DAD PHOTOGRAPHING OWN CHILDREN CHASED FROM AMUSEMENT PARK.

It’s all fun and games until someone calls Daddy a pervert.

It’s a beautiful day and Dad has taken the kids out to play on an inflatable slide; they’re all laughing and having a great time, and he snaps some pictures of the fun… until he’s called a pervert and told to stop.
I think that sounds like a plot for a ridiculous, contrived fiction story, but it’s what actually happened to the U.K.’s Gary Crutchley when he was on an outing with his two sons and other parents protested his picture-taking:
‘I repeated that the only people being photographed were my own children. She said I could be taking pictures of just any child to put on the internet and called me a pervert. We immediately left the show.’

Mrs Crutchley, 37, a teaching support assistant and qualified nursery nurse, said: ‘I was shocked by the reaction of those women.
‘It is very sad when every man with a camera enjoying a Sunday afternoon out in the park with his children is automatically assumed to be a pervert.’

I think the reason I was so struck by this story is that my husband is a photographer. I have countless gorgeous pictures of my kids from various activities. No one has ever accused him of being a pedophile because of it, and never had it occurred to me that anyone might.
Maybe they haven’t because I’m there, too? But a — *gasp* — man without an attendant spouse, taking pictures, must be a pervert?
That’s a very sad commentary on society, right there.
read on here>>

Dr. Helen says “That’s the way society is these days”:

So, guys, remember, if you’re out and about on a Sunday afternoon and have a camera in hand, especially in the UK, you may just be labled a pervert. I hate to think what would happen if a lone man actually walked around taking pictures without his own children present. Jail time may be next, if decent people don’t stand up against this sort of absurdity.

At Inside Looking Out the author — a mother of five — says this isn’t the first paranoid societal overreaction in recent memory:

I recall but as yet cannot locate another news story from the past that totally freaked me out. The gist of it was that a father was changing his son’s diaper, and while he did this, he blew a raspberry on the child’s belly. This was caught on camera by the wife. When the film was processed at a local shop, the shop keeper called the authorities because this was clearly unnatural, and these parents were bombarded by child services who removed from their children and I think they did time for 18 months - because of what amounts to a rush-to-judgment and hysteria.

Inside Motherhood reacts as a fellow parent and photographer:

I don’t take pictures of them playing with other kids unless I know them fairly well, but if I was accused of being a pervert or told I was doing something wrong for taking pictures of my own children playing, I’d be very upset, very offended, and wouldn’t really know what to do. I’d probably comply just because I wouldn’t want anyone to break my camera (or get physical with me directly) but I’d be very angry about it.

Over at Feminocracy, the finger-pointing is swift and precise:

So is it a self fulfilling prophecy? We expect men to be incompetent caregivers and react harshly when they aren’t acting in that role? Again, I’m afraid I’ll have to blame the patriarchy. Parenting isn’t women’s work, and I think some people still haven’t grasped that. The mothers at the slide truly believed that a man could not be present in a parental capacity and that he must be there in the role of lustful predator. It just reaffirms all of the stale stereotypes about men, women, love, and lust. Men are capable of feeling more than lust and of being perfectly capable parents.

I told you the patriarchy hurts women AND men.

In this case, it hurts children, too. Can you imagine being out at the park with Dad when people start accusing him of being a pervert? That’s a whole conversation most parents don’t anticipate having to have with their kids, right there.

by Mir Kamin

This entry was posted on donderdag, juli 17th, 2008 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Misdaad, Gezondheid, Life, Politiek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.