Are all fathers creepy?

[Alex122022]

My experience in a different thread (on swimming pool changing room etiquette) has been quite interesting: there seems to be a widely shared opinion that all men are creeps and there are never any innocent explanations for their behaviour.

While I completely agree that a father in a women's changing room - especially when there are older girls - is inappropriate, I can easily see how this could happen without any ulterior motive. Be it simply ignorance or lack of judgement.

I experienced the same on playgrounds: playing hide & seek with my daughter? Mothers approach my DW and tell her that "a perv" is watching the children. Playing with DD - well meaning mothers asking her whether she is ok or needs help.

AIBU to think this is a bit excessive?

MN moderation is so shit these days.

Where exactly do I violate the guidelines?

Seriously? Please do point out where I say this - or apologise.

I see - @WhoDecidedImAnAdultImNotQualified clearly went over the top with their accusations.

Read your own posts back.

And you can't demand apologies from me, I'm not one of the poor women in your real life.

Men can take their kids to the playground and their daughters shopping for clothes. They should. What they shouldn’t do is make other people uncomfortable while they do these things. So:

at the playground, don’t appear to be watching other people’s kids beyond a normal amount of keeping an eye on safety. Don’t sneak around and appear to be trying to spy on other people’s children.

at the shops, if the changing rooms are not explicitly mixed sex, you wait outside and your daughter comes out to show you the outfits and/or swap them for different sizes (honestly this is so easy I find it odd that the man in question couldn’t have worked it out. I had boyfriends in the 90s who understood how this worked.)

in changing situations, if you can’t take your child into the changing room for whatever reason, you go to the staff and ask to use the disabled or another facility- eg if you have an older child with additional needs, or a younger child, who’s not the same sex as you and you don’t feel you can bring them into the changing room that matches your sex. Again, this is not hard to work out.

It’s pretty disingenuous to say that women are arguing for fathers to stay out of their kids’ lives and activities. I haven’t seen any posts that suggest that, but perhaps that interpretation lets you off a hook at home?

He can't.

Some of them got deleted for - checks note - breaking moderation guidelines.

Spiderman is climbing the building and unfurling his banner...

Similarly, if one Malteser in a packet is a piece of shit in disguise, would you eat any of them?

OP has a lot of time on his hands to sit and post telling women we’re wrong. Guess the contact schedule is every other weekend?

Dear Alex
So many of us replied in good faith. You insulted one of the brightest women on the board. You've picked up anything you can be defensive and negative about while not indicating that you've taken onboard anything that women have tried to explain about our experiences.
You are coming across as a creepy man.

For your daughter's sake please set a good example of how men should behave around changing rooms etc. Don't be the one to blur her boundaries so that she thinks it's acceptable for other men to do that too. Encourage her to trust her instincts. Encourage her to put her own safety, dignity and privacy before politeness. This is how to be a good father.

You accused me of intentionally entering women's spaces for the purpose of my own gratification. I've never said this - and I seriously doubt you will find any statement by me that supports this interpretation.

There were several posts stating that male family members would rather be seen dead than going to the playground - or clothes shopping. Implying doing so would be a highly suspicious activity.

And thanks for the actually helpful suggestion. I do not have experience going clothes shopping in that way and I would prefer to do this in a way that does not cause any upset.

I accused you of wanting to enter women's spaces and using your dd as a tool to do so, and I stand by that given that multiple posts of yours are asking for tips on going into women's changing rooms because you feel like your teen dd will want you there, and you said it's up to her (it isn't)

We see you op.

Thus demonstrating that half the respondents are totally thick!

Who is "the brightest women on the board"?

She has her boundaries - and she can very well express and enforce them, as she should.

So, in short, you remain convinced of your entitlement to do what is most convenient for you, and that the women who are cheerleading you to do so are sensible and right, and the ones offering you a perspective that doesn't suit are 'bizarre'?
If that's the way you approach sense checking your opinions and behaviour, you might as well save yourself and everyone else time, and just blunder through life doing as you please, in your delusion that you're always right.
Because however wrong you are, you're going to find some women who will agree with you. Goes with the territory of being a man.

Quite the opposite - and one can get signal out of the noise.

You treat everyone who engaged in behaviour that's problematic as a safeguarding risk and treat them as having failed to meet safeguarding standards.

There is no 'giving the benefit of the doubt'

Why?

Because giving the benefit of the doubt actively means that behaviour is justified - when it never should be - and that puts children at risk because one justification set a precedent for all future violation of poor behaviour. The whole point is you can't tell the difference between intent of an individual so you eliminate that problematic behaviour instead.

Anyone engaging in behaviour that breaks safeguarding puts ALL children at risk of you start making exceptions and going "well I know Joe/Joanne, he's/she's a good person, just a bit feckless". Because you then set a precedent for others to exploit this logic and your good will.

Safeguarding 101: Anyone who behaves in a manner that a creep would has to be treated like a creep to stop creeps.

This is a poster actively looking for loopholes and gotchas to justify his cause. (See other thread). It's not a case of 'simple mistake'. Anyone who seeks to de-legitimise and undermine safeguarding principles is by definition a risk to safeguarding. It doesn't matter if they are male or female. Anyone 'struggling' to understand this? Well I simply I refer you to the circular argument about behaviour...

That behaviour and faux innocence is a bunch of red flags to anyone who engaged in good faith. Learn from it.

People acting in good faith don't undermine safeguarding principles. Being naive isn't an excuse for an adult who claims to have a child. By the time you have a kid if you don't understand safeguarding 101 you are actively pose a risk to your own child. It's a principle taught everywhere through life. Choosing to ignore it because it doesn't suit your life narrative is an active choice. A choice your child doesnt get.

PS A bag of Maltesers is by definition 100% poo balls.

I like Maltesers!
NotallMaltesers
NAMALT.😂

OP, this is getting really boring. You are wanting women to change their perceptions of men, without men changing their behaviour. Several of us have told you why we have these perceptions, and you’re basically telling us that we are unreasonable.
I think you need to take this up with your fellow men and work on how you can change your collective behaviour in order to change our perceptions.
And yes, we know it’s not all men, but it’s enough men that we have to be wary of all men. See the snake and Malteasers analogies in previous posts.

They really are.

They are the foulest of the foul.

I remember getting them getting them as gifts as a child from people who knew I hated Maltesers.

They very clearly hated me.

To answer your question

My original intend was genuinely to understand how one - as a father - can help to defuse situations that make women feel uncomfortable, without having to constantly profess one's good intentions

Unless you can get the millions of men who do not have good intentions (a sizeable and significant minority) to radically and permanently change their outlook understanding and behaviours, you can’t.

Pp who started with “navigate your way through by using your empathy, grace and kindness...” gave good advice.

You treat everyone who engaged in behaviour that's problematic as a safeguarding risk and treat them as having failed to meet safeguarding standards.

You have a very strange - and dangerous - approach to safeguarding, as you focus on obvious problems and completely ignore the rest. Even worse, you use a very subjective and biased approach, which is not what, e.g. KCSIE outlines.

Anyone engaging in behaviour that breaks safeguarding puts ALL children at risk of you start making exceptions and going "well I know Joe/Joanne, he's/she's a good person, just a bit feckless". Because you then set a precedent for others to exploit this logic and your good will.

This statement is difficult to argue with - the problem is that the threshold of "breaks safeguarding" appears to be very different. Taken to extreme, anyone dealing with children is a safeguarding risk - and most relevant incident actually happen with parents or closer family. I'm sure you are familiar with the data: safeguarding very often deals with problems at home and in family - not with fathers playing on the playground.

Anyone who seeks to de-legitimise and undermine safeguarding principles is by definition a risk to safeguarding. It doesn't matter if they are male or female. Anyone 'struggling' to understand this?

Like you - I assume - I have extensive safeguarding training because of my job - and I struggle how anything here de-legitimises or undermines safeguarding principles. The fact that you are ignorant of the law - claiming it was illegal for someone of the opposite sex to enter a single-sex space per se - makes me wonder though.

People acting in good faith don't undermine safeguarding principles.

This is an incredibly dangerous thing to say - and a statement that makes me wonder whether you really do understand safeguarding. Quite the opposite is true - a lot of people undermine safeguarding principles acting in good faith.

Were there several posts saying that male family members wouldn't go to a playground? Or was there one? I only saw one but perhaps I missed others. It certainly wasn't a widely expressed view, and all of my own male family members regularly take children and grandchildren to playgrounds and soft plays, but for some reason you have honed in on it as if it some sort of majority position.

Same with the clothes shopping. A man can of course take his daughter clothes shopping but he doesn't get to disregard the safety and comfort of other girls and women while doing so. That means staying out of the changing rooms, even to swap sizes. Yes, it might mean that your daughter has to get dressed and undressed multiple times to come out of the changing room, but you'll just have to cope.

You are cherrypicking the answers you want to bolster your argument.

These answers were highlighted to me to show why going clothes shopping or to the playground is some kind of creepy behaviour.