A Message From The Comms Director of a Sexual Offense Law Reform Advocacy Group
Which of these would you favor as a husband for your beloved daughter?
‘The slick fella, too handsome for his own good, whose shifty eyes furtively appraised the family silver,’ or, ‘the well-dressed, good-looking young man whose frank curiosity about the family heirlooms showed an appreciation for life’s finer things.’
Why?
Word choice makes all the difference. Some words are so emotionally laden with either positive or negative connotations that just using them automatically produces the corresponding emotion in the reader or hearer. Producers of media know this and often choose emotionally loaded language to sway the readers to their way of thinking. This is fine for editorials and opinion pieces, but the purveyors of news pieces bear the responsibility of using neutral language, of presenting the facts, the “plain, unvarnished truth,” and allowing readers to form their own conclusions.
These are the facts about the term pedophilia. It is a medical term, not a legal one. There are no laws or statutes criminalizing pedophilia. Depression might cause a person to shoplift, but the criminal act is shoplifting, not having depression. Not everyone who shoplifts has depression, and not all with depression shoplift.
The same is true with pedophilia. Not everyone who molests a child has pedophilia – in fact, research suggests the percentage is low – and not everyone with pedophilia has engaged in any criminal conduct, including molesting a child. And certainly, not all registrants are pedophiles. Sexual convictions run the gamut from public exposure to violent rape.
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Anything sex related sells. Period. They get advertising money based on their “shows”, that’s why we can no longer call it “news”.
Yes, it’s all about framing and first-person language.
The media knowing uses disparaging modifiers like “registered SO” instead of just “SO” because somehow “registered” is more attention-grabbing and instantly instills fear in people.
This is the ignorance and hate we’re trying to deprogram, but fear sells itself and is pervasive. It’s like attempting to shut down a game of whac-a-mole with facts and reasoning, but media and political scaremongering keeps it going.
“Registered sex offender” is accurate and “sex offender” is not.
Personally, I’ll never use either. People listed on the Registries are PFRs. Certainly not sex offenders.
If 100% of the anti-Registry people stopped saying “sex offender” that would matter. But that’s apparently too much effort. Some people want to spread the propaganda of big government.
A person far braver than me. Thank you Sandy.