In this issue:

● Eeeek! It's a Man!

● Anniversary

Eeeek! It's a Man!

I couldn't believe what Mike (not his real name) had just told us in our men's group. His wife didn't want him to change their infant daughter's diapers. In particular, she didn't want Mike touching his daughter's privates. She was afraid something inappropriate would happen.

This was many years ago, and it would be easy to dismiss the episode as part of what was happening in a family that was dysfunctional in several other ways.

Jump forward a couple of decades or so, and we have several more modern examples, reported by Lenore Skenazy.

In her first essay, printed in the St. Petersburg Times*, Skenazy recounts the experience of Mirko Fischer, a businessman who was flying of British Airways. He was in the window seat of a three-seat row. His pregnant wife was in the middle seat. A twelve-year-old boy, traveling alone, was in the aisle seat.

Fischer's wife asked her husband to switch seats with her so she could lean against the window. Fischer complied. Then things got weird.

A cabin attendant came by and asked Fischer to move. Fischer refused. The cabin attendant became insistent, and Fischer moved. He later sued British Airways for sex discrimination (and humiliation): The airline's policy was that no man was allowed to sit next to an unrelated child, even if that child's parents were sitting in the next row. All men were to be considered potential predators. Fischer won his case, and British Airways is now segregating unaccompanied children into a separate section of the airplane.

The second essay** recounts a bunch more stories. In the first, Timothy Murray, the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts pulled a couple of kids out of a smoking minivan just before one of the van's tires exploded into flames. The driver, grandmother of the kids, jumped out and tried to punch Murray in the face. According to Murray, she told him she thought he was trying to kidnap the kids. Skenazy calls this "Worst-First" thinking: "almost any man who has anything to do with a child can find himself suspected of being a creep."

The next story is weirder, and bends back full-circle on the episode at my friend Mike's house. A male daycare worker in Iowa is forbidden to change diapers. In fact, he has to leave the room when another of the (female) workers changes a diaper.

Some stories would be funny if they weren't part of this overall "Worst-First" phenomenon. In Skenazy's third story, a man in a store, carrying a pile of girls' panties, was followed by a woman loudly berating him and calling him a pervert. Turns out he was a clerk doing some restocking.

Two more stories, and then we're done. In one, the British Musicians' Union told its members not to touch a child's fingers, even to help place the tiny digits on the keys. And finally, at a public pool in Sydney, Australia, boys may not change in the same locker room as the men. The men themselves had demanded this, for fear of being accused falsely.

Where does this leave us? Like the men at the pool in Sydney, and like a lot of other men who find themselves in the presence of children, we hold back. We avoid. We make sure that we are safe from hasty or false accusations.

Sometimes that concern for our safety has tragic consequences. Skenazy tells of a man who saw a toddler wandering along a road, lost. He didn't want to get into trouble. A little girl in an adult male's car? There would be more than a little explaining to do. So he passed her by. The little girl wandered to a pond and drowned.

Some of us men, maybe all of us, may face similar dilemmas, whether we are trying to save a life or are trying simply to be helpful. And until our society regains a bit of its sanity and composure, we'll have to decide case-by-case, balancing our safety against the safety of children. May we choose wisely. M

* http://tinyurl.com/eek1-male
** http://tinyurl.com/eek2-male

Anniversary 11

November 8 marks my 11th anniversary since I gave up booze. I am immensely grateful to all the men who have trod the same path. May we continue to get inspiration and strength from each other. M

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