My husband is a wonderful father. I never had a father myself, and all my friend’s dads were such cretins that it never occurred to me a dad might be a good thing to have until I saw how great he is with our kids. He’s patient, playful, and obviously loves nothing better than bringing joy to their little faces.

He also, frequently, tells me how awkward he feels - how distrusted, disapproved of even - when he interacts with other children in public places. Even when he takes our kids to the playground, so it’s blatantly obvious he has a legitimate reason to be there and to be involved with the kids, he says he’s hesitant to help another child use the swings or climb to the slide. Most especially, he avoids touching them.

Now think about that. In our cultural obsession with pedophilia we have created a climate where a man who is already a father struggles to be seen as “safe” for children. Imagine how much worse it is for a single man. Men are seen as having no legitimate reason for wanting to be with children, to play with them, to (God forbid!) cuddle them.

This is wrong in so many ways. Kids need cuddling. Kids - boys especially - need to interact with men as well as women. Denying men the chance to interact affectionately with children passes the message that men aren’t caring, that daddies should play little or no part in kid’s lives, that all men are a hair’s breadth away from being sexual predators. Is this true? Is this what we want? Is this the message we want our little boys to grow up accepting?

The battle against porn - phrased as it is, in America, as a battle to protect children - only exacerbates this. Don’t believe me about how the US equates porn with pedophilia? Check out this link for a layperson’s estimation of the new USC 2257 regulations, or this one for a more comprehensive legal evaluation. These regulations were sold to the public as important measures to prevent the “exploitation of children by pornographers” - the very fact that such a tactic could work shows that pornography=pedophilia is a notion already firmly implanted in the public psyche! And naturally, as the primary consumers of porn, men bear the flak of being suspected of closet pedophilia.

You know what I think we have here? An underhanded, despicable attempt to reintroduce the idea that women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen (what the Christian right would no doubt call family values). Women’s work can only include things like CEO of a Fortune 500 company or President of the United States if Men’s work includes caring for children, and as long as we continue to think of male sexuality (which includes their liking for porn) as something dangerous this situation will persist.