On July 1, 2012, a law that allowed forcible chemical castration on child molesters came into effect in Moldova[1].
On Christmas Eve, the Moldavian Court of Justice from Chișinău sentenced a 50 year old man to chemical castration after the court found him guilty of raping his partner’s daughter of eight years old[2]. The sentence is not definitive and the defendant has the right to a final appeal on the Supreme Court of the Republic of Moldova. Moreover, as long as the sentence is not definitive, it cannot be applied.
But it’s not just Moldova. Estonia[3], South Korea[4] and Poland[5] have recently passed legislations to allow the state to force convicted pedophiles to go through chemical castration procedures. There are also at least 9 states from the USA who have similar legislation. There are also a lot of countries that encourage chemical castration in exchange for reduced sentences like Russia[6], Israel and Argentina.
But what one can rarely, or arguably never, read in any news report with regards to chemical castration laws is the fact that the legal term ‘chemical castration of pedophiles’ means, in fact, ‘chemical castration of male pedophiles’.
In the spring of 2011, a deputy from the Liberal-Democratic Party from Romania wanted to propose the Polish law to be enacted in Romania too. The law did not pass because right at that time, the public discourse was marked by a dreadful case of a mother who had been raping her then 6 year old son for at least two years (probably more). Due to this fact, a lot of people actually asked: ‘Do this law apply to her too?’ And when the doctors answered ‘No’ the camp supporting the bill lost its credibility in an instant.
At least for the moment.
But besides the fact that this law applies only to male offenders, which literally places a double standard in the law through which lawyers can argue that when a woman rapes a child it is not ‘that bad,’ there is also the same question that anti-death penalty activists pose: What if we’re wrong?
With all the forensic technology and other modern means that can be used in the investigation, it is still quite possible to mutilate the wrong man. And yes, chemical castration is, at the end of the day, a form of mutilation because the hormones and the formula that’s being used are pretty much the same that have been used on Alan Turing[7].
Although hundreds of peer-reviewed articles[8] have been written in the last decade, more and more countries attempt and succeed to pass legislation that allows the state to mutilate men. Moreover, the manipulated masses are pressuring some governments to extend the provisions of this law to rapists. And considering how many innocent men serve jail terms following false rape allegations, there is no doubt that this kind of law would increase the already too large cost of a false rape allegation when the defendant is male.
In addition to that, therapists that work with offenders often contend that the predators drive is to achieve control over the victim and that sex is only one of the means to achieve that. This being said, lowering a predator’s sex drive doesn’t necessarily correlate with lowering their likelihood to assault, as they can pick another means to achieve control. In other words, even if we were to think in the official blue-pill narrative, this law is useless in reducing the offender’s propensity to offend again, while the same time is devastating to those that have been wrongly convicted. It’s also quite expensive – around 2,000 euros per year, according to Moldavian specialists[9].
In an ideal, Utopian dream world, where the judicial system never fails and the false allegations do not exist, I might be inclined to agree with such a law to a certain extent and apply it both on male and female serial offenders. However, we don’t live in a Utopian dream world and the judicial systems fail all too often. False allegations and convictions in the sex crimes area aren’t rare at all.
[1] http://www.noi.md/ru/news_id/10565
[2] http://www.ziare.com/europa/moldova/r-moldova-prima-condamnare-la-castrare-chimica-a-unui-pedofil-1209005
[3] http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_06_05/77079747/
[4] http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/07/24/idINIndia-58423020110724
[5] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-09/poland-approves-chemical-castration-for-paedophiles/859672
[6] http://en.ria.ru/russia/20111004/167381251.html
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_indecency
[8] http://www.jaapl.org/content/31/4/502.full.pdf
[9] http://m.protv.md/stiri/social/pedofilii-vor-fi-castrati-chimic-ce-presupune-procedura-si-care.html
Is chemical castration misandric?
