American hysteria

[novapsyche]

The problem of the sex offender in American culture is one that we need to grapple with sooner than later. I'm not talking about this from a feminist perspective--I'll do that on a different day and time. What I'm talking about is the unfairness that attends the charge of sexual offender.

Today, the news stories of former sex offenders abducting and killing small children has middle-class America up in arms. They want to know what they can do about these people. They want to ban them from their neighborhoods. They want them zoned out of existence.

The problem is that the media has helped to confuse sexual offenders of children with people who are date rapists and other types. There is a crucial difference: people who see children as sexual beings are fundamentally at odds with those who are attracted to adults. There is no good in mixing the two populations and driving them both out of cities and towns. Everyone needs a place to live. Pedophiles can't be rehabilitated (at least, so far as we can tell). There is nothing to be gained by lumping those people in with someone who may or may not have gone too far with someone their own age. The dangers are completely different.

Someone who is 18 and has been charged with statutory rape by having sex with someone who is two years younger but consenting will have the label of sex offender for the rest of his or her life. Not the same situation as a 35-year-old manipulating a child into trusting him or her enough to get past the child's clothes.

So now Florida has decided to ban sex offenders from storm shelters. Yes, they all deserve to be swept away with the hurricane tides. Every single one of them, regardless of the context of their crimes. The world is black and white; let them drown and let God sort it out.

Comments

[aiela.livejournal.com]

If it's a violation of their parole to be near children, what's the alternative?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I'm not exactly sure. But I agree with what the legal director from the FL ACLU said in the article.

[aiela.livejournal.com]

I will agree that perhaps -prisons- aren't the best alternative, I'm just not sure what is.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I guess they pick prisons because that's the one place where children aren't going to be.

Still, perhaps they could designate one storm shelter in every town as the non-child shelter. I think that could solve things without arbitrarily discriminating against those who have already paid their debt to society.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

It's even worse.

Many people are labelled as "paedophiles" when they are not. Men who have illegal, unethical sex with clearly pubescent fifteen year olds are not paedophiles in any rational sense.

Further, many sexual abusers of children are not true paedophiles, and most true paedophiles are not sexual abusers of children. (Where "paedophile"="someone preferentially sexually attracted to prepubescent children").

Many sexual abusers of children are what can be called "opportunistic" predators of children- they really would abuse anyone available, and children just happen to be the low hanging fruit, so to speak. They are not paedophiles.

Most paedophiles- people who are sexually attracted to prepubescent children- do have a conscience, and as such they do not usually abuse children. The minority of paedophiles who do become abusers generally do so due to the coexistence of another issue with their paedophilia- issues such as senility, drug abuse, intellectual subnormality, or (arguably worst of all) that fraction of paedophiles who are psychopaths- who have antisocial personality disorder.


The ironic thing is that paedophilia is increasingly demonised even as the worst aspects of paedophilia are increasingly accepted into the cultural mainstream; the subtle, ever-increasing sexualisation of children, and the failure to shape and contextualise their experiences in a way that optimises their development.


Paedophiles in general, and even monstrously active child abusers, are scapegoats for our collective guilt at the way in which we continue to fail our children in this modern age.

We blame the wolves when it is we who have neglected our flock.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

And this doesn't even touch on the point that in some states, you can be put on a "sex offenders" list for peeing in public or being a peeping tom. I'm not saying it's OK to be a peeping tom, but that level of sex crime is quite different than having sex with pre-adolescents.

[kali-ma.livejournal.com]

I have a great solution - drop the sex offender registry program entirely, but ONLY after changing the law so that child molestors and those who commit aggravated rape NEVER are let out of prison, no matter how well behaved they are in prison, and so that other sex offenses are treated much more harshly than they are now. If they don't have enough room they can get rid of these ridiculous mandatory minimum laws for non violent drug offenders. Who would you rather have locked up - a pot head or someone who rapes little girls at knife point? I mean, really?