I recently read a news story about a man who is accused of assaulting and raping a woman he met through the online dating site Match.com. After discovering his status as a registered sex offender, Match.com decided to enact a blanket ban on any sex offender from joining or using the site.
Many who heard this story probably thought to themselves, “Good! I can’t believe it took them this long—figures that he was a sex offender. Once a criminal, always a criminal.” This sort of thinking bothers me: not only because it’s discriminatory and assumptive, but because I personally know a registered sex offender.
Prior to his conviction and subsequent incarceration, he was a recent graduate and webmaster of a prominent university, an adjunct professor at the same institution, and had plans to enroll in graduate school and pursue a tenure-track teaching position. He pled guilty to possession of child pornography (about 100 images obtained through a file-sharing program, most of which he was not even aware contained images of underage persons, the rest he dismissed as something he did not want to see, but did not realize were illegal to have on his computer as he downloaded them from a public sharing site), served 44 months in a federal prison, and was released about a year ago.
Since that time, he has not been allowed to touch or even look at a computer (he’s never seen YouTube or Twitter, and Facebook was college-only the last time he visited), has been working as a restaurant cook, and will be registered as a sex offender for the next 15 years. He has never harmed a person, nor has he ever wished to see or has seen a child in a sexual manner. In fact, the thought of children in this way makes his stomach turn, as it does most of us. However the same stigma that is tied to people who rape women or molest children is tied to him because of some pictures that were put online by federal agents to trap the people who download them. I am not saying that sex offenders should go unpunished, nor am I saying that there aren’t people that deserve to be understood as a sexual predator that needs to be monitored and restricted. What I am saying is that when you assert that, because of a few bad people, all people labeled as sex offenders by law cannot do (insert activity or legal right here), you are also stigmatizing people who are not dangerous, who are not a threat to women, or children, or society.
Generalizing can be a very dangerous mental activity: “I was victimized by a (black, Hispanic, male, teenager, sex offender, atheist) so all (blacks, Hispanics, males, teenagers, sex offenders, atheists) are bad.” This is bad logic: there are too many (blacks, Hispanics, males, teenagers, sex offenders, atheists) who don’t hurt people to make it okay to generalize about those who do. Sex offenders are not all men with unsuccessful careers, polarized relationships, and general losers. Many are Architects, judges, lawyers, doctors, teachers, successful, married, with children, etc. In fact, many men who are NOT sex offenders fit the above loser profile. Being convicted often changes someone’s life, and they become better people than the people you see and respect every day. We all have our downfalls, we all are victims of bad luck or circumstances, we all make mistakes. There is a story behind every “news story” you read… just keep that in mind before you voice your opinion on legislation that will change the lives of others.
“It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things which unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine, it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word 'love' has the same meaning for everybody. Or 'fear', or 'suffering'. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That's why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division.” Kieślowski in Interview Kieslowski's Many Colours by Patrick Abrahamson, Oxford University Student newspaper, June 2, 1995
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