Weird double-standard

[alex_antonin]

Humans have some fucking weird double standards sometimes. For example: People who molest children (or merely get ACCUSED of doing so) get viewed as these utterly horrible and irredeemable people that supposedly cannot be rehabilitated, and get put on a blacklist for life (whether found guilty or not) that makes it nearly impossible for them to find work and housing after being released from prison, and sometimes they even get castrated (a "treatment" that never works)... Yet murderers - people who end the life of another person - don't elicit the same disgust; murderers can be rehabilitated. Paroled or pardoned murderers can live a long, fairly normal lives after prison and don't have to tell anyone what they've done. WHAT THE FUCK? So, what? Diddling a toddler is a worse crime than going to the trouble of buying a gun specifically to kill a person, finding them, and blowing their fucking brains out? What the fucking hell is wrong with people, where they think inappropriate touching is a crime worse than ENDING SOMEONE'S FUCKING LIFE??? Makes no sense at all. I mean, if there's going to be a blacklist for sex offenders, there should be one for murderers, too. Hell, some people even *admire* murderers. Why is it that admitting to admiring murderers doesn't elicit the same reaction as admitting to admiring child molesters? Why do sex offenders have to be ostracized the shit out of all their remaining days, but a paroled murderer can go on his or her merry way as though they didn't commit the single worst crime there is, short of genocide? Fuck, blacklist both groups or neither, but this double-standard shit is just insane.

Seriously, I can't think of any crime worse than ending someone's life, except maybe torturing the crap out of them first.

Comments

[christinathena]

Several differences between murder and child-molesting:
1. Murder has a rather low recidivism rate (especially if you're dealing with a single murder - serial killers are different, of course, but most of the time we're dealing with ordinary one-time murderers). That is, it's rare for someone to murder again. On the other hand, pedophiles have a very high rate of recidivism. Which means if someone's done it before, there's a good chance they'll do it again. On the other hand, the fact that someone's murdered before doesn't mean you need to worry about your life being in danger from that person, because the chance that they'll repeat that act is pretty low. Now, part of that might be the social messages that a child-molester is irredeemable
2. Murder is obvious. It's hard to hide the fact that someone was killed, and even harder to hide the fact that they're no longer around. So, if someone turns up dead, you know they're dead, and someone who's been convicted of murder before will probably be pretty high on the list of suspects. On the other hand, child molestation is often hidden. So, a child could be being molested without anyone even knowing that fact.
3. Related to the above two, if someone's caught molesting a child, chances are they've molested other children before without being caught. It's pretty unlikely that a murderer would've killed other people before and gotten away with those murders. So, there's the factor of the unknown. How many have they hurt before without being punished? And how many more will they hurt if given the chance?
4. You're talking about *children*. People who kill children are just as shunned as child-molesters. People are protective of children, and killing a child is a lot worse than killing an adult.