Last year I mentioned that my brother, an avid reader and Barnes and Noble shopper, was kicked out of the kid’s section of his local B&N because the store didn’t allow lone men in the kid’s section. They claimed to have had complaints about men leering at kids. My brother was sitting on the picnic table there in the kids section because every other seat in the house was occupied by people browsing books they were thinking about buying on their Kindles.
My brother’s wife, who was pregnant at the time and with my brother and her parents at the store, complained to a manager and was told directly by a female employee that this was the reason he couldn’t be in the section. When I followed up on the incident (I was in my men’s actvism phase) I was emailed by the store manager and told that the policy was in place in order to ensure that children would have space to pursue their “love of reading” or some such nonsense.
A similar incident has occurred in Scottsdale, Arizona (h/t WND):
Omar Amin, 73, said store worker Todd Voris told him that a female shopper had complained about him being in the children’s area May 4 in the store at Shea Boulevard and Loop 101 in Scottsdale.
Amin, who was alone at the time, said he was in Barnes & Noble to buy books for his two grandchildren who live in Wisconsin.
“Men alone cannot be by themselves in the children’s area,” Amin said he was told, adding that Voris said other bookstores had encountered problems with child molesters.
Voris, when contacted by The Arizona Republic on Thursday, referred the call to a district manager.
Mary Ellen Keating, a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman in New York, said in an e-mail response: “We have no comment on the store matter you called about. We believe we acted appropriately.”
Amin, an Egyptian-born American citizen, has thought about pressing charges. My brother, then in law school, never wanted to go that route.
Like this:
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B&N must not uniformly apply this policy. The one down the street from my office doesn’t ask me to leave when I’m shopping for my kids, though I have seen some shrew patrons giving me looks.
Feminine hysteria again, in order to protect against a “threat.” Never occurs to B&N to ask that all children be accompanied by a parent. Instead, management reacts to two customers that have stayed up all night watching “Not Without My Daughter.” B&N thinks the threat is lone men in the children’s aisle when really it is the feminization of America.
Aperaspera:
Right. We want to give children complete autonomy but also perfectly ensure their safety at every turn. So naturally, in order to maintain this, men’s freedoms are curtailed.
U,
Yeah, the policy differs. I went into my Barnes and Noble kids section to test their policy. I sat there on the bench for a while and nobody said anything. I also wasn’t wearing pants. They really dropped the ball.
It’s not like it matters much, considering that physical bookstores are now obsolete and unnecessary. I can’t remember the last time I entered one. I just buy books in e-book format from Amazon, and download them to my phone to read.
Omar Amin made a tactical error. What he should have done is gone public with the claim that he was kicked out of the store because he was a Muslim and then threatened to sue. The store would then have to respond that they kicked him out of the children’s section because he was a man. Discrimination on the basis of gender is illegal.
Too bad he wasn’t black – and gay – that would be like winning the trifecta.
Funny, TangoMan, most would consider that combo as -losing- the trifecta. Or, having three strikes before you get to bat.
But this is bullshit. Women have also been known to kidnap and/or molest children — either for their own desires, or to please their male partner. In fact, a woman will have a better chance at sweet-talking a kid into leaving with her, as a strange man will probably scare the kid. Like Aperaspera said, parents need to mind their own damn kids.
Brick and mortar book stores may become non-existent in ,give or take, 10 years. I own a Kindle and I haven’t set foot into a BN in over a year. I remember the last time I went there…
I went to the front desk and asked some girl where I could find the 48 Laws of Power. She gave me a condescending look and said, “By the Business section.” At this point, I realized she had on a button which said, ” Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
oh you, feminist, you so transparent.
Barnes and Noble has a kid’s section that is pretty separate. But the one where I live has restrooms that require all people to go *through* the kids section.
Borders, before it closed, had a kid’s section that was joined to the rest more seamlessly. I sat there a few times with no problems, back in my late 20s..
Omar Amin made a tactical error. What he should have done is gone public with the claim that he was kicked out of the store because he was a Muslim and then threatened to sue.
Agreed. He wasn’t savvy to this litigious society, being an elderly foreigner and all.
He technically is also an ‘African American’. But being Muslim is enough dynamite anyway.
This is really crazy. At the library I work at they have turned the womens’ and mens’ handicapped restrooms into coed ones to avoid offending transexual and transvestite males. So now, while we do our business, we have to worry about men hanging outside the restrooms while waiting for us to finish our business and even walking in on handicapped ladies who may not be able to lock the doors properly. Also the feminine napkin disposal box is exposed to men. The whole situation is ridiculous and unacceptable. Yet the trannies have all the rights and we women have to suffer. Non-perverted males however, have no rights to conduct normal business and are guilty until proven innocent or are flat out just always guilty.