Words used stupidly

 


The above is a headline from The Sun. Hopefully you realise quite how stupid this headline is. We could wonder where the stupid lies, with the editor, with Ms Peacock, but apart from being stupid it is massively unhelpful. No law, Sarah's or otherwise, can tell you if there is a paedophile living on your street because paedophiles are not required to identify where they live. People who offend sexually against children, that's a different matter. The on-going convenient use of language, incorrectly, is common in media. There is a width of difference between a paedophile and someone who offends against children but people are too lazy or too stupid to care.

PAEDOPHILE IS NOT A SYNONYM FOR OFFENDER

It's unhelpful because it has the potential to drive people underground. Paedophiles who do not offend may be vulnerable to offending, may be vulnerable to harming themselves because of the way that they feel or the way that they feel society will respond to them, they may want help and support, but this ill-informed, uneducated headlinery - any effort to cause affront and fear and sell bollocks-filled nonsense - and the continual sea of stupid that considers that paedophiles are offenders, makes that unlikely.

Be cautious how you use language and try not to be as stupid as The Sun.


Home



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kindness and Incrementalism

  NB Anything here about incrementalism and entitism has come from discussions with a trainee who knows more about this than I do, but if I get it wrong it’s all on me.   I was listening to a Radio 4 programme about kindness and the presenter did a vox pop in which people were asked why they might be kind to someone. Almost everyone responded that they would be kind to a person because they didn’t know what kind of day they had gone through, or how hard their lives were right now. That’s interesting. So, the motivation for kindness is the possibility that someone has had a bad day. Not being kind because you want to be kind, but to do someone a favour, help them out. Does that mean if you knew that hadn’t had a bad day you wouldn’t be kind? I think that’s fairly awful. Isn’t the point of kindness that it is done without any sense of return or because it is needed, just because it is a kindness? Maybe I have been a hippy for too long. I hope so. But this is not entir...
Read more

The Importance of Absence aka The Absence of Importance

This thought is linked to a person I am  currently   working with and is a product of discussions with my supervisor, so thanks to both of them, but no responsibility attached to either. Also, I have to be a little careful that I don't inadvertently reveal identities. I expect all of us have been in a situation where we get a sense that we are not being attended to either as much, or in the same way, by a beloved. Often this is the opening act to the opera of being dumped, but before we have reached that conclusion (and it does take time as each of us believes that we are far too wonderful to be dumped, and I am sure that you are) we know that something has changed in that relationship. It could be spending less time together, going out less often, the conversations are less involved, there is less sex. Fundamentally these are all indicators that we are becoming less important, less central, to that other person's universe. We are becoming more absent, and that increasing ab...
Read more

Another forensic blog (Introduction)

Image
S ometimes there is a thought that buzzes around like a wasp in a jar and the the only way to escape the noise is to write it down. In the past I'd try to get these nuggets on our course's blog, but it was always a bit of a process and probably there are issues about what can go on an official site without legal disclaimers and editorial consistency, and my suspicion is that once published on a University site technically they become the University's property so I can't later get a book deal. So, I thought I would keep them here. The content will be vaguely related to forensic psychology and maybe there will be something of interest and value, but it is my view of things and it is much better if you have your own view of things. There will be no particular order. #1 A Lesson from Forensic Science #2 Distributed Cognition, Situated Cognition, and Forensic Psychology #3 Private Work as Collaboration or Confrontation #4 Your Client is not Your Client #5 Words used stupidly...
Read more