Is It A Bad Time To Be Male?

Before I go on, it should be important to say that this is not intended to be a men v woman thread, as it's not the purpose, nor is it men's only, which is why I haven't posted this in the Gentleman's Club.

I spent this weekend at my girlfriend's house, during which time, her two year old niece came visiting. This child and I get on really well, as I do with children in general. We were playing and dancing and just having a good time, as you would with any young child. Once the child had gone, we had a discussion about this and I remarked about how bad it must have looked to anybody else - this is a child that is not mine, who I have met only a few times, and yet I am holding her hand, or she is running to give me a hug, or giving me high five.

This makes me sad, because I would think nothing of these things, yet you just know somebody would think it is indecent or that it is wrong. This discussion went on to other things and how there seems to be a lot of socially acceptable discrimination against men - it turns out that in some states across America, men are allowed to work in creches/daycare, but they are absolutely forbidden to change nappies, or assist the child in, say, going to the toilet or helping them get dressed. It seems to be the case in creches over here as similar stories have been mentioned previously. There are seemingly some libraries that won't allow men to go into the children's sections, or to playgrounds, and whatnot. Sure, statistics say that men are the more common abusers, yet I have read somewhere that a high rate of abuse by women are not reported at all, for whatever reason. So we'll likely never know the true facts.

I have heard stories (either on here or in person, I am unsure) about fathers who would take their kids to the park, holding their child's hand or playing, only to hear some passerby mutter 'paedophile' under their breath. This is their child, yet they are not free from it.

Moving aside from these issues ..
I think most men have had those moments where you would be walking somewhere and there would be a woman walking in front of you, that would just happen to be walking in the exact same direction as you. As you're walking, you can tell they're glancing nervously back at you, or quickening their pace. It's one of those horrible moments, where if you slow down, it looks dodgy, if you speed up, it definitely looks dodgy, and if you stay at your normal pace, it still looks dodgy. There's been some times where I've actually changed the way I was walking somewhere, just for this reason.

There are more issues to discuss, but this post is getting long enough as it is, but it does seem like people (be they children or women and men too, I suppose) are being conditioned to think that any man is a potential sex predator, dangerous and for a man to feel scared and ashamed of how society and other people might see them as.