I guess the Internet is now a place where people like to pretend they’re on Jerry Springer.
Okay. Right; yes. I know. It’s always been like that in places. (Free Republic and Democratic Underground, anyone?) But used to be you could go to innocuous fora and have the talk be about neutral things like Weight Watchers points and Disney World.
Hah. I’m so naive. Because that is no longer the way. See, I went to a WDW to post a question about something I noticed on my trip. I’ve had a lot of issues here with older boys being in the Women’s bathroom and both boys and girls peeking between cracks or under the stall at me. By “a lot of issues” I mean it’s happened maybe 10x a year (the boy thing) and 3x a year (the peeking thing.) But at Disney it was a pervasive thing for boys who appeared to be as old as 11 to be in the women’s bathrooms with their mothers. So pervasive that it was pretty much every time you went into a bathroom and twice I noticed women coming outside to double-check the signage. When there are more little boys than women in a bathroom and you have to look outside (or for the tampon dispenser on the wall) to make sure you’re in the right spot, it’s kind of a deal.
So I just asked politely if this was maybe a cultural thing. See, at WDW–especially in the fall–a lot of the visitors there are from other countries. And I was thinking maybe this was something they do in Brazil or France or wherever.
Whoops. Apparently, judging by the harsh words thrown back and forth all evening this is a huge issue with a lot of people calling other people hens and and accusing them of being too ashamed of their bodies and frigid and sexually dysfunctional and child rapists and murderers and etc. etc.
This is on a forum for Walt Disney World.
I do have some thoughts, now that I know it’s something to have thoughts on. But the most pervasive thought I have is that I feel really sorry for men. Did you know that simply having a penis makes you a skeevy criminal who is only held in check by the force of societal disapprobation? If it were not for women, you would either be molesting little boys in every public bathroom or turning your back while another empenised rogue does so. I know they’ve talked about this over at Tiny Cat Pants before in other contexts, but this is just like the sad root and fruit of the problem in one place.
I also think that being too suspicious of people makes you less kind overall. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in caution, suspicion, the whole nine yards. My family even calls me the “Belt and Suspenders girl” because I’m sometimes overly cautious myself. But when you look at other people and see only devils, it seems to free you up from whatever obligation you may have to kindness. And that is a problem no matter who you are.
I do think it could possibly be a cultural thing. The hostel I stayed at in Austria didn’t even have segregated restrooms. They weren’t single use (I think each one had like 6 stalls and 8 sinks or so), and there were two (one on each wing) but there was nothing designating one a men’s and the other a women’s and that didn’t really seem to bother anybody but the Americans I was there with.
But on the broader topic, I think we do often err too much on the side of caution these days. It’s hard to say where the line should be drawn, but when you see children literally on leashes out in public, or security systems that surely cost more than the shop that installed them could possibly lose in theft (because, really, MOST people don’t steal things)…
I have to be honest and say that I do still think it may be cultural/regional.
But I wholeheartedly agree with you that everyone (including myself) may be too cautious at times. It’s a side-effect from living in this fear-motivating society that i keep whining about. On the other forum one of the “let your 10 year old boy pee in the men’s room” folks pointed out that your child has a 1-in-1,000,000 chance of being assaulted or abducted in a public bathroom, but a 1-in-278 chance of dying as a passenger in a car at some point in his lifetime. yet people still take their children out for ice cream or driving around to look at Christmas lights and many other such unnecessary car trips.
Not necessarily related, but one funny thing I’ve discovered over the years about this politically correct men bashing/pushing girls at school society of aggression we have created (I don’t know how to better describe it) is the goofy look on mothers’ faces (mothers of boys) who otherwise support this nonsense when THEIR boys get systematically held back at school. Mothers of girls don’t have this problem.
And yes, it’s amazing how aggressive people are out there with their comments and stuff. It’s the anonymity, I guess. If they acted like that in public they might get punched out. But in the Internet nobody knows you’re a coward.