read -- and not just those of the hurt feelz crowd on college campuses -- it increasingly seems like what it's like to be male, if you're one of the unlucky ones.
This, below, was a story from January, but I missed it then and it bears blogging because of how everyone was quick to go with the sick assumption.
A Yorkshire taxi driver was banned from making runs to a school after he was seen hugging and kissing two young girls outside a local school.
Lucy Crossley writes for the Daily Mail:
Tony Kemp, 60, from Kirkbymoorside was suspended from the school run for six days by North Yorkshire County Council after they said an allegation had been made against him.The council refused to tell him why he was suspended, but a colleague told him he had been seen kissing and cuddling two girls outside a school - which he then realised were his daughters, who are nine and 11.
Now, this is the UK, land of crazy libel laws and a lady called the Queen who runs around England followed by a bunch of corgis to the tune of bajillions of dollars, so there's already a level of WTF?
Still -- the guy wasn't even allowed to know why he was suspended.
Once officials realised the error, Mr Kemp was reinstated, but he is furious at how he was treated by the council and 'devastated' that the accusation was made.He says he can not understand why he was not told what the allegation was, and why he was not interviewed as a matter of urgency - which would have given him the opportunity to explain what had really happened.
What'll happen is that one of the women who stands for this sort of thing -- railroading men, first chance anyone gets -- will have this done to a man (or son) she cares about. Maybe it'll be in one of these campus cases where a guy gets a blow job from a woman when he's blacked out drunk and he gets tossed out of school for sexual assault.
Suddenly, when that happens to somebody's son, the injustice will become clear.
But I think maybe we -- here in America and the UK -- shouldn't be operating like this. And it's a sign that something is terribly broken in each of our countries.
The answer to that -- to the next guy who gets his due process rights yanked from him: "Hey, you're a man, dude. Suck it up."
It seems there's going to be only one way to change things, and that's for somebody who's been tossed out of school sans due process to sue the institution and everyone involved blind.
It can't happen soon enough.
Put on a "list" without knowing why, suspended without knowing why? Sounds a heck of a lot like the no-fly and super double secret terror lists.
"My kingdom for a little due process".
mer at June 20, 2016 3:52 AM
That is what it's like. Kafkaesque in a way America isn't supposed to be.
Amy Alkon at June 20, 2016 5:15 AM
As for the taxi driver story, note what this is -- a guy getting in trouble for -- evidence that he is a loving dad!
Amy Alkon at June 20, 2016 5:58 AM
If I had the money it would be fun to rent billboards making fun of these events as a way of making a point.
Obama should have stepped in at some point telling his guys "We need to talk. A passed out guy gets kicked out of school for something a girl did to him willingly?".
Bob in Texas at June 20, 2016 6:53 AM
Obama should have stepped in at some point telling his guys "We need to talk. A passed out guy gets kicked out of school for something a girl did to him willingly?".
You think Obama agrees that that's an injustice?
dee nile at June 20, 2016 8:17 AM
I bet Liz spent less tax payer money on travel in the last fifty years, than Obama has for the last eight.
Isab at June 20, 2016 8:58 AM
I guess I'd like to think the Dems in Congress would start paying attention to something the asshole has done that's not working out for their constituents.
Realistically, it's up to the alumni to cut off their checkbooks and start dialing their Congressmen to change this stuff.
Bob in Texas at June 20, 2016 9:39 AM
Hand-in-glove with the male hysteria is the notion that every stranger on the street wants to boff Junior. That one's on parents.
Kevin at June 20, 2016 12:04 PM
This will only end when more people like Amy (ie, women) stand up for men.
Currently in the UK, a man can't even take his own children to the park alone. They have gone down the rabbit hole but we seem to be hot on their heels.
Craig Loehle at June 20, 2016 1:16 PM
This happens for the "benefit" of women. Only women can change it. At the end of the day, women will suffer if they don't.
Women's Suffrage = Women's suffering.
Jay R at June 20, 2016 2:53 PM
Took them 6 days to figure out the kids were his?
Or 6 days to figure out he wasn't screwing them.
Bob in Texas at June 20, 2016 4:02 PM
Trouble is, many businesses have to choose between being sued for hurting men's feelings - or being sued for something much worse.
Just heard about this case:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/06/20/this-was-30-minutes-of-hell-for-this-young-lady-unaccompanied-minor-groped-on-flight/
The family is suing the airline.
From now on, I expect flight attendants will be told that when a man WANTS to sit next to an unfamiliar, unaccompanied child on a half-empty flight, the attendant must move the child. With as little fuss as possible, of course. Of course, the airline could still get sued - by the man.
I'm appalled that some of the commentators are asking, in effect, why she didn't scream or fight back. She's 13 and the man was a stranger and maybe twice her size. How was she to know that he wouldn't pull a knife on her or quietly threaten to do so?
lenona at June 22, 2016 3:34 PM
Oh, and here's one of the higher-rated comments on that case:
fundy.13
6/20/2016 9:58 AM EDT
"All of these men complaining that they were made to feel like pedophiles when they were asked to move seats is ridiculous. Last year on an international flight I was asked to move seats because the airline had seated me next to a little boy flying on his own. I ended up not having to because there was already an empty seat next to another unaccompanied minor (a boy about the same age as the one I was seated next to) and the airline sat them together. Not once did I think 'they're treating me like a criminal!' Additionally, this sort of thing doesn't happen to just men, I'm a married woman in my twenties and they still asked me to move seats."
lenona at June 22, 2016 3:58 PM
And, it occurred to me that it was actually pretty lucky that she DIDN'T scream.
Why? Because had she done so the first time, he would have yanked his hands away before the flight attendant walked past and became a witness. Since she froze up for a half hour or so, he got careless. Witnesses can be crucial in cases like this. (Not to mention the tear rolling down her cheek.)
lenona at June 23, 2016 12:40 PM
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