Yesterday, the Louisiana State Senate voted 32-3 to send a bill to the State House that would make castration an acceptable and sometimes mandatory punishment for sex offenders in the state. [Fox News] For second-time offenders, castration would be mandatory, provided that a "medical expert" decided castration would be effective. Chemical castration, via medroxyprogesterone acetate, would be the default method, but offenders would be able to choose physical castration instead.
Take a moment. I'll wait for you to catch up.
Let's roam into the hypothetical. Medrozyprogesterone acetate is a progestin that, when used as a treatment in males, reduces sex drive. Makes sense. Yes, introducing progesterones in a testosterone-filled environment will reduce sex drive. That seems like a common sense statement, and unfortunately I cannot veryify it because there are no studies on the effects of medrozyprogesterone acetate in healthy men. Every study I found was about sperm count in men having recently received vasectomies. Moving on. That's not the ridiculous part.
The ridiculous part is the assumption that too much sex drive is the underlying problem. Grown men do not rape children because they have overactive libidos. Rape, whether of grown women or of children, is an action driven by anger and rooted in violence.
Non-consentual sex is a physical manifestation of anger, violence is the coping mechanism, and mental illness is what we should be addressing. How often sex offenders feel the urge to get laid is not what we need to be talking about.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
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My question for you is this: Why do Americans refuse to believe scientific facts or truths? What is it about "science" that leaves people cringing, made to automatically assume that it "couldn't possibly be true" or that researchers are just "making this stuff up"? Perhaps it is the big words (I will admit, I was intimidated by 'medrozyprogesterone'). Or perhaps it is the long amount of time (years, sometimes decades of experiments) that scientists spend answering one question, making this seem "over done" or "dramatic" to the American public. I am going out on a limb here, but perhaps the reason Americans refuse to accept scientific findings as truth is because they are in denial. Americans love a quick fix, the most efficient means to an end, after all, time=money, right Einstein? It is after reading articles like the above mentioned that I die a little more inside as an American citizen. Once again, psychological science is ignored, thrown out like yesterday's old news. When will Americans realize that the brain is an extremely complicated meshing of interwoven systems, billions of electircal impulses and chemical interactions, all of which must seemlessly work together to produce a healthy individual? When will we learn that you can not simply place a bandaid on a massive hemorrhage?
To be relatively scientific myself (and if you also choose to be so daring...) check out this article I found on the topic of sexual aggression (huh, what an interesting way of putting it...) and the correlation that exists between propensity toward sexual assault and anger/attachment/anxiety levels in sex offenders. http://web.ebscohost.com.proxycu.wrlc.org/ehost/pdf?vid=9&hid=104&sid=6b777732-5e8e-4d42-92fd-ab70e9d11dc3%40sessionmgr104
In case that did not work, here is the source information:
Tamara S. Lyn* & David L. Burton. (May 2005), 11(2). pp. 127-137. Journal of Sexual Aggression.
The study focused on a group of incarcerated individuals who were jailed for either sexual or non-sexual violent offenses. Using this grouping, participants were asked to report, via anonymous survey, on questions related to their anxiety, anger, and attachment.
"Other implications of this research involve the incorporation of insecure attachment, anger and generalized anxiety into treatment approaches with sexual offenders. Lyn and Burton (2004) elaborate on the implications of insecure attachment for interventions aimed at reducing recidivism. Awareness of an offender’s attachment style can help clinicians to provide corrective attachment experiences and to avoid the inadvertent perpetuation of unhealthy attachment dynamics in the therapeutic relationship. Such awareness on the part of an offender can also help him or her to develop ways to meet attachment needs in socially appropriate ways. Anger and anxiety management techniques also appear to have relevance to clinical interventions with sexual offenders (Freeman-Longo & Cullen, 1995; Zonana et al, 1999; Burton & Smith-Darden, 2001)."
Also,:
"In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that
individuals in the arenas of law, advocacy and clinical work who interact with victims and
victimizers alike should not think of sexual and non-sexual violence as separate phenomena."
Thank you scientific research for making that more clear.
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