I read a newspaper article(1) about how people who view, access, or store child pornography are punished. Sentences can get up to 20 years in prison. Based on the merits of the case, each federal sentence has a recommended minimum, with the absolute minimum being 5 years. The prosecution of these crimes is based on the presumption that a 'voyeur' of this ilk will one day take the initiative to abuse children, possibly recording their actions for distribution.
Some see the punishments as excessive. "The fact that a person was stimulated by digital depictions of child pornography does not mean that he has or will in the future seek to assault a child," declared one judge. "You shouldn't punish someone for something they haven't done," said a public defender.
Yet is seems that the standard – the potential to harm – is the wrong one to use. Children are abused solely for the benefit of child pornography consumers. Harm has already been done.
Methamphetamine is illegal in the US. Not only is it illegal to produce and transport, it is illegal to consume. Thus one who is caught in possession of methamphetamine is sentenced based on their possession. Not on the future harm they may do to others, but on the fact that they posses an illegal substance.
Shouldn't the possession of child pornography work the same way?
1. Efrati A. Making Punishments Fit the Most Offensive Crimes. The Wall Street Journal. October 23, 2008:A14.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
The Call And a Response
I saw the movie Call + Response. Thank you, Shannon for turning me on to it. Please go to www.callandresponse.com to find out about show times in your area.
It is about modern day slavery – the fact of its existence, the vastness of it. It's not simply little girls getting kidnapped from their villages to be sold to brothels. There are child soldiers, there are men and women-whole villages-who are enslaved for labor purposes. And the cartels which run the drugs and the guns, they run the people trafficking too. For all we know, the clothes we buy are made via slave labor; an essential metal for our cell phone, mined by slave child labor.
The movie is a sort of benefit concert, with commentary to inform and encourage. It is a calling to attention and action, a provider of ways to respond.
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What kind of person desires to have sex with a 3-year old? Or a 7-year old? I'm not talking about cultures I don't understand or know enough about, I'm not talking about the brothels of India or Southeast Asia, or even Europe. I'm talking about the Americans who do this, going to a massage parlor, seeing that the child can't be more than 12, looking like the gymnasts of old. Traveling abroad specifically for the opportunity to 'get a little girl' (or a little boy), to have a child perform fellatio on them. What kind of person is stimulated by watching 5-year old orphans spread their legs on camera?
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High-heels for infants who aren't even close to walking are available for purchase. Could someone explain to me how this is not another way to promote a child as a sexual object? Because one there is a widely acknowledged sexual component to the wearing of heels, particularly high heels. Yes, there are power heels for the office. But that underlying power our sexuality.
Men having sex with teenage girls is so common place, so fabled, so aspired to. Why? That school girl craze of a several years ago, with the short prep school plaid skirt and the knee high socks. Why did fully mature women have to mimic teenage girls in order to be seen as attractive? And why is a woman's attractiveness solely sexual? (Or seemingly portrayed as such in common media?)
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There are women who speak and fight and speak and fight for such causes. There are programs to teach and reinforce positive self-image in girls, so that they don't succumb to the prevalent American myth? that the only value she has is by being both sexually well versed and suitably chaste, that her womanhood is described by how good she 'does it' and how she's not a slut. (Did no one bother to mention that how good one is most likely depends on practice, but the more one practices, the more looked down upon one becomes?)
What I would like to see are more male voices talking to men and boys. I hear things here and there, but teaching girls to keep their legs shut means nothing if the boys are dropping their pants and pushing thier thighs back open. (And not necessarily by brute force, gentle persuasion and muddled emotions can be a deathknell.)
I'm not sure that boys would listen to women. I am confident that they would not listen to me. My psychodrama seems so peculiar to my gender. And I do not understand.
I do not understand why promiscuity seems to be so prized by the men of our modern society. (Before one launches into an evolutionary argument about having the most offspring a la a lion, do not forget that the more offspring one has, the more mouths must be fed. I do not have the impression, from the little I've read, that ancient man, in his multi-partner ways, neglected his offspring. One would think that the need to feed so many mouths would be a dis-incentive for planting so much seed.) I am not trying to advocate monogamy. I am trying to understand what would drive a man to visit brothels in the first place. Hit it and quit it leaves many a woman feeling soulless; does it not do the same for men?
It is about modern day slavery – the fact of its existence, the vastness of it. It's not simply little girls getting kidnapped from their villages to be sold to brothels. There are child soldiers, there are men and women-whole villages-who are enslaved for labor purposes. And the cartels which run the drugs and the guns, they run the people trafficking too. For all we know, the clothes we buy are made via slave labor; an essential metal for our cell phone, mined by slave child labor.
The movie is a sort of benefit concert, with commentary to inform and encourage. It is a calling to attention and action, a provider of ways to respond.
***********************************************
What kind of person desires to have sex with a 3-year old? Or a 7-year old? I'm not talking about cultures I don't understand or know enough about, I'm not talking about the brothels of India or Southeast Asia, or even Europe. I'm talking about the Americans who do this, going to a massage parlor, seeing that the child can't be more than 12, looking like the gymnasts of old. Traveling abroad specifically for the opportunity to 'get a little girl' (or a little boy), to have a child perform fellatio on them. What kind of person is stimulated by watching 5-year old orphans spread their legs on camera?
***********************************************
High-heels for infants who aren't even close to walking are available for purchase. Could someone explain to me how this is not another way to promote a child as a sexual object? Because one there is a widely acknowledged sexual component to the wearing of heels, particularly high heels. Yes, there are power heels for the office. But that underlying power our sexuality.
Men having sex with teenage girls is so common place, so fabled, so aspired to. Why? That school girl craze of a several years ago, with the short prep school plaid skirt and the knee high socks. Why did fully mature women have to mimic teenage girls in order to be seen as attractive? And why is a woman's attractiveness solely sexual? (Or seemingly portrayed as such in common media?)
***********************************************
There are women who speak and fight and speak and fight for such causes. There are programs to teach and reinforce positive self-image in girls, so that they don't succumb to the prevalent American myth? that the only value she has is by being both sexually well versed and suitably chaste, that her womanhood is described by how good she 'does it' and how she's not a slut. (Did no one bother to mention that how good one is most likely depends on practice, but the more one practices, the more looked down upon one becomes?)
What I would like to see are more male voices talking to men and boys. I hear things here and there, but teaching girls to keep their legs shut means nothing if the boys are dropping their pants and pushing thier thighs back open. (And not necessarily by brute force, gentle persuasion and muddled emotions can be a deathknell.)
I'm not sure that boys would listen to women. I am confident that they would not listen to me. My psychodrama seems so peculiar to my gender. And I do not understand.
I do not understand why promiscuity seems to be so prized by the men of our modern society. (Before one launches into an evolutionary argument about having the most offspring a la a lion, do not forget that the more offspring one has, the more mouths must be fed. I do not have the impression, from the little I've read, that ancient man, in his multi-partner ways, neglected his offspring. One would think that the need to feed so many mouths would be a dis-incentive for planting so much seed.) I am not trying to advocate monogamy. I am trying to understand what would drive a man to visit brothels in the first place. Hit it and quit it leaves many a woman feeling soulless; does it not do the same for men?
Sunday, October 12, 2008
That Darn Squirrel!
According to the campus newspaper (Las Positas College Express, Lina Deeb, staff writer), a squirrel electrocuted itself, compromising two out of the three main power lines as it died.
This, in, turn, tripped the fuses to the a/c fan in the gym. And the folks in the theatre building (which is nowhere near the gym) started smelling smoke and were evacuated. Eventually, they shut down the main power and we all had to leave.
Have squirrels gotten dumber over the past few years? Because there seems to an increase in squirrel road kill as I go about my day to day, and now there's this.
And the good? side, we skipped two sections of Chapter 2. A little be less will be on the upcoming test.
This, in, turn, tripped the fuses to the a/c fan in the gym. And the folks in the theatre building (which is nowhere near the gym) started smelling smoke and were evacuated. Eventually, they shut down the main power and we all had to leave.
Have squirrels gotten dumber over the past few years? Because there seems to an increase in squirrel road kill as I go about my day to day, and now there's this.
And the good? side, we skipped two sections of Chapter 2. A little be less will be on the upcoming test.
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