..."Addicted to Pornography" Ariel Castro and Where He Learned To Do What He Did

The widespread, though highly selective, use of psychological explanation as an excuse for crime doesn't do a thing to make the crime disappear from history.  When it is a crime like Ariel Castro's, nothing can make the fact of what he did go away nor does understanding its motivations do anything to absolve him from his selfish, sadistic choices.  Even understanding everything about that doesn't change the fact that he was the one choosing to abduct women, keep them in a sadistic sexual bondage, torturing and terrorizing them, objectifying them, depriving them of their rights and in doing the same to the child produced by his rape of one of them.  The whole catalog of his crimes against those women, the child, the families of the women and the community that were also harmed and terrorized lies at the feet of Ariel Castro.  Each and every second of the eleven years of those crimes was an opportunity for him to stop being a selfish, entitled male and for each and every second of those years he failed to stop being evil.

Yesterday, as he was being sentenced and knew he would be spending the rest of his life in prison, as he knew that his name and his person would always be defined by his crimes, he demonstrated one of the more repulsive aspects of the field of psychology, its use to deny moral responsibility for someone who is obviously mentally equipped to practice moral choices.  There is nothing in any of Castro's history outside of his crime to demonstrate that he wasn't so equipped.  But after a century and a quarter of Freudian and other schools of psychology giving people such as him the vocabulary of denial of personal responsibility, of the out of claiming an uncontrollable compulsion, a selfish man such as he will use that language to game things for his benefit, or at least to avoid having to face his own guilt, himself.   Perhaps a good cut off point in those who are truly unable to stop themselves and those who could is having the ability to make the argument that "I am sick" to a judge who is about to sentence them.  It's the moral dilemma presented to the court of criminals who tried the child murderer in Fritz Lange's movie "M".  But more on that in a minute.

Of course, Castro having claimed to not be responsible due to his addiction to porn and with what I've been writing about for the previous week, I need to address it.

When Castro used pornography as an excuse for what he did, he could have been using the truth to a dishonest end.  I didn't follow the case to know if the police found that he had pornography in his house or on his computer but that would certainly be worth knowing and could be.  As in the case of Clarence Thomas, it was possible to link what he had said as sexual harassment to specific pornographic material, it is quite possible that there is a direct link to be made in this case.   And the opposite is true, crimes are often the source of inspiration of pornography.  One of the disgusting genres of porn is inspired by the pedophile priest scandals.  I wouldn't be surprised if some totally degenerate group of porn producers isn't using the description of Castro's crimes as inspiration of pornography even as this is being written.  As I noted the other day, exactly what Ariel Castro did he could easily have found in an enormous percentage of pornography.  The abduction, imprisonment, binding, rape, torture, degradation, terrorizing of women is mainstream in the pornography that the free-speech industry, the media, the judiciary up to the Supreme Court and, of course, alleged liberals hold has no danger to society.  Ariel Castro could have done everything he did on the suggestion of pornography, if he says that's where he learned to do what he did, that is certainly not implausible.  His saying that is what inspired him, the gravity of his crimes and the known content of pornography makes it impossible to ignore those issues.   That what he very well may have used as inspiration has the full approval of the Supreme Court and a sizable percentage of those who substitute supposed "First Amendment" advocacy for a religious code of conduct.   For many, especially those who have rejected other sources of morality, that advocacy is often the extent of their moral imagination.

To champion the free distribution of pornography of even the most depraved content - something which the internet makes an every day reality for even the youngest of children -  is to champion the pornography that teaches Castro's behavior, making its lessons as attractive as sexual gratification especially through the aggrandizement of male supremacy.  Which is what the subjugation of women is motivated by, at its foundation.   It is to advocate beliefs and attitudes that are indivisibly bound to the the most extreme subjugation of women by men under fundamentalist religion that those same champions may feel very gratified in condemning in other cultures removed from their own with other alleged motivations.  But, as in the use of psychological excuses, those motives do not change the nature of that subjugation, it doesn't diminish the crime,  it does nothing to change the fact that women's rights are harmed and destroyed, the rights to entire and complete equality is attacked for some alleged higher purpose.  "Honor" in one case, "freedom" in the other.  But it is the "honor" and the "freedom" of men, in the end.  It is domination, dehumanizing and, in fact, destruction of those who are dominated.  And, as can be seen in so much of gay porn, that can be turned on men in the context of physical strength or other factors.

In the movie, "M" once his crimes are laid out to him, undeniably, Peter Lorre's character makes a similar plea, that he is compelled to murder little girls.  The mobster judge says that he has just given the reason that he has to be killed, that he will be a danger to children as long as he lives.   Lorre's advocate points out that the very mobsters who have put him on trial have also murdered people and that they didn't do it out of psychological compulsion.  The very same people who are, rightly, disgusted with what Ariel Castro did who are sickened by the details of his crimes, the very same judicial system that has, rightly, condemned him to life in prison, are also those who, when it is a matter of pornography that even he admits inspired him,  give his inspiration their blessing.   That, dear readers, is a problem.  I will almost guarantee you that even as we are disgusted by what he did there are those who are so self-centered, so gratified by those things he did, that without something to restrain them, they will use his case as a learning opportunity on how to do it more effectively without being caught.  If you don't think that taking whatever means can be taken to express the deepest level of disapproval is worth the slight risk to other discourse,  you've said that the past eleven years of torture and violence inflicted on those women, on women unknown to us, children and men held under similar conditions, is a price worth paying for what is certainly not a necessity of life.   That is the bottom line of this issue.  Who pays a price for pornography with their life?   How many women, children, men, are successfully given life imprisonment by those Ariel Castros who don't get caught, who get to play out the perverted porn scenarios to the conclusion favored by their creators and consumers?