[bambax]

> Her friend, who had just given birth to a baby girl, had logged on to the Michigan Public Sex Offender Registry Web site to search for local predators.

"Sex-offender" registry is of course a total and complete abomination. But if you're going to write against it, maybe you owe it to yourself and your readers to not use the words of the enemy -- namely "predators".

There are no "predators". There may or may not be people who made a mistake earlier in life -- many of those mistakes would not even be frowned upon in many other parts of the world.

But to call people on a sex-offenders list "predators" is like calling everyone on a no-fly list "terrorists".

It's bigoted, it's despicable. And it's at least counter productive to use that word in an article that tries to fight the very principle of those lists.

Also, to continue on a related wording controversy that's really irritating, victims shouldn't be able to automatically call themselves "survivors". You're a survivor only if you narrowly escaped death. If your life was never at risk then you're not a survivor.

[inetknght]

> There are no "predators"

Unfortunately, you're wrong. While there might be far fewer actual predators than the registry supposes, there are indeed actual predators on the list. The problem is that the registry is abused by law enforcement and the public through misunderstanding and continued by lack of intellectual integrity. Why read any public case notes of convictions when all you need to know is that they're on the registry? It takes so much _time_ to actually find out _why_ someone's on the registry. It takes a lot of thinking to actually figure out "hey this person was simply exploring their sexuality and no harm was intended". Why spend time and thought on that when you can just assume the worst and let someone else worry about truth?

[dragonwriter]

The whole point of the registry is that it's supposed to contain only people that are perpetually dangerous; if it doesn't and you need to go to case notes to find that, then both the burdens placed on people for permanent registration and the consequences of being on the registry (which go beyond just being findable as a sex offender) and the existence of the registry itself are unjustified.

[pc86]

> There are no "predators"

This is just as wrong as saying that everyone on the registry is a predator. Of course everyone isn't. But there absolutely are many violent rapists, pedophiles, etc on those registries. Plenty of people who made a mistake or got caught without a Romeo & Juliet law in their state, but also plenty of sexually violent predators.

[bambax]

There are no predators because a predator is an animal.

Calling people who committed crimes of sexual nature in the past, predators, is the same as calling people who committed theft, rats or other epithets.

The purpose of this naming scheme is to de-humanize the person, so as to justify the inhuman treatments one wants to subject them to.

It's a technique as old as society. It never ends well.

[aanm1988]

Humans are animals.

In fact humans as a species have evolved to become the greatest predators on the planet.

[bambax]

Well, ok. I would have no problem calling all humans predators, or rats, or whatever. The problem is when you use those words to single out some humans, and then proceed to give them a special treatment.

[kakarot]

It's true that many, if not most, registered sex offenders are not predators, but predators do exist. There are predators out there and I have met many. But I agree, from a psychosemantic perspective using "predator" in that sentence reeked of FUD

[aanm1988]

> There are no "predators".

There are absolutely predators out there. When your "mistake" is rape and you made that "mistake" repeatedly, that's a pretty good definition of a predator.

> many of those mistakes would not even be frowned upon in many other parts of the world.

So what. There are a great many despicable things that have no place in our society yet are permitted in the rest of the world.