These stories were all over Reddit for years. I remember a thread asking for examples of things Reddit led them to believe that weren’t true, and the top voted comment was that Reddit made them think that going to the playground as a lone dad would cause women to view them as a predator. In reality, going to the playground as a dad in most places is a non-event. It’s common for dads to be there alone with their kids. When I go, it’s a mix of moms and dads and we all talk and interact.
Yet to a non-parent reading Reddit it seemed like going to the park as a dad was asking for trouble. The story was repeated so often.
I’m sure these events do happen some times. When it does, I wouldn’t be surprised if the accuser was reading their own Reddit equivalent social media website where stories about men being creeps at the playground get passed around as fact. To them, it’s just how they see the world working because they’ve heard it repeated so often.
Before my male friends had kids, they were tense and apprehensive around toddlers. They worried they would hurt them, etc.
Now, they act like Dads, even with kids who have nothing to do with them.
These guys weren't bad people to begin with. They just didn't radiate "dad energy" for lack of a better phrase.
That’s not what I was saying. I admitted that these things must happen somewhere.
The Reddit issue is that those isolated incidents were presented as common occurrences. It was talked about like any dad going to any park was going to attract dirty looks.
Instead, it’s a rare thing that happens when you come across someone problematic who sees problems where they don’t exist.
What I have encountered in the two countries I have lived in is the persistent expectation that the norm is for children to be with women, not with men. This makes suspicion of men with or near children more plausible.
I still find people are surprised a man is the primary parent. My daughter lives with me and people assume her mother must be dead. People have asked where mum is. Dads looking after their own kids are sometimes described a baby-sitting.
This is not as bad, but it does set things up for regarding men being around children as suspicious.
My wife, on the other hand, is the parent who will go over and play with all the children while the parents are on their phones. But she’s a woman, so it’s different.
Also, to be clear, the accusations the article is about are false and unsubstantiated according to the author. It's a "he said, she said".
He's managed to agree with a small number of signatories of the Open Letter that they acted on no evidence (in a jurisdiction where the burden of proof for libel is on the defense, so if they had decided not to agree they'd have had to prove this wrong), but not e.g. the original accusors. The fact that he wrote an epic blog post without being clear on this doesn't really make him look great, though I acknowledge he wanted to focus on a different aspect.
The court case (ending in a consent order, not a judgement) is an interesting story about "as a UK citizen, should you be signing an Open Letter if you merely believe accusers, but don't know them to be right, and can demonstrate how you know", but it has little to do with the accusations themselves.