Another good term to use is "registered citizen." And RSOL NM uses the term "registered families" when referring to situations that affect the entire family. The reasoning is that if the father or mother of a family is on the registry, for all practical purposes, the entire family is.

Sandy / National RSOL

Dave,
I prefer RFSO (Registered Former Sex Offender) or Registered Citizen. I never use the tern sex offender.

Agreed

I was looking for something to use that was better THANKS

Political Victim or Victim of Politicians

Calling it by another name is not going to make it nicer or change anything whatsoever. My son is still a sex offender according to the government. so, sorry.. i'm not in.

I will never call my son a sex offender or even a former sex offender. he has never had sex, never coerced or approached anyone with the intent of having sex, nor will I call those I know on the registry a sex offender. They are registrants and it is not up to me to elaborate on their behalf.

I agree with Nak, a label is a label....so whatever....just give me so letters I can use, so I don't have to type out the whole whatever cos I'm lazy lol

That's the government nak you know you're son just because he has to wear the label doesn't mean he should be treated like one

REGI sounds good (and adds a bit of humour to an awful situation).

I get what Nako is saying but I look at it this way - calling it something like registered citizen gives these folks more respect than their own governments are giving them and it is a way to refuse the label the government 'assigns' them. We do not have to accept the label

I remember back in the day when Native Americans had this same debate and everyone had different feelings about it. Heck it got so bad real Indians got scolded calling themselves a Indian. Some liked American Indian and some liked the tribe. Lakota Souix, Blackfoot, Cherokee.... Etc

I found it kinda funny the largest activist group was called the American Indian Movement. Everything people recognized was the word Indian. Scholars started calling us Indigenous to add to the confusion. One thing for sure I always knew what I was even if the rest of the world didn't and know matter what I called myself it didn't change what I thought of myself or others like me.

Culture is a odd thing in that people feel a kinship when meeting someone similar to you. Someone beaten down. Rejected, isolated and impoverished. The average life expectancy a few years back on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was 48 years old. Poverty is and was so bad it killed many people. It killed entire families.

Never forget the true enemy of your oppression. For the Native American it was the government. It was good people that had compassion and a sense of fairness that ended geomocide for the Native American. It was evil people that created that geonocide with lies and the desire to see others suffer.

Times change and we as society still are very similar to the past. We still have the government creating hate and spreading lies. Throwing entire families into fear and poverty over labels.

Just my 2 cents.

I am with freebird and Nak here, I used to think that changing the label would help too, but I have learned that it just adds to the confusion when I could be educating people about what sex offenses are, who can get ensnared and what they can do about changing those circumstances.

Like freebird said, it has nothing to do with who you are or how you handle yourself in situations, it is just a label. I fear that like all oppressed peoples in the history of our country and our world, we will end up victims of the blind hysteria that plagued 1930's Germany, 1940's America, 1990's Albania/Croatia, and 1800's America when we didn't even really round them up and put them in camps to exterminate the indigenous people they just killed them outright, families and all.

I don't think changing the way we talk about the people that have either committed a crime or were just ensnared in a web of laws that were too sticky to unravel around them. Changing the label won't change the way they are treated by others. Education is the only thing that will change that.

Nathan.. I know he shouldn't be treated like one. But does that stop people treating him like that just because I call him REGI instead of SO? No. I will not hide my head in the sand and make like if I call it by a different name it's going to make a difference. Just because a dozen people here decide to call it REGI doesn't make the rest of the world do it. I'm a realist.

Ya know.. maybe some Should be called a sex offender. I call my son an innocent man who was fucked over by the government. There are people in this group who have LOs who actually did do something they should have went to prison for or gotten treatment for. My son just got fucked.. and that's it. The public can lump him together with others who actually did hurt children, calling it by something else is not going to make his PO treat him differently or get him off the registry.