What is deviant today may be socially acceptable tomorrow. Take wearing pants. Women wearing them in the early 1900s were considered cross-dressing freaks, penalized and arrested for public indecency. Homosexuality, deviance or norm? Most would say "norm" I would venture to say. Although some still consider homosexual behavior aberrant, countless others - countries and states included - have legally declared homosexuality to be a natural orientation and have made same-sex marriage legal. Men and women sleeping together before marriage. Abnormal? Not in the 2000s. But before the groovy 1960s, you betcha. Today, co-habitation is what most couples do prior to marriage as a matter of course.
Want some other examples?
How about S & M? Sadomasochism involves two consenting partners -- one who wants to inflict pain and the other who wants to receive it. Flogging, humiliation, torture -- are these "normal"? Well to some, yes. They think role-playing in dominant and submissive postures is fine. Some even go as far as to claim it a “lifestyle.” Here’s another: Necrophilia anyone? Sucking the toes of a dead corpse perhaps? Intercourse with a cold, hard body? Unthinkable deviance. Well, today’s immensely popular vampire love stories point to a growing romanticism of necrophilia and are nothing more than popularized tales of sex with the dead (or un-dead, as it were).
Abnormal behavior like fetishism and bestiality are joked about in public and practiced openly. Just open a sex magazine. Go online. Watch adult cable. It's right there, out in the open. De rigueur.
Let’s be clear about something: Sexual deviance is nothing new. But we need to draw clear lines in the sand between sexual behaviors versus violence. Sex is strange business. What turns people on is an odd and often surprising amalgam of otherwise unthinkable conduct. Taking “standard” sex further, if it is sadism, fetishism, submission or any other kind of non-standard sexual behavior and if it is within the context of mutual consent, it should not be mistaken for acts of sexual violence or aggression.
We humans do end up popularizing behavior that was at one time deviant, even illegal. But here’s the catch and the part that needs to be dealt with: what happens in the future to those who are "accepting" the behavior now because they know no different? Or because they want to fit in? Or because they are so trusting of the person inflicting the pain that they believe it must be OK? Or because society is telling them it's "de rigueur"? Where does that leave the victims of today's deviant behavior tomorrow? What will we be saying in ten, twenty or thirty years from now about those who are being victimized in secret today for things society will deem either acceptable or acknowledgeable tomorrow?
Because the injurious acts take place in secret, with a devastating, even paralyzing, level of shame and humiliation attached, victims often sublimate these experiences into the depths of their psyches, into the farthest hinterlands of consciousness. For too many souls, it takes years and years for these experiences to come to light.
When partners are non-consenting, it is never all right. Sexual slavery is never alright. Children being made to perform acts on adults is never alright – not in the past, now or in the future. Child sexual abuse should never be tolerated.
In light of the media frenzy surrounding sexual abuse on television, in print and online, (NBC’s “To Catch a Predator,” the Sandusky trial at Penn State, “Prep School Predators” at my alma mater Horace Mann, in the Catholic church, in the Boy Scouts) what can we do to give solace to the victims of the past who are struggling today with horrors they endured back then?
For certain, we need to make sure children are protected now and past victims find a way to have their day in court in order to bring their torturers to justice. Considering how long victims often take to find the courage to speak out, the statute of limitations are woefully short, inadequate and act as a barrier to justice. Reforming child abuse laws is imperative and the time frame for victims to come forward needs to be UNLIMITED. New York needs to follow California’s lead and open a window for all victims to have a voice, if they want it. Or go as far as Delaware and Florida, two states that have eliminated the statute of limitations entirely.
WE CANNOT LET THE BEHAVIOR OF PREYING ON THE YOUNG AND THE NON-CONSENTING EVER BECOME TOLERABLE, EVER BECOME ACCEPTABLE. MAKE SURE YOUR STATE IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK.
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