Readers Digest??

I used to laugh quietly when I heard someone say, "What is this world coming to ...?" because I saw idea and ideals gaining ground that could make a better world for everyone. Now, even Readers' Digest is teaching children not to ask a man for help?

"I helped a lost little girl by taking her to the store's service counter, and having them page her mother. I saw this as a chance to teach my 12-year old daughter, Kylie, a safety lesson.
"That girl did the right thing," I said. "Do you know why? Because she asked a woman for help, NOT A MAN."
Kylie looked at me mystified. "Why on earth would I ask a man for help if I was already lost?"
Submitted by STEPHANIE TAIT, Olathe, Colo. to Readers Digest."

-- from “Life in these United States”,
June 2006 issue on p. 197 at the bottom.

And what will this woman's daugher do if there are no women around when she needs help? Cower in a corner?
What could possibly have brought Stephanie Tait to the point that she would teach her daughter something like that?
And what sort of woman will her daughter grow up to be?
Can you imagine a woman who has been taught a fear of men since childhood? Not because of some traumatic event which skews her emotional balance, ... but by the force of her mother's words, forever echoing in the archetypal memory of her being.
How will this fear express itself in aggression? Fear is the driving force of aggression.
Will she, in turn, teach her daughters to fear men without reason?

Does Stephanie Tait realize that she is teaching her daughter discrimination and prejudice? -- very much the same as southern women in the US were once told to fear all blacks...

"Fear and prejudice are not something a child is born with. A child fears nothing. It has to be taught." -- Margaret Mead, anthropologist, about the Civil Rights Movement in the US