I have twice been labelled a paedophile.
The first time was in May 2009 while out walking in Warwickshire. We were just starting our walk in Alcester and my wife wanted to use the toilet before setting off. The public toilets were in a park next to a children’s playground. I felt uncomfortable to stand there, so I waited outside the park on the pavement.
I heard a voice from behind me shout “Paedophile!”. There was no one else around; it was clearly directed at me. When I turned to see who had called out, I saw a man walking away from me on the other side of the road. He was looking back at me but turned away the moment I looked round.
The irony was that I was standing outside the park to look less like a paedophile.
The second person to call me a paedophile was someone I knew, which made it more disturbing.
In the spring of 2012 I went out orienteering and had a nasty fall. While running along a dirt path I spotted the next checkpoint was hidden in a ditch behind me. I took my eyes off the path for a brief moment: my foot landed on a brick part-buried in the ground, slid across the smooth surface and then lodged in the dirt. My foot stopped dead but the rest of my body carried on.
As I was flung forward my foot remained wedged and the full weight of my body snapped my ankle. I felt it snap and I heard it snap. I remember letting out a yelp in mid-air. Not due to pain, more in shock. I couldn’t believe my ankle had gone - and as easy as that!
When I hit the ground I looked up and saw another runner, a boy aged about 12. He looked at me, I looked at him and he ran off. We were around 200 metres from the finish so I assumed he went to get help. There was no way he could lift or support me, so that assumption made perfect sense.
I lay on the ground and waited. After 20 minutes no one had come to help.
I told this story to a work colleague a few days later and it was at this point she interrupted me.
“That was inappropriate.” she said, “You shouldn’t have called out for help to a child. You could have been a rapist or a paedophile.”
I was taken aback. Firstly, I hadn’t called for help. I had let out a yelp; an involuntary act from the shock. Secondly, and more importantly, I wasn’t a rapist or paedophile.
“But the boy didn’t know that.” she replied, “You’re asking the child to make a decision. It’s a position you shouldn’t have put him in.”
“Would you have called for help?” I asked.
“Of course,” she answered, “but I’m a woman so I’m not a threat.”
She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that I just accepted it.
At the time there were stories in the news of calls for women-only waiting rooms and train carriages, to allow women to feel safe on public transport. It was perceived that men should stand aside to let women feel safe. For the same reasons, it seemed logical that a man should not call for help from a woman or child.
Even so, I remember returning to my desk and pondering the situation. I had a non-life threatening injury and therefore could remain quiet until a man walked past. But what if I had a life threatening injury, what if I was bleeding uncontrollably, is it acceptable for me to call for help in that situation or should I quietly bleed to death, lest I make a woman feel unsafe.
I actually held this view, that men should be treated as rapists, until 2016.
I was watching a TV programme about the Obama administration - “Inside Obama's White House”, an excellent and thoroughly revealing documentary that I highly recommend. One piece in that documentary focuses on an incident just before Obama came to power.
A chaplain and friend of Obama had made a racist comment about white people. Obama had condemned the comment but people called for Obama to condemn and disown his friend. Obama’s response was thoughtful and measured.
Obama recalled how his white grandmother had once confided in him that, even though she knew it was racist, she couldn’t help but feel fear when she saw a black man. It was an instinct deep inside her, born out of conditioning when she was young. Obama argued that people should not be disowned, shunned or exiled for being racist. Like his grandmother, they should be helped and urged to overcome their prejudices.
It was a great way of explaining why we need to be less aggressive towards prejudiced people. You can’t tackle the problem of ignorance with more ignorance.
The story made me rethink what I regard as racism and I made a link back to the theory of men being treated as rapists.
“Not every black man is a mugger, but any black man could be a mugger,” is clearly a racist viewpoint.
“Not every man is a rapist, but any man could be a rapist,” is clearly a sexist viewpoint.