Comments on: Dateline Perverted Justice: Pedophilia That The Market (And Judith Butler) Can Appreciate

By: keith

keith — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 19:10:09 +0000

It’s their first time being caught. It’s highly doubtful they are first time “offenders”.

By: a student

a student — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 23:15:18 +0000

Though this issue wasn’t addressed, the unfortunate outcome of a show like this is that it affords less protection to criminal offenders. Juries will already formulate pre-conceived notions about defendants if the pool contains an audience who watches this. It seems that many of those caught and highlighted on the program are also first-time offenders. Not that I sympathize with them, but I believe this “To Catch A Predator” nonsense does a great disservice to the criminal justice system.

By: honeyspur

honeyspur — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:05:55 +0000

I am thankful too – I wish there had been a program like this when I was a child.

By: Sylvia Abrams

Sylvia Abrams — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 04:43:11 +0000

I love the program and I am glad that they are exposing these men for who they are and the potential of them harming young children!!!! I wish that there was something that I could do to help with Perverted Justice..and this program..if there is let me know…sylvia22988@yahoo.com

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 04:42:45 +0000

Though there may have been a rich history, child pornography as an epidemic was debunked in The Trade in Child Pornography. Short sentences and small fines all but wiped it out and most of the images in current circulation were made when it was legal in certain countries. The fact is, there aren't that many people interested in viewing child pornography and there never has been, and so it is possible Butler and Adler are entirely correct and the coverage does more harm that good.

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 04:35:20 +0000

Though there may have been a rich history, child pornography as an epidemic was debunked in The Trade in Child Pornography. Short sentences and small fines all but wiped it out and most of the images in current circulation were made when it was legal in certain countries. The fact is, there aren't that many people interested in viewing child pornography and there never has been, and so it is possible Butler is entirely correct and the coverage does more harm that good.

By: John Steele

John Steele — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 04:19:03 +0000

I find Butler’s claim, as quoted, to be pretty close to obvious. Of course, that claim was made (more broadly) in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. IIRC, Jeremy Waldron recently analyzed Galatians and Amy Adler made a similar point regarding pornography laws (The Perverse Law of Child Pornography, 101 Columbia Law Review 209 (2001)). I don’t read them as saying that prohibitions should therefore be renounced.

Any reasonable reader of the Meese Report or the Starr Report would conclude that the phenomenon got the best of those authors.

By: RCinProv

RCinProv — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:53:36 +0000

If “the very act of prohibiting this material causes us to look images of the child’s body differently,” then how do explain the era before this stuff was all illegal? Have you ever looked into the rich history of the child pornography industry that prospered in Southern California in the early 1980s, including the publications by the Eberles (who later become cheerleaders for the moral panic claim)? The “desire” was all there without prohibitions.

Empirical evidence is, let us say, a problem for all of this “moral panic” literature. But then Judith Butler and others who embrace “moral panic” don’t have that problem, since they are apparently not concerned with the empirical world.