Lesbians can't watch children?

Started by Elina, December 06, 2013, 02:33:46 PM

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Elina

Slate and Forbes

I'm glad that this isn't something that's just local news and being swept under the proverbial San Antonio couch. 

Elina

I personally know some of these people.  But more than that, I know this attitude.  This is a city where homosexuality is not accepted.  I know very few openly gay people, and not a single one who is openly bisexual (my field is very conservative, and almost everyone I know is in the legal field).  It's the same in my cultural community (I'm Indian).  I can even remember being asked when I was pregnant if I'd let a gay man watch my child.  Here's hoping that this sort of stuff stays in the media and makes people think.

Valthazar

It's a serious problem, but discrimination exists in many forms.  I know many parents who openly state that they would never consider a male babysitter so they "don't take any chances."  Oddly enough, many of these parents are pro-LGBT, unaware they are displaying another form of bias.

I am also of the Indian community, and those attitudes will never change, except among 1st and 2nd generation Indian-Americans.   But the culture in Indian American communities is unlikely to change considering that Indian immigration continues to remain high.

Good luck convincing many Indian-American families to even consider a Caucasian or Non-Indian babysitter, because they don't want their kids to be "corrupted" by Western  ways.  I am hopeful things change, but it is unlikely within this sub-community.



Elina

Is all discrimination bad?  And is it different if you're a person who says "no guy is watching my kid" but then acknowledge that you're sexist versus not even recognizing the bias?  What is more important, ensuring your child's safety or being open-minded?  Food for thought.

I've worked with mostly juvenile and some adult sex offenders for a long time, over a decade now.  I've seen everything from a 10-year old girl who molested a 5-year old in an elementary school bathroom to a group of boys who raped a girl in the back of a moving school bus.  But I have to admit that in my years handling these sorts of cases, I've come across exactly three female sex offenders and hundreds of male ones.  Makes me a freakishly overprotective parent.  Blech.

Valthazar

Quote from: Elina on December 06, 2013, 04:42:50 PMWhat is more important, ensuring your child's safety or being open-minded?  Food for thought.

So it is one school of thought that justifies preferring a female babysitter over a male babysitter, because statistically your child is safer with a female babysitter?  That seems like discrimination like any other.

It's no different than someone not trusting a black person because statistically they have higher rates of incarceration.

Elina

Just to make it clear, I don't care if my kids have male or female teachers/babysitters.  I just don't want them alone with people.  I liked big daycares with lots of people and video cameras in the classrooms over a small, intimate in-home daycare.  Safety in numbers, I guess.  Like I said, paranoid.

I would agree that discrimination is discrimination, and gender discrimination is pervasive and more acceptable in our culture than other kinds like racial.  And it goes both ways.  I was court-appointed attorney on an indecent exposure case last year, and a judge called me back to his chambers, told me that a lady shouldn't be made to handle such a case, and replaced me with a male attorney. 

vtboy

Though the sexual orientation of these four women evidently figured heavily into their convictions, I think the case is only partly explained by prejudice against homosexuals. There are striking similarities between this case and a veritable pandemic of child abuse prosecutions in the 1980s and 1990s, most against day care workers only some of whom were homosexual. The common threads among the cases included: hallucinatory, conflicting and facially incredible testimony of the child "victims"; blatant tampering with the children's testimony by adult "relators" who claimed some sort of expertise in eliciting the "truth" from immature and inarticulate minds; prosecutorial misconduct (often including the concealment of exculpatory evidence); judges who allowed prosecutors to turn their courtrooms into circuses; jurors who failed to exercise the slightest degree of skepticism in considering the state's evidence and abdicated their responsibility to hold prosecutors to proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt; and public hysteria. The phenomenon is an ugly one which, in North America, dates back at least to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. To my mind, it has never been fully explained.

consortium11

Quote from: vtboy on December 07, 2013, 06:40:00 AM
Though the sexual orientation of these four women evidently figured heavily into their convictions, I think the case is only partly explained by prejudice against homosexuals. There are striking similarities between this case and a veritable pandemic of child abuse prosecutions in the 1980s and 1990s, most against day care workers only some of whom were homosexual. The common threads among the cases included: hallucinatory, conflicting and facially incredible testimony of the child "victims"; blatant tampering with the children's testimony by adult "relators" who claimed some sort of expertise in eliciting the "truth" from immature and inarticulate minds; prosecutorial misconduct (often including the concealment of exculpatory evidence); judges who allowed prosecutors to turn their courtrooms into circuses; jurors who failed to exercise the slightest degree of skepticism in considering the state's evidence and abdicated their responsibility to hold prosecutors to proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt; and public hysteria. The phenomenon is an ugly one which, in North America, dates back at least to the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. To my mind, it has never been fully explained.

I've read the judgement in the leading appeal of one of the above cases in the UK. It's shocking how corrupted the process was for the original cases.

There's a real issue (although high profile cases such as the above and the one in the article have meant thankfully some of the worse abuses are being dealt with) with the investigation of child sex offences in general. I think in this case the sexuality of the women in question was something that added to the original ill, not the cause of it.

kylie

#8
Quote from: Elina
I've worked with mostly juvenile and some adult sex offenders for a long time, over a decade now.  I've seen everything from a 10-year old girl who molested a 5-year old in an elementary school bathroom to a group of boys who raped a girl in the back of a moving school bus.  But I have to admit that in my years handling these sorts of cases, I've come across exactly three female sex offenders and hundreds of male ones.  Makes me a freakishly overprotective parent.  Blech.

Quote from: ValthazarElite
So it is one school of thought that justifies preferring a female babysitter over a male babysitter, because statistically your child is safer with a female babysitter?  That seems like discrimination like any other.

It's no different than someone not trusting a black person because statistically they have higher rates of incarceration.

       Yes, it is different.  There are many, highly varied situations people could be incarcerated for (including quite a few spurious or prejudiced police, prison, and jury decisions).    Saying one doesn't trust "those people" in general based on a higher rate of imprisonment, is making more guesses about a much wider variety of cases, but in a social environment where we know a more general bias exists.  Elina was talking about cases where, I gather, she knows the details quite well.  And she is in some position to observe some of those biases in the system and society as they apply to what she is talking about.

             Although since you mention it...  I wonder how many Black convictions are small-time urban drug convictions.  Say in those for example, it's not too surprising if you don't "trust" communities the government has divested of basic funding and opportunity to begin with.  They've been given pressures that can readily lead to a desperate financial situation.  You could -- speaking quite generally -- compare it to men not being socially motivated, educated and trained to help with children so often.  (With caveat that most of those with ultimate power over "public" leadership such as any related legislation, are well, men?)  But I feel that with any closer inspection below the broad-level generalization, even that probably wouldn't come out all that comparable.