TW: Spanking, Child Sexual Abuse
"Child sexual predators deserve the death penalty. Anyone who scars a child for life is irredeemable."
This is regularly said by parents who spank their children or by people who regularly associate with them.
And this is why calls for the death penalty cannot be treated as genuine concern for protecting abuse victims. Everyone loves to stop evil when they can imagine the evil as an outsider who can be killed. But when the evil is normalized by society, no one wants to analyze how their own actions contribute to the evil.
Child sexual predators are willing to cause a lifetime of trauma to a child in order to feel powerful for a few seconds. Parents who spank are also willing to cause a lifetime of trauma to a child in order to feel powerful for a few seconds. They're both warned about how much trauma they're causing and they both decide to do it anyway. I see no difference between them.
Sexual predators are violent and evil. But they're not uniquely violent or uniquely evil.
