@Buttonstc The word prejudice means to pre-judge someone based upon assumptions
In many cases there is a pre-judging, even if people want to believe there is not. In this case the pre-judging may not come until after the fact, but it is still there.
Those who unlawfully subject children to sexual activity are not being PRE-judged. The judgement is based upon conviction in a court of law and subsequent classification as a sexual predator.
You have validated the point, the act is what it is, it is determined by the society one lives in to be lawful of not. How one defines it is the pre-judgment. Merriam-Webster says this:
pred•a•tor
noun \ˈpre-də-tər, -ˌtȯr\
: an animal that lives by killing and eating other animals.
: an animal that preys on other animals
: a person who looks for other people in order to use, control, or harm them in some way
If a college jock has sex with a high school sophomore he sure has no plans to kill and eat her. Unless there is evidence to the contrary he has no plan to control her, unless him talking her into something (if she did not pursue him) constitute the level of absolute control, or to the point it was long-lasting, and systemic, not just some fling at a frat party. But as you pointed out the law pre-judges him as someone out to do harm (I guess to all or most females classified as a minor) to be labeled a predator. Who is to know the lass he rolled in the hay with would be the only one, his desire was not for any female classified as a minor simply because they were, to do so shy of a clinical diagnoses of pedophilia, is pre-judging; unless you have something that can refute that?
So how is that pre-judging them? Theyve been judged in a court of law not for their imaginary or future conduct but for what has already transpired.
I understand, they are social pariahs and it is quite easy to disconnect any prejudice against them because of the visceral reaction they cause in most people. If one is to believe they meet the classical definition of predator, that they will seek to attack, or control some female classified as a minor just because she is, they don’t need to know her, they do not have to have any emotions for her. If she falls for him, and he for her, the law will classify him as a predator because that h\is how the government wants to classify the crime for punishment sake, but is he really a predator because his gf whom he feels he loves was classified as underage?
There are laws prohibiting people from driving and using their cell phones. The law makes no distinction that some drivers can multitask well enough to use their cell phones and still be highly attentive to their driving. To make a blanket law is to be pre-judging that anyone using a cell phone driving is diminished, that is a judgment made by government or the will of the voters, but that doesn’t mean it is true and every driver is incapable of driving with their cell phone in hand. Judgments are made of people, situations and things all of the time, some situations or people just get more of it.
In the neighborhood I use to live in, there was a corner liquor store, which was run by people who were mostly from Yemen with a few Kuwaitis. After 9–11 happened they were getting a lot of flax even from people who used the location for years, because they were thought to be of the same nation as the skyjackers, Iranians, or Iraqi. People were upset and wanted to unload on someone to make them pay for bringing down The Towers. All that was really known was that it was people from the Middle East, so insulting, and vandalizing property of anyone that was Middle Eastern was a way, in their mind, to even the score. What something is said to be, and what it really is on occasion are different.