Auden and Steve Spender used to hie to Morocco to bugger 11 year old subalterns. We all know what Focault did. Etc. Etc. Raping vulnerable young males is part of how homosexuals reproduce. And the Velvet Mafia is a paramount force in any subset of academia—the narcissism and psychopath and cluqueishness naturally lend themselves to political infighting.
Strictly speaking, there are collateral consequences to conviction as we lawyers call them. The sex offender registry and the attendant restrictions on offender proximity to certain areas where children congregate is one, DNA collection following a felony conviction is another; additionally, denial of access to certain federal benefits for certain drug crimes or lifelong prohibitions on firearm possession for certain convicts, and so on. An especially harsh consequence is revocation of immigration status following conviction of certain crimes. The legal fiction is that these are regulatory policies that are not intended to be punitive, though in the case of sexual offenses nearly every restriction is in practice a concession to feminists and social conservatives, while the civil consequences of DUI convictions owe more to a desire for revenue on the part of the state and insurers as well as the lack of opposition to prosecutor and Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbyists.
I oppose these except for certain habitual offenders for a few reasons. First, you do the crime and serve the time, and that should be that. Second, the criminal justice system in the States is a joke that is fueled by racial and class animus. Third, the effect of having a large pool of felon convicts with records that weigh on them for life is the creation of a plentiful and cheap labor pool that drives down wages for all workers.
With respect to the underlying offense involving involuntary pederasty, that is a fairly gruesome offense although there are far worse. Working in the field of sex offenses makes you jaded pretty easily, since we are talking about men (and it is overwhelmingly men, although female sexual predators are a fascinating lot for a lot of reasons) who have either truly deviant tastes (prepubescent to early pubescent) or who have tastes that are historically within the realm of what we deemed normal. I am enough of a social constructionist that I think those things change over time, although I would say that historically going into prepubescence was *always* considered deviant. But when it comes to men having a sexual interest in teenage boys or girls? A supervisor once told me that a man who denied he found any 16 year old girls was either lying or was looking at the teen boys. I don't really agree; teenage boys lack the fully developed secondary sexual characteristics that a lot of gay or bisexual men find attractive, and ditto sometimes for teenage girls and heterosexual males, which is also one of the reasons that the distinction of sexual orientation along both sex and age axes is theoretically useful, even though we have to pretend it doesn't exist because we invented the idea of a high sexual age of consent around the same time we invented childhood for the purpose of prohibiting exploitation of child labor.
Best book I have read on this is Philip Jenkins' Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. Jenkins is a social conservative which is not my cup of tea, but he has a historian's disdain for modern America's obnoxious pearl clutching on this topic. The patriarchal norm was that men had sexual access to teenage girls and teenage boys, and you see this in virtually every traditional society in some form or another. It is modernity that banished these vices in the name of liberalism and humanism.
Anyway, I wouldn't hire him if only for liability purposes but in Europe I doubt that the sexual offender registries are as much of a barrier. But this is much more a European thing. There are still plenty of people in France that defend certain intelligentsia who more or less admit to having done this regularly. Despite what the obnoxious commenter here wrote, this is not a homosexual reproductive strategy. There's a reason Roman Polanski lives in Europe and not the States.
How about calling it CHILD RAPE and not involuntary pederasty! Because that's what it is. If your child was raped, you wouldn't be sitting here defending the non-punishment that was 5 years of jail for CHILD RAPE.
Good comment. People have varied perverse tastes, and perhaps everybody has some perverse taste, even if they haven't happened upon it yet. I'd quarrel with the idea that every traditional society gave men access to teenage girls or boys. Plato describes it as common, but looked down upon, in his Greece, with respect to boys. Prostitution is common, perhaps universal, but, again, is usually looked down upon. There is access, but not "moral access"--- the same as now, when the practice is illegal but common.
Good comment. People have varied perverse tastes, and perhaps everybody has some perverse taste, even if they haven't happened upon it yet. I'd quarrel with the idea that every traditional society gave men access to teenage girls or boys. Plato describes it as common, but looked down upon, in his Greece, with respect to boys. Prostitution is common, perhaps universal, but, again, is usually looked down upon. There is access, but not "moral access"--- the same as now, when the practice is illegal but common.
Chris, this post espouses the very values you often condemn in the woke movement:
1. Support for cancellations
2. Support for bringing out actions from 10+ years ago to scapegoat someone
3. Lack of respect for the judicial system (Rittenhouse anyone?)
4. Wanting to treat people based on preconceived notions of the group they belong to vs. trying to understand what kind of humans they are today
I think that the only logical position is that anyone who's duly served their official punishment deserves to go back to society as if nothing happened, no matter what crimes they've committed. Call me crazy but I'd even be okay with KM working at my local elementary school - I trust that his experience with prison taught him not to break the law anymore. I have no idea what his qualifications are and whether or not he's a good candidate for being the chair of some journal, but what he did in the past should not be a factor.
I understand that there's also a factor of hypocrisy there - I totally do! Its really upsetting to see your opponents smear and tar people on your side for the slightest transgressions while letting their own get away with murder. But its important to stay true to your principles, even when it benefits the other side.
While it is true that there are certain wokeish things here and that is worth pointing out, you cannot possibly believe that this man should be an elementary teacher? I assume that was for rhetorical flair. A man convicted of an assaultive hate crime is presumably not fit for service in law enforcement. I would think that the same standard applies.
Why can't he be an elementary teacher? Granted I have no idea how good of a fit he would be on a personal level, but that's something that should be evaluated according to his recent history, not something he did in 2005. What's the point of letting someone go from prison if you're going to treat them as a leper for the rest of their lives?
We are talking about a violent felony associated with an underage student, over whom he had authority at the time. There's a nexus between the job and the offense he was convicted of, and there are enough concerns about recidivism to justify him being prohibited from working with children under those circumstances. I am not suggesting that he should be forced to forgo all gainful employment, but we are talking specifically about teaching. Incidentally, even lax Sweden does allow schools to deny applicants based on criminal background checks, and teachers are obligated to disclose (https://knowledge.leglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/LEGlobal-Employment-Law-Overview_Sweden_2019-2020.pdf). Moreover, an EU directive protecting the rights of children to an education free from the risk of sexual abuse requires this screening. European Parliament & Council, Combating the Sexual Abuse and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Child Pornography, Directive 2011/93 of 13 December 2011, art. 10.
The problem is that these kinds of restrictions tend to have a transitive property in real life. You can't work with children? Well you can't work with teenagers. Can't work with teenagers? Well you can't work with students. Can't work with students? Well you can't be in academia. Can't be in academia? Well you can't work for a "serious" company. We can't pretend as if the restrictions exist in a vacuum and don't have unintended consequences.
If what we're really aiming for is minimum sentencing for certain crimes (Chris for example is not happy that a short sentence was handed out), by all means, that's a good conversation to have. Perhaps KM should've spent at least 3 years in prison with no parole - that's a completely reasonable position to have. But that's a question for the judicial system - I don't see how we can blame KM for not serving more time - its not like he can go volunteer to stay in a prison for a year to clear out his name.
Certainly they do not exist in a vacuum, but then we can also draw lines on policy with respect to collateral consequences. And this ignores some other considerations that exist in tandem with the ones you are discussing as well. For example, the plea bargain may have been the result of some evidentiary concerns on the part of the prosecutor for the charges, or the desire to avoid having to have the victim testify. I do not know if you have ever had the misfortune of cross examining children and teenagers about their sexual relationships with adults (I have) but it is unpleasant for you, and especially for them. It must be done in our judicial system, but we can use pleas to avoid it as long as we are satisfied that on balance the conviction and sentence is worth it for deterrence/incapacitation/retributive purposes.
I will also say that there's an inversion of the problem you are suggesting: If I am worried that he is a risk if he *works* with children, does that justify a longer prison sentence? Essentially, you would be suggesting that he should remain in prison until there is no risk that he reoffend, or an acceptably low risk, because you do not believe his job prospects on release should be interfered with. This incentivizes longer prison sentences across the board, because if I cannot prevent him from being in environments where there is a risk after his sentence is served, I should just, by your logic, extend the criminal sentence and leave his liberty even more curtailed.
I would say that is a perverse incentive system. And a costly one that can be avoided by recognizing that some acts have both criminal and non-criminal consequences.
My problem is that KM wasn't given an opportunity to repay for his crimes and come out with a clean slate. He can't volunteer to spend extra time in prison to clear out his records. He can't spend a year under supervision to prove he doesn't have violent tendencies. There's nothing he can do - he's effectively condemned for life with no way out - at least in the US, which is why he moved to Sweden. Let the man have a way to repay for his crimes via something other than a lifelong ban on most jobs.
In cases of child rape, I don't give a flying fuck about whether or not it is consistent with other views or whether there are extenuating circumstances. These are children. Karl Mitten raped a child. Do you not understand what that means? Karl Mitten raped a child. It shouldn't matter if he's a leftist or rightist or acts like a saint now or has the saved the lives of a million puppies or is diseased. He raped a child. I don't care nor will ever care about any of the points you're making. Never. I would rather die than have this monster roaming the streets. This POS will be back behind bars forever.
Quote: "*** Here is where I would make the distinction between Pedophiles and Hebephiles. Hebephilia is the strong, persistent sexual interest in kids ages 11–14."
This seems like an error to me. You called him a pedophile, but under your definition it seems like he's a hebephile. Unless I'm missing something. I realize this is a very old correction.
Auden and Steve Spender used to hie to Morocco to bugger 11 year old subalterns. We all know what Focault did. Etc. Etc. Raping vulnerable young males is part of how homosexuals reproduce. And the Velvet Mafia is a paramount force in any subset of academia—the narcissism and psychopath and cluqueishness naturally lend themselves to political infighting.
Strictly speaking, there are collateral consequences to conviction as we lawyers call them. The sex offender registry and the attendant restrictions on offender proximity to certain areas where children congregate is one, DNA collection following a felony conviction is another; additionally, denial of access to certain federal benefits for certain drug crimes or lifelong prohibitions on firearm possession for certain convicts, and so on. An especially harsh consequence is revocation of immigration status following conviction of certain crimes. The legal fiction is that these are regulatory policies that are not intended to be punitive, though in the case of sexual offenses nearly every restriction is in practice a concession to feminists and social conservatives, while the civil consequences of DUI convictions owe more to a desire for revenue on the part of the state and insurers as well as the lack of opposition to prosecutor and Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbyists.
I oppose these except for certain habitual offenders for a few reasons. First, you do the crime and serve the time, and that should be that. Second, the criminal justice system in the States is a joke that is fueled by racial and class animus. Third, the effect of having a large pool of felon convicts with records that weigh on them for life is the creation of a plentiful and cheap labor pool that drives down wages for all workers.
With respect to the underlying offense involving involuntary pederasty, that is a fairly gruesome offense although there are far worse. Working in the field of sex offenses makes you jaded pretty easily, since we are talking about men (and it is overwhelmingly men, although female sexual predators are a fascinating lot for a lot of reasons) who have either truly deviant tastes (prepubescent to early pubescent) or who have tastes that are historically within the realm of what we deemed normal. I am enough of a social constructionist that I think those things change over time, although I would say that historically going into prepubescence was *always* considered deviant. But when it comes to men having a sexual interest in teenage boys or girls? A supervisor once told me that a man who denied he found any 16 year old girls was either lying or was looking at the teen boys. I don't really agree; teenage boys lack the fully developed secondary sexual characteristics that a lot of gay or bisexual men find attractive, and ditto sometimes for teenage girls and heterosexual males, which is also one of the reasons that the distinction of sexual orientation along both sex and age axes is theoretically useful, even though we have to pretend it doesn't exist because we invented the idea of a high sexual age of consent around the same time we invented childhood for the purpose of prohibiting exploitation of child labor.
Best book I have read on this is Philip Jenkins' Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. Jenkins is a social conservative which is not my cup of tea, but he has a historian's disdain for modern America's obnoxious pearl clutching on this topic. The patriarchal norm was that men had sexual access to teenage girls and teenage boys, and you see this in virtually every traditional society in some form or another. It is modernity that banished these vices in the name of liberalism and humanism.
Anyway, I wouldn't hire him if only for liability purposes but in Europe I doubt that the sexual offender registries are as much of a barrier. But this is much more a European thing. There are still plenty of people in France that defend certain intelligentsia who more or less admit to having done this regularly. Despite what the obnoxious commenter here wrote, this is not a homosexual reproductive strategy. There's a reason Roman Polanski lives in Europe and not the States.
How about calling it CHILD RAPE and not involuntary pederasty! Because that's what it is. If your child was raped, you wouldn't be sitting here defending the non-punishment that was 5 years of jail for CHILD RAPE.
Good comment. People have varied perverse tastes, and perhaps everybody has some perverse taste, even if they haven't happened upon it yet. I'd quarrel with the idea that every traditional society gave men access to teenage girls or boys. Plato describes it as common, but looked down upon, in his Greece, with respect to boys. Prostitution is common, perhaps universal, but, again, is usually looked down upon. There is access, but not "moral access"--- the same as now, when the practice is illegal but common.
Good comment. People have varied perverse tastes, and perhaps everybody has some perverse taste, even if they haven't happened upon it yet. I'd quarrel with the idea that every traditional society gave men access to teenage girls or boys. Plato describes it as common, but looked down upon, in his Greece, with respect to boys. Prostitution is common, perhaps universal, but, again, is usually looked down upon. There is access, but not "moral access"--- the same as now, when the practice is illegal but common.
Chris, this post espouses the very values you often condemn in the woke movement:
1. Support for cancellations
2. Support for bringing out actions from 10+ years ago to scapegoat someone
3. Lack of respect for the judicial system (Rittenhouse anyone?)
4. Wanting to treat people based on preconceived notions of the group they belong to vs. trying to understand what kind of humans they are today
I think that the only logical position is that anyone who's duly served their official punishment deserves to go back to society as if nothing happened, no matter what crimes they've committed. Call me crazy but I'd even be okay with KM working at my local elementary school - I trust that his experience with prison taught him not to break the law anymore. I have no idea what his qualifications are and whether or not he's a good candidate for being the chair of some journal, but what he did in the past should not be a factor.
I understand that there's also a factor of hypocrisy there - I totally do! Its really upsetting to see your opponents smear and tar people on your side for the slightest transgressions while letting their own get away with murder. But its important to stay true to your principles, even when it benefits the other side.
While it is true that there are certain wokeish things here and that is worth pointing out, you cannot possibly believe that this man should be an elementary teacher? I assume that was for rhetorical flair. A man convicted of an assaultive hate crime is presumably not fit for service in law enforcement. I would think that the same standard applies.
Why can't he be an elementary teacher? Granted I have no idea how good of a fit he would be on a personal level, but that's something that should be evaluated according to his recent history, not something he did in 2005. What's the point of letting someone go from prison if you're going to treat them as a leper for the rest of their lives?
We are talking about a violent felony associated with an underage student, over whom he had authority at the time. There's a nexus between the job and the offense he was convicted of, and there are enough concerns about recidivism to justify him being prohibited from working with children under those circumstances. I am not suggesting that he should be forced to forgo all gainful employment, but we are talking specifically about teaching. Incidentally, even lax Sweden does allow schools to deny applicants based on criminal background checks, and teachers are obligated to disclose (https://knowledge.leglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/LEGlobal-Employment-Law-Overview_Sweden_2019-2020.pdf). Moreover, an EU directive protecting the rights of children to an education free from the risk of sexual abuse requires this screening. European Parliament & Council, Combating the Sexual Abuse and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Child Pornography, Directive 2011/93 of 13 December 2011, art. 10.
So I think it is fine.
The problem is that these kinds of restrictions tend to have a transitive property in real life. You can't work with children? Well you can't work with teenagers. Can't work with teenagers? Well you can't work with students. Can't work with students? Well you can't be in academia. Can't be in academia? Well you can't work for a "serious" company. We can't pretend as if the restrictions exist in a vacuum and don't have unintended consequences.
If what we're really aiming for is minimum sentencing for certain crimes (Chris for example is not happy that a short sentence was handed out), by all means, that's a good conversation to have. Perhaps KM should've spent at least 3 years in prison with no parole - that's a completely reasonable position to have. But that's a question for the judicial system - I don't see how we can blame KM for not serving more time - its not like he can go volunteer to stay in a prison for a year to clear out his name.
Certainly they do not exist in a vacuum, but then we can also draw lines on policy with respect to collateral consequences. And this ignores some other considerations that exist in tandem with the ones you are discussing as well. For example, the plea bargain may have been the result of some evidentiary concerns on the part of the prosecutor for the charges, or the desire to avoid having to have the victim testify. I do not know if you have ever had the misfortune of cross examining children and teenagers about their sexual relationships with adults (I have) but it is unpleasant for you, and especially for them. It must be done in our judicial system, but we can use pleas to avoid it as long as we are satisfied that on balance the conviction and sentence is worth it for deterrence/incapacitation/retributive purposes.
I will also say that there's an inversion of the problem you are suggesting: If I am worried that he is a risk if he *works* with children, does that justify a longer prison sentence? Essentially, you would be suggesting that he should remain in prison until there is no risk that he reoffend, or an acceptably low risk, because you do not believe his job prospects on release should be interfered with. This incentivizes longer prison sentences across the board, because if I cannot prevent him from being in environments where there is a risk after his sentence is served, I should just, by your logic, extend the criminal sentence and leave his liberty even more curtailed.
I would say that is a perverse incentive system. And a costly one that can be avoided by recognizing that some acts have both criminal and non-criminal consequences.
My problem is that KM wasn't given an opportunity to repay for his crimes and come out with a clean slate. He can't volunteer to spend extra time in prison to clear out his records. He can't spend a year under supervision to prove he doesn't have violent tendencies. There's nothing he can do - he's effectively condemned for life with no way out - at least in the US, which is why he moved to Sweden. Let the man have a way to repay for his crimes via something other than a lifelong ban on most jobs.
In cases of child rape, I don't give a flying fuck about whether or not it is consistent with other views or whether there are extenuating circumstances. These are children. Karl Mitten raped a child. Do you not understand what that means? Karl Mitten raped a child. It shouldn't matter if he's a leftist or rightist or acts like a saint now or has the saved the lives of a million puppies or is diseased. He raped a child. I don't care nor will ever care about any of the points you're making. Never. I would rather die than have this monster roaming the streets. This POS will be back behind bars forever.
Who the fuck cares!? The guy raped a child, he should be executed not making money and spreading woke leftism!
Have you fucking met children, they should be protected from this MONSTER!
Quote: "*** Here is where I would make the distinction between Pedophiles and Hebephiles. Hebephilia is the strong, persistent sexual interest in kids ages 11–14."
This seems like an error to me. You called him a pedophile, but under your definition it seems like he's a hebephile. Unless I'm missing something. I realize this is a very old correction.