A general response to comments on an earlier entry

[pegkerr]

This entry, I fear, is going to be rather impolite. Sorry. You have been warned.

I have attempted to draft replies to several comments left on the post I made earlier today about the false alarm of a child abduction in my neighborhood. Uncharacteristically, I realized that I just couldn't because I was getting much too angry. I thought about this most of the evening, wondering at my own reaction. The comments I was reacting to so strongly were made by people I really respect, including parents with more years of experience than me.

Look. As I told cakmpls I am perfectly well aware that stranger abduction is rare. But I am not willing to accept the judgment that my neighbors and I were "needlessly" upset, as if we don't have the intelligence and judgment to assess and accurately evaluate real-life risks. I truly believe that I was reasonably and responsibly upset. What some of you don't seem to be quite grasping is that this was personal for me. I do not make it a habit to watch television news just to scare myself with stories about awful things happening to children. In fact, I do not watch television news at all. I learned about this because a neighbor called me personally to tell me about something that was happening in my own neighborhood, at a park very close to my home that my girls go to all the time. Would I have preferred that she not call me, as if it was something I didn't need to know? Hell no. I was not merely reacting to a media-created amorphous threat Somewhere Out There. I was reacting to a call from a neighbor. This was MY park. This kid was the exact age of MY child. This kid went to MY neighborhood school. This kid was actually acquainted with MY neighbor. And from the information I was given (which turned out to be an error), an Amber Alert had been issued, meaning that an abduction was believed to have occurred.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want no more well-meaning comments directed at me explaining (as if I'm dense, as if I didn't know) that the risk of stranger abduction and harm is so low that I needn't worry about it. What I finally realized tonight was that the reason that these comments (which I understand were well-intended and meant to be reassuring) upset me so much is because both Rob and I have had childhood friends who were raped and murdered. By strangers, goddammit. The one I knew was the little sister of one of my best friends growing up. She was grown up when it happened to her--someone raped her and threw her over a cliff to die hundreds of feet below. But for Rob, it was a little girl, the first little girl he ever had a crush on. She was, I don't remember, ten or twelve or so when it happened. Her body was dumped along a lonely stretch of road like garbage. Neither murderer was ever caught.

From Rob's and my own personal experience, this threat is not just theoretical, not just a concern of scaredy-cat cowards or those easily cowed and manipulated by the media. To both of us, remembering Andrea and Ginny, it is searingly real. So forgive me if I reject well-meaning pats on the head. Forgive me if I seem rather defensive and emotional about this.

I think I have a right to be.

I'm making this a general post, because I don't want to be rude to anyone personally.

Comments

[jimhines.livejournal.com]

"There are situations ... where managing our fears about our children is the best thing, even the only thing, to do. That is, where we must largely ignore them (at least as to letting them control our actions) after careful consideration."

Disclaimer: I did a lot of work with rape issues and survivors, and that colors my reaction to your statement.

I agree we can't let fear paralyze us or dictate our actions. However, at least in the research on sexual assault, the majority of survivors talk about feeling afraid or uncomfortable or simply wrong about a situation, but choosing to ignore those feelings. They had learned that it's not okay to be afraid, and so they ignored a valid warning to get away from a dangerous situation.

I don't think you're saying we should flat-out suppress feelings of fear and ignore the risks that are out there. But personally, I'd rather teach people to listen to that fear. Don't let it control you, but do respect it.

Heck, I feel a twinge of fear every time my little girl leaves the house to play with her friends. (We moved here about 7 months ago, and she's young enough that this is the first time she's really left the house to go play.) I don't demand she stay cooped up in our house under constant supervision, but I don't think ignoring the fear is the right solution. I mean, I know of one registered sex offender living about three houses down, and I also know there's a good chance there are other potential predators, if not on our street, then within a block or so.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I think there's a big, and important, difference between (1) "feeling afraid or uncomfortable or simply wrong about a situation" when it's a specific, particular situation that one is in (what I think you're talking about) and (2) feeling afraid or uncomfortable or wrong in some general, everyday situation because someone, somewhere, sometime, came to grief in such a situation. The former is using all our senses, even ones we aren't aware of, to give us useful information; the latter is letting groundless emotions rule our lives.

Ignoring fear in the specific immediate situation is often a bad idea (although people in dangerous occupations have to learn to do it, and people who are taking a risk to help others may consciously or instictively do it). Managing fear when there's nothing we can do about the feared thing or when anything we could do has a greater risk of a negative outcome is usually a good thing. (Have you seen the movie The Village? I find it very on-point to this discussion, but don't want to be a spoiler. I have an entry in my own LJ in which I discuss this behind a cut.)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

One difference is that sexual assault is common. It's not rare like abduction.

B

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'll happily distinguish general fears from specific fears. I agree with you that if you have a feeling about a particular situation, person, or whatever, a feeling that it/they are not quite right, that you're not comfortable with it/them, that it's smart to take note of that fear.