LogFAQs > #975229890

Jen0125 posted...

I have no choice but to be prejudicial because you never know what man is a predator.

See, how valid this is depends on the context in which you're making the assumption and what you do with it. Avoiding situations where you'll be alone with strange men? Sure. Pre-emptively stabbing every man you see in the dick? Not so much (to choose an extreme we can hopefully agree on). There's a balance to be struck between ensuring that you protect yourself and have a safe environment, and pre-emptively hurting people regardless of how likely it is that they'll do anything to interfere with that.

Refusing to ever hire a man as a sitter 100% leans too far in the latter direction. You do in fact have other choices than to be prejudicial in that case: background checks, interviews, references, the subjective experience of how he interacts with you and your (hypothetical) kids, teaching your kids to recognize abusive behaviour so you can nip it in the bud if it does happen and ensure no other kids ever get victimized... All of these things not only mitigate the risk of hiring a sexually abusive man without categorically excluding large numbers of innocent men, they're things you should already be doing to mitigate the (probably lesser, but still non-negligible) risk of hiring a sexually abusive person of any other gender. Not only do you not need to make assumptions based on gender, you're taking a considerable risk if you assume you're safe just because of the applicant's gender, which really just takes assumptions out of the equation entirely.

Again, if your personal traumatic experiences mean you aren't comfortable with the idea, that's fine. I don't have the experience to be able to empathize with that, but I understand that that's not something you can just get over because somebody says you should. No amount of intellectual reasoning is going to make you feel less uncomfortable, and that discomfort isn't invalid just because you can't logically defend it. But there's a world of difference between saying "Due to my personal trauma, I'm not comfortable leaving a man alone with my kids" and "men are more likely to be predators and therefore shouldn't be hired as babysitters." The former is what you need to do to feel safe and comfortable. The latter contributes to a culture of more rigid gender norms that have far-reaching consequences (including reinforcing rape culture by normalizing the idea that being sexually predatory is just boys being boys).