prev + next
2002-03-03 | 6:28 p.m.

[Warning: this is really rambling and unedited. More than usual.]

I showed my column about child molesters to Stephen and Maxine and they both thought it was kind of nutty. Ruth didn't even respond; she probably thought it was even worse than they did.

It makes me mad, a little. Both of them were careful to make the point that they thought the idea was beyond the pale.

I'm glad my friends are sympathetic to the needs of the unliked, but why no concern for the rights of children? I'm not even talking about the right of a child to play in his or her front yard, which no parent I know will allow (because of Amber). Just the right to walk down the street and not be afraid.

I guess it is crazy. The way that child molesters are paroled into the suburbs really truly makes me crazy.

I know I sound like one of those PETA people, inexplicably fussing over the rights of kittens, and maybe I am. Stephen once suggested that my concern for children was a result of socialization. No more, no less. He said that when people mourn the death of a child more than the death of an adult, it's just socialization, because children aren't inherently worth more than adults. I understood what he was saying and I accepted it, sort of, intellectually, but emotionally I reject it. I've never forgotten it because it still bothers me and I wish I knew how to dispute it sensibly.

I just keep thinking that a child cannot defend himself against an adult.

Shouldn't that count for anything? Special circumstances? There are special circumstances built into the criminal law when a murder victim is younger than a certain age.

I'm not saying that children are innocent by comparison to adults or anything like that. I'm just saying that it is--it should be--more wrong to kill the young of your own kind when they have no chance against you. I really believe that there must be some sort of biological imperative against it, which is more than mere socialization.

But then there was that book, Mother Nature, where she basically said that women have been killing their children out of expediency since the beginning. I'm not sure exactly because I didn't read it. (It was a really big book.)

So maybe it is "just" socialization. Civilization itself is a construct, and we're all living on the grid, right? But okay, so now what? We still have to live our lives with what's in front of us. When it comes to child molesters, those of us with children don't really have an ivory tower to retreat to for prolonged philosophizing.

I really think there is something more than that, though, because there are so many things that humans do to ensure the furtherance of the species, and I think that this is part of that. I want to believe that my not being able to wrap my mind around his idea speaks to something more and deeper on my part than simple misguided sentimentality.

I get too emotional about this to think rationally or write things down in an articulate way. I think about my own childhood and sometimes I think I was very street smart, and I feel proud of that, and then other times I remember many times when I was afraid.

What it comes down to is this. People who are mentally ill and pose a threat to others should not be released into the general population.

My brother is not, to my knowledge, a pedophile, but whenever I think of him I have this worry that he is going to hurt someone. Because he's done it before. He goes off his medication, he gets angry, and he hurts people.

I love him, but I don't want him to know where I live.

Oh man. See, Alice, I'm coming down off my Thin Mints high and I'm blubbering and crying and feeling sorry for myself because my idea--my admittedly wacky idea--didn't meet with universal approval.

Another thing that occurs to me is that because of my brother's situation, it really bugs me when people think I'm saying something loopy. I can't help but think it'd be just my luck to end up in the state hospital on heavy meds while all the child molesters you can count are planting pansies in the suburbs.

prev archive next
0 comments