Which is worse: murder or rape? 

We know legally that murder, at least first and second degree murder, is prescribed a harsher sentence than rape. Yet, we often feel in our gut more revulsion to a person that commits rape than to a murderer. Maybe it’s because murder is a generic term that carries with it no clear picture of the actions, whereas rape conjures up an image of a specific action, one that is quite vivid and disturbing. We may also create certain images of the predator and the victim in our minds, which helps us to dig our heels into the conviction that the act is awful. With murder, there is almost a motive question - why did the person do it? Perhaps he was justified. How did he do it? Poisoning is somewhat more palatable than stabbing. 

But honestly, there should be no question that murder is worse than rape. Yes, rape is awful in every sense of the word, but surely not worse than murder. With murder there is no more life. No chance to get therapy, to heal, to live a life again. Rape makes life awful for a while, and difficult, but murder makes a life nonexistent - it seems unequivocal. 

Yet, the labels we apply to the two people don’t seem equally balanced. If I commit murder, either intentionally or not, I may be labeled a murderer, but there is no murder directory that prevents me from living close to a daycare center. There is no label that is essentially impossible to remove, that prejudges me everywhere I go. Yes, murder is a serious crime and there are legal consequences, yet a murderer who has done his time could be living next to you, and you may not know it. Whereas a man who committed consensual statutory rape is labeled a sex offender and is easily searchable in your neighborhood. 

You see, the murderer that we’re talking about committed involuntary vehicular manslaughter. He drove drunk and killed a person “unintentionally” with his car. He got a maximum sentence of 20 years. Now, he had 2 DUIs before this. He was an alcoholic. He killed a person by getting behind the wheel of a car drunk. The label he gets is an alcoholic who made a mistake. He isn’t even labeled a murderer, which implies in the word some degree of intent. An alcoholic is treated with much sympathy and tenderness these days. There are organizations to accept, help, and support alcoholics. Telling people that you’re sober garners almost a bit of pride in the person, and a bit of respect in the audience. Yet, it also allows one to be forgiven for his previous mistakes committed while drunk. 

Unfairly, a sex offender can seemingly never clear his name, despite his crime possibly carrying less legal consequences, and of course less physically permanent consequences. It seems unfair that one label engenders sympathy and forgiveness, while the other is a permanent scar that can’t be removed. 

Why can’t we judge the external action instead of placing a label on the individual that he can’t remove? Isn’t this the same problem that occurs in discrimination? We observe an unpleasant action in a person that has certain characteristics, and when we see a different individual who we learn belongs to a similar group, we place a negative label on that person. That person may or may not have committed unpleasant actions, or different actions, but the label doesn’t provide for this nuance. The label confines the individual to the same negative connotations that we applied to the first individual, and they don’t get a say in it. They are a victim to that label, a harmful categorization that prevents the person’s unique personality from being seen and valued by the world. 

I don’t wish to villainize anyone, regardless of their deed. This is not condoning the deed, it is simply judging the deed separate from a permanent description of the person for the rest of his life. If you fell in love with a woman who told you that she was 18, and afterwards, you discovered that she lied, you’d be labeled a sex offender for the rest of your life. After you get out of jail, you find yourself standing next to a person at the bank, and you realize that you remember this person from prison He’s an alcoholic who killed someone while behind the wheel of a car. You look at him, and see that he is wearing a nice suit, has a daughter with him, and seemingly is living a good life. Meanwhile, you struggle to find a safe place to live where you aren’t harassed by neighbors or blocked due to the proximity of schools or daycare centers. Googling your name comes up with a sex offender label slapped to you, while googling him comes up with multiple Alcoholics Anonymous articles, with a vehicular manslaughter article only coming up on the second page. Your life has been horrible, while your “victim” is living a healthy and successful life. Meanwhile, the victim of the alcoholic is dead. Their life was terminated. And yet, here you stand, seemingly having performed a far less heinous crime, with less severe consequences, but you have been punished, labeled, and influenced more severely in many ways than this person next to you. 

It doesn’t seem fair because it isn’t. We need to stop labeling people, and instead focus on the specific actions that they performed. People aren’t murderers or sex offenders, they’re people who committed crimes. They should be treated based on the severity of their crime, and how much insult occurred to the victim. Only then, will humans be treated equally, and will no longer be tied down by their past mistakes for an entire lifetime.