If “Maury” Made the Laws

I don’t even know why I watch Maury, since it pisses me off so much sometimes. It’s one of the most sexist shows on television. One of Maury’s signature topics is teen girls gone wild. You know, teenage girls who have sex with older guys, steal, join gangs, and get into fights. I don’t know where the wild teen boys are, but that apparently doesn’t matter, and that’s not what this post is really about.

What bugs me is how the wild teen girls are treated. They embarrass themselves on stage. They never get to really delve into their psychological issues. Then they’re taken to jail to be “scared straight.” Most of the girls do engage in illegal behavior, like prostitution, drug use, and truancy. But some of them don’t. Some of them just have sex. One of the teens, I think she was 15 years old, didn’t do anything illegal. She hardly even lied. She was asked three questions on the lie detector test and told the truth about two of them. She lied about how many people she slept with (she said 2, but the lie detector determined it was 5). She admitted that she’s had unprotected sex five times, and she was telling the truth when she said she never received money or gifts for sex. It’s still troubling that this teen had unprotected sex, but it’s not a crime. Except if you’re on Maury. Then you get sent to a woman’s prison in New Jersey and get yelled at by inmates and spend some time in solitary confinement. That’s standard procedure for girls whose only “crime” was having sex with a man twice her age.

Another popular topic on Maury is controlling men who enslave, beat, and rape their wives. Last I checked, slavery, battery, and rape were serious crimes that can get you serious prison sentences. They’re definitely more serious than the victimless crimes of prostitution and drug use. Now, I commend Maury for exposing abusive mates and raising awareness about domestic violence and marital rape. But the one thing that the show doesn’t do with these abusive criminal men is send them to jail. These men can probably be questioned, if not arrested, based on the Maury show footage. So why not send them to jail to give these men a taste of what would happen if their mates called the police? These men are CRIMINALS, and Maury treats them like they’re just regular guys that have lost their way.

If Maury made the laws, statutory rape would be a crime for the underage victim. If Maury made the laws, having unprotected sex would warrant a prison sentence. If Maury made the laws, perpetrators of sexual assault, battery, and slavery would be treated like victims. They’d be treated with kid gloves. It’s atrocious.