STALKING AND HANDICAPP PARKING

I oppose stalking. I support handicap parking.

What I do not support is defining laws or privileges so widely as to make them meaningless. I use handicap parking to illustrate the point.

Our federal government just released a 12-month report which states that 3.4 million persons age 18 or older were victims of stalking. The government defines stalking with a pinch of specificity, “Stalking Victimization in the United States,” (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Special Report, January 2009) as “a course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.” As definitions got, this sounds like a reasonable definition to me.

Then, the report veers into a definitional quagmire, listing no fewer than seven measurements of stalking behaviors, and states that none of these individual acts is criminal (fudging its categories with “may not be criminal”). It is this definitional quagmire that would let almost any real stalker off the hook if he or she has the money to hire a competent lawyer.

Most of these “victimizing” acts could be readily stopped if the person being “stalked” just had a normal backbone. These acts include:

Unwanted e-mails (now this encompasses about half of Americans!);
Unwanted phone calls (well, now we include robo-calls, unsolicited advertising?);
Following/spying on a person (the report uses the word victim instead of person);
Showing up at a place without a legitimate reason;
Waiting at a place for a person (the report uses the word “victim” So I guess it’s ok to wait for a person just so long as the person does not consider him or herself a victim!)
Leaving unwanted items, presents, or flowers (well, now, guys and gals can no longer leave roses for their pissed-off lovers!);
Posting information or spreading rumors on the internet, in a public place, or by word of mouth. (No more freedom of speech, guys and gals, the truth is no longer a defense if it includes “posting information” on the internet, in a public place or even by word of mouth!)

This is not about stalking; it’s about feminizing conduct. Say what you may, there is a real difference between men and women. Boys like to play with different toys than girls and no amount of “socializing” is going to change this.

The report states that about half of stalking victims experienced at least one unwanted contact per week and about ten percent of victims said that they had been stalked for 5 years or more. The report reveals to us a fact that even an idiot should know: highest incidence of stalking occurred with persons divorced or separated. (Wow! Now a guy or gal pursuing a girl with flowers is put in the same category as a stalker!)

Trying to put an economic face on stalking, the report states that more than half of stalking victims lost 5 or more days from work because of stalking. Well, we should now brace ourselves for a Federal Law outlawing all meaningful contacts between men and women. The federal government has already enacted a statute addressing interstate stalking, 18 U.S.C. §2261A.

Although stalking is a serious matter and should be treated as such, the gross exaggeration of stalking as being widespread, especially when a little common sense by the persons being stalked would put a stop to it, is just another example of the hyper feminization of conduct in United States. Indeed, there are a sizeable number of women (and men too) who want to destroy all conduct that in any way differentiates between men and women. These folks want to criminalize any aggressiveness in men, apparently leaving women free to kill with words while men—who are verbally inferior to women, generally—is left to bear the burden of silence.

Comparing stalking to handicap parking, while both are serious matters, is no exaggeration:

Every mall or strip mall I visit, I cannot help but to marvel at the misuse of parking spaces by over allocation by a factor of three or four to one parking spaces to the handicap. I do not begrudge handicap persons parking spaces. What I am indignant about is the over allocation of vacant parking spaces as “handicap parking.”

Now, see the analogy of handicap parking spaces with defining stalking to as virtually all contacts in our modern world? When stalking is defined to mean almost anything that makes people, particularly women, uncomfortable, that’s when the ugly sin of political correctness rears its hydra head, and criminal prosecution for stalking is rendered a shadowy apparition.

Stalking is not a definitional flip of a coin; stalking is not a nuisance; stalking is a crime. Turning it into a nuisance by having it embrace political correctness and feminization (who hasn’t receive an unwanted phone calls, e-mails, etc.?) makes it harder to effectively combat it.

Why don’t we criminalize telemarketing stalking?

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© 2008 by Lenton Aikins
All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction is permitted provided credit is given.
Lenton Aikins, Ph.D., J.D.
Attorney at Law, Author
Dr. Aikins has travelled widely, lived abroad in Europe and Latin America, recently spending three years in Costa Rica as Director of a Spanish Language school. He holds a Ph. D. in Political Science from University of Southern California, a Juris Doctor in Law from Western State University, College of Law. His book, While African Americans Slept: Leadership by Parasites, is available at: http://zitpub.com or go to http://lentonaikins.com