“No Stigma Zone”: A Case for VAWA Grants’ Being Issued to Provide All Government Offices with Dictionaries so Their Employees Can Look Up Words like “Stigma”

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stigma poster

I had occasion to visit the city prosecutor’s office on Friday. The decor was sternly clinical. The only ornamentation was some small posters on a bulletin board under glass (which was probably there to protect them from cynics armed with Sharpies). One of the posters notably featured the phrase “No Stigma Zone.”

The poster was about bullying, and its message was bullying is bad and won’t be tolerated. If I didn’t have better reasons to distrust bureaucrats, I’d distrust them for being immune to irony.

To municipal lawyers, “bullying” means playground taunts and insults, like “fatso, “slut,” and “queer.” The state’s applying cruel labels to people like “stalker” and “molester” based on three minutes of finger-pointing (and permanently inscribing those labels on people’s public records)—that isn’t the same thing.

Accusations are typed up on government forms, and that makes them different from name-calling.

Duh.

I bumped into a teenage girl yesterday whom I used to swing around by the arms in another life. That was about the time I was first falsely accused—10 years ago—and she was still a twerp. (I was more carefree then. My body wasn’t run-down, and tomorrow still held infinite promise.) She told me another girl had called her a “whore” on an Internet medium called Snapchat. She explained that posts there only linger for a few seconds, so kids can snipe one another without leaving a trail of evidence.

This is what the state means by “bullying”—a zinger with a half-life of moments—and count on it that some lawmaker somewhere has designs to stop this conduct in its tracks(!)…by enacting more laws to facilitate accusation.

This is what my old journalism teacher would have called missing the forest for the trees.

Copyright © 2016 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The girl I chanced into yesterday asked me why she always finds me at Starbucks hunched over my beater laptop. I spared her (and myself) a truthful answer but did have to tell her my dog, whom she grew up with, had died in August (while I was still hunched over my beater laptop composing commentaries like this one instead of swinging children around by the arms or playing with dogs).

2 thoughts on ““No Stigma Zone”: A Case for VAWA Grants’ Being Issued to Provide All Government Offices with Dictionaries so Their Employees Can Look Up Words like “Stigma””

  1. great post… though I think it to be more like missing the planet for the dirt.

    However…Reading the portion of my appeals decision below it seems they are not unaware only that the lower courts may be unconcerned with the collateral damages they cause.

    Appellate courts lack jurisdiction to decide moot controversies. See Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n v. Jones, 1 S.W.3d 83, 86 (Tex. 1999). However, several intermediate courts of appeals have reviewed challenges to expired protective orders under the collateral consequences exception to the mootness doctrine on the ground that the “effects of a protective order carry significant collateral legal repercussions and a social stigma even though the protective order has expired.” State for Prot. of Cockerham v. Cockerham, 218 S.W.3d 298, 303 (Tex. App.—Texarkana 2007, no pet.)

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    1. Arizona views it this way also.

      ¶8 As a preliminary matter, we consider whether the injunctions’ expiration during the pendency of this appeal renders the issue moot. See A.R.S. § 12-1809(J) (injunction expires one year after service). Generally, an appeal becomes moot and subject to dismissal if this court’s resolution of the appeal would no longer affect the parties. Cardoso v. Soldo, 230 Ariz. 614, 617, ¶ 5, 277 P.3d 811, 814 (App. 2012). But this rule is a matter of prudential restraint, subject to our discretion. Id. Among other exceptions, we may decline to dismiss on this basis if a party may continue to suffer collateral consequences tied to the otherwise moot issue. Id. at 617–18, ¶ 9, 277 P.3d
      at 814–15.

      ¶9 The injunctions at issue here may carry such collateral consequences because of potential reputational harm to the Visors. See Cardoso, 230 Ariz. at 618, ¶ 12, 277 P.3d at 815 (ongoing reputational harm and stigma are appropriately considered in determining whether an appeal from an expired order of protection should be dismissed on the basis of mootness). Expired injunctions against harassment could impose adverse consequences on enjoined defendants because they remain a part of the court record and are easily located. Accordingly, we conclude that the Visors’ interest in excising ongoing stigma justifies consideration of their appeal.

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