Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

scientists, that lip was just looking for trouble. Using sophistry andcunning, the scientists dismiss force as a reality in virtually everykind of crime.T he first method of dismissal is implicit in the methodologyitself. The normal male, according to Sex Offenders, commits sexualacts against the will of the female as a matter of course. To bedistinguished as an offender, he must be convicted. It is theconviction, not the offense, that makes his act significant. Someoneconvicted of burglary who intended to rape is included in the study;someone who actually raped but was not convicted is excluded. Initself, this is unfortunate, “but this is the price we must pay,fortunately very infrequently, in obtaining a workable definition ofsex offense. ” 73 The premise is that the unconvicted rapist is anoddity. Importance is given not to the incidence of actual rape butto “obtaining a workable definition of sex offense. ”T he sophistry involved in describing or determining the use offorce in a sexual act committed by a male convicted of a sex offenseis clearest in the attempts to categorize acts against children andminors. “Children” are here defined as female children under theage of twelve, not the daughters of the men convicted. “Minors” arefemales from twelve to fifteen, not the daughters of the menconvicted. T he “heterosexual offender” did not use force; the“heterosexual aggressor” did.In describing sex acts committed against children, the scientistswere at pains to establish two categories, one in which force wasused and one in which it was not:Force ranges from unmitigated violence to, let us say, holding achild by the wrist; threat runs the gamut from specific verbalthreat or brandishing a weapon to a subtle implication. In anyrelationship between a child and an adult there is always in thebackground an element of duress; the inevitable disparity instrength and social status is an omnipresent factor. A man, eventhough a stranger, is in an authoritarian superior position.While it was manifestly impossible to cope with these vaguer(but nonetheless effective) forms of force and threat, we wereable to exclude from heterosexual offenders vs. children anyone