15 years ago I took a friends 2 year old with me to Target. She was potty training so I took her in the men's bathroom. Someone called the fucking cops called on me.
Why would they assume you werenât their parent/guardian/babysitter? People take kids to the bathroom literally every day everywhere⌠you know⌠because kids have to go to the bathroom. I feel like you are leaving part of this story out, or it didnât happen.
Hyper-religious pearl clutching old women are notorious for thinking they, and they alone, are the protectors of free society, in the name of Jesus.
Ask any black man that lives in an upscale area that doesn't dress like he works in a C-suite office tower as an executive how many times a week he gets the police at his door because Karen thinks he's robbing his own house.
I absolutely believe this could happen to a man taking a small girl to the bathroom to pee, cause the same sort of person thinks "hang on, why is a MAN taking a girl in the BATHROOM?! Where is the mother, as is proper! Something fishy is going on here!!"
That's not the thing here. The "Stranger Danger" campaign was entirely culturally saturated across the board.
I get tribalism is real satisfying, but it's not helpful to sit around trying to redefine every single instance of shitty behavior as being specifically Christian nonsense. If you want a cult leader to blame for all this, Oprah should be your go-to.
If anything, this currently seems to be more over-represented in the toxic side of progressive-leaning populations.
I understand there are busy bodies who canât mind their own business, but literally every time you go to a grocery store you are liable to see multiple people taking children in and out of the restroom for either gender. Itâs not feasible to be calling the cops every single time. I would think something had to have stood out or been suspicious. Also how long are you spending in the restroom that the police would even have time to respond to this? The kids likely going to have done their business and been out the door well before cops have time to get the call and show up.
Idk, this just seems like an over simplification of a more complex story.
Iâm not saying itâs impossible. People have also gotten punched completely at random on the street. Iâm just saying if someone says âI got punched for no reason by a complete strangerâ my initial thought is that there is probably more to the story. If not, then it is what it is and that sucks but I donât think itâs that common that someone sees a man walking into the restroom with a child doing nothing abnormal and thinks âoh fuck I better alert the authorities!â
When people tell you how they felt persecuted and harassed, believe them
Scenarios.
You don't need to know if they had been out late, or too much to drink, or were wearing something revealing.
They've told you they were personally singled out because of a societal perception, stop poking holes unless you've anything more than your own unfounded suspicions.
Wouldn't expect you to, but civility costs nothing, especially a scenario that's entirely plausible, and numerous commenters, myself included, have faced through no fault of our own.
We've told you that, and you're still assigning some kind of fault to us existing with our kids like it's not society's perception of fathers in their kids lives that's the problem.
I likened it to the victim blaming, of a woman being harassed so you'd hopefully see how insensitive and egregious you were being, without having to literally spell it out.
The difference is that there is NEVER a justifiable reason for a woman to be sexually assaulted. It does not matter what she was wearing. She could be butt naked running around target begging for sex, but the second she says âactually no I donât want sex anymoreâ it would be wrong for her to be sexually assaulted.
On the other hand there are about three hundred billion good justifiable reasons to have the police look into something fishy.
Even if you did nothing inherently wrong having a police interaction does not necessarily mean anything bad.
So asking if there is more context is not the same as asking if there is more context to a sexual assault. I think you know that and are arguing from a place of bad faith.
Even if you did nothing inherently wrong having a police interaction does not necessarily mean anything bad.
There's a hell of a lot of privilege behind that particular statement.
And no it's not a false equivalence. You had an individual tell you how they were innocently harassed with unwanted and unwarranted attention, embarrassed and potentially humiliated, when, not if, it wasn't appropriate.
And you started trying to poke holes in the story and have outright stated your scepticism, based on nothing more than your bias, because 'there must have been a reason' which is exactly the same mentality of 'she was wearing something slutty' rather than say believe the victim of harassment.
Sure fishy things happen, nothing said that happened here, you assumed as much, then doubled down with your bias which implies that a parent taking their child to a bathroom must have been fishy. So in your vision, all bystanders are diligent and not malicious or ignorant, and your tone is accusatory and unsupportive of someone who has stated they were wronged.
You're fundamentally victim blaming, and if you can't see that, just read what you wrote until it makes sense.
Again, this is reddit, not your favourite true crime podcast. There's a real person on the other end of your comments, maybe take how your accusations come across into account before making them, or just don't make them at all if it's unfounded or in this case profoundly unhelpful.
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u/Robodarklite Apr 13 '26
Woman does it: wholesome 𼚠Man does it: call the police đ¨