Each is liable to panic, which is exactly the terror of ignorance surrendered to the imagination. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have written before that individual moral panics tend to last roughly twenty years at most, and that is true; however, it is also true that the cultural conditions which favor certain types of moral panics over others can be extremely long-lived. For example, though individual periods of witch-hunting typically lasted less than 20 years, the era in which they were extremely common lasted from the late 15th century to the mid-18th. There were other (non witch-related) moral panics during that time, such as the syphilis panic of the early 16th century; there were also witch-hunts throughout history outside of that era. But for various sociological reasons (not the least of which was the Protestant Reformation and the religious climate which gave rise to it), witch hunts were the most common and characteristic moral panics of that time.
Similarly, the Victorian Era is noted for sex panics; again, there are many reasons, but the largest one is probably the ascendance of the middle class due to the Industrial Revolution, and the subsequent urbanization of the working class which placed its members within the sight of the bourgeoisie, from whom they had been relatively isolated for centuries. From about 1840 on the middle class became increasingly alarmed by the sexual freedom of the working class; they feared “moral contamination” and demanded that the masses submit to the same self-denial and rigid social structure as their “betters”. And though the weapons they developed to fight “vice” were ostensibly intended for sexual minorities such as whores and homosexuals, they were also freely employed against women who violated the increasingly-strict social controls on female sexual behavior. The sex panics waxed and waned, flowing into one another throughout the 19th century, finally culminating in the white slavery hysteria and anti-prostitution campaigns which resulted in the establishment of prohibitionist policies throughout the West, most especially in the United States. Eventually, the First World War in Europe and the Great Depression in the US put an end to the anti-sex climate; people had more important things to worry about, and the increasing freedom of women had helped the rising young generation to develop a healthier attitude about it than that of their parents and grandparents. From start to finish, the whole process took about 70 years, but signs of decay were clearly visible by the ‘90s; in other words, a clever sociologist might have been able to predict the eventual end of the sickness a generation before it finally came.
Those of my readers old enough to remember the 1970s know, as my younger readers may not, that the current climate of sex hysteria only began about 1980; the major reasons were religious backlash against the sexual revolution, cultural backlash against the increasing freedom of women, panics about rape and child sexual abuse purposefully stoked by organized feminism for political reasons, and of course the specter of AIDS (which brought all the other threads together). Though there have been other moral panics in the past 33 years, all of the major ones were about sex and most of those which weren’t directly about it were at least tangential. The most important hysteria of the early ‘80s, child sex abuse hysteria, split into two closely-related panics by the late ‘80s: the Satanic Panic and the child predator panic. The original feminist narrative of the hysteria, that huge numbers of women had been sexually abused by their evil fathers, brothers, uncles or whatever, proved too uncomfortable for Americans to embrace for very long, so it was externalized; the abusers were no longer family members but lust-crazed “pedos” or Satanists lurking in day-care centers (a venue whose implications for rapidly-growing numbers of women working outside the home should be obvious). These twin terrors went forth into other Western countries, and though the Satanic Panic eventually metamorphosed into “sex trafficking” hysteria, the “child predator” panic has only expanded as governments have recognized its utility as a tool of social control. The definition of “child” has rapidly expanded over the past twenty years to include young adults (thus pathologizing relationships which were perfectly normal throughout human history), and that of “sexual abuse” to include drawings or words about sex with or between younger people, not to mention non-sexual photographs of children of a type common in virtually every single family album in the Western world prior to the advent of the panic.
I’ve written elsewhere about increasing signs of decay in the “trafficking” hysteria, and now I’m pleased to call attention to similar signs of illness in its twin sister. Both panics have proven useful to governments: “trafficking” for border control and whore-persecution, and “child predator” as a means of abrogating privacy, expanding legal definitions of “harm” and relegating increasing numbers of non-violent citizens to pervasive control and surveillance. And because of this, governments (especially the US government) have dumped astronomical sums into promoting, encouraging and enforcing laws rooted in both of them. But though this sponsorship has extended both beyond their natural life-spans, it has also sowed the seeds of their destruction; the incredible heavy-handedness which characterizes government involvement in anything has begun to make the problems with these narratives more obvious even to those unaccustomed to critical thought. Articles criticizing the hysteria over “child porn” have begin to appear in the mainstream media, and though bloggers have been writing about the tyranny of “sex offender” registries for years, even those who are politically invested in them are beginning to take note:
…Since the Wetterling Act was passed in 1994, laws governing sex offenders have grown successively stricter and more far reaching. In many places, residency restrictions dictate that sex offenders cannot live within a certain distance from…places where children gather. Online registries broadcast the names and pictures of offenders, often without specifying the nature of their offenses. Juveniles treated as adults and labeled as sex offenders for acts involving other kids bear that stigma well into adulthood…The laws tend to fuel the impression that sex offenders are a uniform class of creepy strangers lurking in the shadows who are bound to attack children over and over again. That’s what [Patty Wetterling, mother of the namesake of the mandatory registration law] used to believe…too. Yet over the course of two decades…she found her assumptions slowly chipped away…she learned that abductions like Jacob’s are extremely rare, and that 90 percent of sexual offenses against children are committed by family members or acquaintances …[and] they…have a distinctly low recidivism rate…According to Human Rights Watch, at least 28 states require registration for consensual sex between teenagers, 13 for public urination, 32 for exposing genitals in public, and five for soliciting adult prostitutes. Restricting where sex offenders can live, in many cases forcing them into homelessness and disconnecting them from family and social support, hasn’t had any quantifiable reduction on the rate of sexual abuse…Wetterling…[has] quietly emerged as perhaps the most unlikely voice questioning sex offender laws…and…has expressed gnawing doubts over the past several years about how we deal with sex offenders…
But while politicians were only too happy to listen to Wetterling when she supported more laws, they’re not so eager to pay attention to her misgivings now. Still, a very few of them have apparently begun to recognize that the hysteria has gone too far; while most states have subscribed to the delusional argument that the registries are somehow not a form of punishment despite the fact that any child could see that they are, a Maryland court has taken a baby step in the right direction by ruling that “requiring an individual to register as a sex offender for a crime committed 12 years before the registry came into existence violates the Maryland Bill of Rights and the ex-post facto clause of the Federal Constitution”:
The prohibition against ex post facto laws is rooted in a basic sense of fairness, namely that a person should have “fair warning” of the consequences of his or her actions and that a person should be protected against unjust, oppressive, arbitrary, or vindictive legislation…Based on [these] principles…retrospective application of the sex offender registration statute…is unconstitutional.
This decision is little more than erecting an umbrella against an avalanche, but it does represent a very small sign of shifting attitudes. It is not by any means the beginning of the end; we’re still a long way from the end of the “child predator” panic and an even longer way from the end of this anti-sex era in history. But once it’s clear that “sex trafficking” hysteria is beginning to collapse and the laws governing “sex offenders” aren’t getting any worse, we’ll at least be able to say that we’re at the end of the beginning.
I would argue that a contributing factor to the backlash against the “Sexual Revolution” was a visceral awareness that the wide open ethos of the 1970’s favored certain kinds of minor predatory behaviors (Not rapists, but serial jerks). There was a drawing back from the Playboy narrative of ‘if a woman doesn’t have sex as casually as an adolescent boy, she needs to see a shrink’, and some of the more objectionable Disco Dicks started to be figures of fun.
I say this because my Lady was a victim of childhood sexual abuse by a family member who presented as Gay, and on consideration I came to the conclusion that he was in fact a Narcissus; capable of loving nobody but himself. I believe that he presented as Gay because the Gay community would tolerate his self-absorption where the wider society had grown tired of him and his ilk during the 1970s (I only know him from the 1980’s on, until his Karmic death from AIDS).
I do not, BTW, blame the Gay community for ‘Alexi’ (not his birth name). I think that the Gay community puts up with serial jerks for the same reason that the SF fan community tolerates many unpleasant kinds of maladjustment; it cuts too close to the bone for them to say “my non-standardness is OK, but YOU are a swine”.
I bring this all up not to discredit your observations, which I think are broadly valid, but because I think there is a broader context. The Sexual Revolution invalidated a lot of social norms and that was in many ways a good thing. It also lead to excesses. The Playboy narrative is really unpleasant to read (at least for me, and I’m a heterosexual male), and STDs hadn’t had it so good in decades.
I’m a heartless guy – really, they could bring back the punishment of crucifixion and I’m on board with that.
So it’s an extremely bad day for me when I start to pity those convicted of sex offenses. What the government is doing is going against everything Mrs. House taught me about the constitution in the forth grade. It’s shocking how many Americans are willing to just ignore the constitution “on the fly” in order to provide a figleaf of protection for children.
Although the original feminist attack against child sexual abuse (CSA) had its heart in the right place, the movement was soon co-opted to promote feminism in general – diverting government funds to support the broad feminist agenda that had nothing to do with children,* and eventually caused great harm to little girls in particular by excusing and justifying the traditional mental castration of daughters.**
I’m dreaming of a day when the mass hysteria over CSA will be widely considered the shameful counter-revolution that is actually is, and hopefully a reason why the tradition mental castration of children will be finally challenged by scientific research that may show sexual inhibition in early childhood as the major cause of female sexual dysfunction.
* See “The Politics of Child Sexual Abuse: Emotion, Social Movements, and the State,” by Nancy Whittier.
** Search: Clitoral Erectile Dysfunction.
It’s not about pity, it’s about making punishment proportional to crime and allowing for reinsertion after (otherwise, you might as well execute the condemned*). The registries are a disproportionate punishment for the “crimes” they’re inflicted for (like public urination or seeing an adult prostitute, for instance) and forbid reinsertion because of overblown restrictions.
* I am against the death penalty (among other reasons, it doesn’t allow for mistakes), but a branded individual is even less productive a citizen than a dead one
Hey I respect those that hold a view counter to the death penalty. I have no problems with y’all and a democratic society has the right to determine what kind of punishment is merited and I fully realize my views on the issue are harsh – maybe too harsh.
I was simply telling you my beliefs and I don’t expect them to ever be implemented in the U.S.
However, when I take over Sweden and install myself as “King Krulac” – then when a guy rapes an eight year old girl he gets crucifixion! The reign of Krulac won’t be all that harsh though – for instance I’ll install tax incentives for sex workers along with full protection of the law!
I wasn’t criticizing your views (and when I do, I hope I’ll be constructive), just stating my own as an aside. Just saying, exclusion for life is probably more cruel and certainly a bigger loss to society than killing them (because those people will have to turn to crime, which will drain resources). I’m also against torture, but as long as you crucify anyone who rapes an eight-year old (no leniency for women or boy-rapers, man), I guess I can live with it (even if it was implemented in the US, it still wouldn’t concern me directly – in my country, which is closer to Sweden than the US, the death penalty was abolished not long before I was born).
I also respect every regular poster here (beginning with our hostess, of course), regardless of whether I agree with them (sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, how else could it be). Disagreement is no reason for disrespecting people.
Interesting point of view, but please explain how it would be possible for an adult male to “rape” an eight-year-old girl. He would have to be awfully tiny.
Check a good textbook on pediatric gynecology, and you’ll see that the immature vagina much too small to admit a mature penis. So-called “child rape” is rhetorical nonsense.
John Wayne Gacy deserves some of the blame for setting off the panic. Among educated people, attitudes against gays hardened in 78. Keeping gays away from children was science back in the early 80s, even before the industrial scale recovered memory witch hunts.
Don’t think that court case is grounds for much optimism, since it’s a matter of a legal technicality, and it won’t matter very long anyway. I take the pessimistic view that the process of legal escalation is non-reversible and self-feeding, and predict that women’s pressure groups will eventually get life sentences instituted for sex violations committed by males.
I suspect that although legal challenges will be part of the backlash, the real push back will come when those in the privileged classes start getting hammered with the ‘sex offender’ label. Suddenly the essential unfairness of holding someone accountable for life for a single incident that probably wasn’t all that serious will become major news.
The real problem, as I see it, is that sex crimes are thought to be some how unilaterally worse than other crimes (assault, abuse, theft, malicious destruction). Which is ludicrous. Honestly, who in their right mind would rather be shot than raped?
This is, of course, out side of the fact that sex offender registries literally do not work. At all.
Well personally I’ll take someone stealing my wallet over getting violently raped.
I understand your point though.
I guess I’d put rape at the same level as beating up someone. Repetition (on the same person) would put it at the level of abuse. Worse than crimes against property, but less than murder.
Two articles of interest on the topic of sex crime:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/10/01/how-young-is-too-young.html
http://williamapercy.com/wiki/index.php?title=A_Critical_Analysis_of_Subjectivist-Based_Theorising_and_Research_on_Male_Intergenerational_Sexualities
One of the big problems with the entire “sex offender” tag is that it can be applied against a john having sex a Professional Sex Provider. If you cast the net to wide, you will capture the innocent together with the guilty.
Playboy is a weird example: in many ways it was trying to empower both men and women with more openess about sex and sexuality after the surprising information in the Kinsey Reports.
You have a few worst case situations (John Wayne Gacy) who scare the bejeesus out of everyone, and are exploited by those who do not want us to think in order to saddle us with the yoke of oppression. Always remember: A few anecdotes does not make a generalization about those facts true; more often than not, the opposite case is the truth.
Finally, Maggie, I ran across an article that might interest you in the Jewish Forward, “Sex Trafficking Then and Now.” Here’s the URL: http://forward.com/articles/175115/sex-trade-then-and-now/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=The%20Forward%20Today%20%28Monday-Friday%29&utm_campaign=Daily_Newsletter_Mon_Thurs%202013-04-22
This particular umbrella would seem to be essentially porous. SCOTUS, in a 5 to 4 decision, ruled that the Alaska Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) was not punitive and, thus, its retroactive application did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause. Smith v. Doe, 123 S. Ct. 1140 (2003).
Because the issue has been dealt with already, SCOTUS doesn’t have to look at it again.
The following may be enlightening:
http://apps.americanbar.org/disability_cvcs/Publications/Law_Digest/2_3/2_3_FN16_Smith.pdf
Were this to follow the appeals process, I would think (although IANaL) it’s likely to be reversed without ever reaching SCOTUS based on the above. Montana has similar laws; I know for a fact the state of Montana put people on the lists well after the court proceedings, without the order or concurrence of any judge, and in at least one case, without an actual conviction (adjudication withheld, all legal obligations fulfilled years prior.)
Ben: Federal appeals courts can override state courts on issues of federal law or the federal constitution. They cannot override a state supreme court on the interpretation of the *state* laws or constitution. So eventually the federal constitution part of this decision will be overruled with the same tortuous rationalizations the federal SC has used all along, but ex-post-facto registration laws will still be overturned within Maryland.
I agree that we are not there yet, or even well on the way. But we are on a road known to contain exits leading to the road to the end of this. It can’t be guaranteed that we will take any of these exits, and even if we do there is the risk that we’ll take another exit OFF the road that ends this. But we are now able to get on that road, if we want to.
Interestingly, virtually everyone participating in this thread on the Straight Dope, which trends heavily liberal/progressive but with some moderates, conservatives and libertarians, advocates getting rid of sex offender registries altogether .Granted, this is a generally much more informed bunch than you see in most discussions online, but still, it’s a hopeful sign;
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=722789
You should also mention the so called “Magdalene asylum”, where the “rescued” women were often forced into actual slavery.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum
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