| All of our hearts went out to the Idaho | | | | each year into the sordid world of the child |
| children who were kidnapped, molested, and | | | | sex slave.What triggers men (by far the |
| one probably killed, by a previously | | | | primary offenders) to subvert a normally |
| convicted sex offender.Why are there so many | | | | reciprocal and mutually enjoyable activity |
| sexual predators?Clearly, in the more distant | | | | into an act of violence and rage? For |
| past, sexual crimes were committed but the | | | | thousands of years (with the exception of |
| victims had no recourse and accepted their | | | | isolated matriarchal anomalies), men have |
| fate with only impotent protest. Slaves, | | | | been at the top of the pecking order. Being |
| concubines, war captives, indentured | | | | male assured a certain degree of personal |
| servants, and lowly peasants all suffered | | | | power no matter what their economic or social |
| frequently at the hands and genitals of | | | | level.With the advent and growth of the |
| powerful men. Prostitutes have always | | | | women's movement, the pecking order changed. |
| silently borne more than their fair share of | | | | In a world where brute strength and ancient |
| violence and depravity. Domestic violence, | | | | taboo had little to do with success, power |
| spousal rape, and incest have traditionally | | | | and social position became determined by |
| been a family secret, unpunished in the ages | | | | characteristics that belonged equally well to |
| when a wife and children had status only as | | | | either gender: intelligence, education, |
| chattels of the family leader.Even | | | | motivation, flexibility, and the ability to |
| discounting the power of the media to bring | | | | communicate.Men who possessed such skills |
| every incident into the limelight, it still | | | | were perfectly happy to compete and cooperate |
| intuitively feels as if the perverts amongst | | | | with their female cohorts. It was those men |
| us are multiplying faster than the general | | | | lacking the ability to compete who had the |
| population. America has always been a violent | | | | furthest to fall. They lost the |
| nation, wresting her unparalleled natural | | | | self-assurance and ego strength that had |
| resources out of the wilderness with | | | | previously been their right by the random |
| dynamite, pickaxe, and drill. Not too many | | | | arrangement of chromosomes. Without the |
| decades ago, hand guns or rifles were carried | | | | personal competence to rise above the lowest |
| by every man in the West. Later came the | | | | link of the cultural chain, their rage at |
| machine guns of the mobsters and the Saturday | | | | their loss detonated. Unable to express |
| night specials of the gang bangers and drug | | | | themselves verbally, they mutely lashed out |
| dealers.But why the present pervasiveness of | | | | with their old reliable commodity, physical |
| sexual violence?One might point to a variety | | | | strength, against those who were most |
| of possible causes. There is the explosion of | | | | defenseless: women and young children.Experts |
| increasingly sadistic pornography that has | | | | have long asserted that rape is not a sexual |
| emerged from the backroom peepshows and | | | | offense but an act of violence. We have |
| darkened adult movie theaters to flash into | | | | pushed the inept and primitive among us |
| our living rooms through the Internet | | | | against the wall and they have come back, |
| portals. Everything from coeds with Web Cams, | | | | flailing and slashing, to make someone pay |
| groping grandmas, and unbelievably | | | | for their pain. Our civilized conduct and |
| over-endowed naked bodies, to child porn, | | | | collective success have labeled us all as |
| animal-human sexual contact, bondage and | | | | potential victims, vulnerable and insecure as |
| (questionably real) snuff films flow onto our | | | | we warily watch and wait for an eventual |
| desktops, uninvited and aggressive.We have | | | | attack.Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical |
| heard, repeatedly, from the convicted sex | | | | psychologist with deep interests in Social |
| offenders themselves, that their earliest | | | | Psychology and politics. She has performed |
| catalyst into the fantasies that they | | | | therapeutic services for more than 20 years |
| eventually acted out, was pornography. In | | | | and has studied the effects of cultural |
| Asia, pornography has far more limited | | | | forces and employment on the individual. |
| exposure, yet thousands of children disappear | | | | |