Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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ORIGINAL: pixelslave
If you adjust your "package", you could also be arrested for lewd behavior whether you realize it or not.
Wow. Is this really the case "over there"? I'm sorry for asking, it just seems incredible.
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And certain kinds of public speach are regulated as well.
In some areas, yes, public speech is regulated. But in most western countries, this is notso much related to the content, as to the nature of such speech. For instance, you can claim the holocaust didn't happen, but you can't incite violence against jews. To me, this is a sensible distinction between the freedom of speech and the management of spontaneous violence.
Freedom of speech exists for the sole purpose of defending the right to make unpopular and/or offensive statements.
Think about it, carefully. Popular and/or inoffensive statements need no protection under law, and a right to make such statements is not necessary, it is a given. These laws exist to allow us to criticise, to encourage change, and to challenge the status quo.
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People can be arrested in many communities for shouting obscenities. If not for that, they'll arrest them for some related crime such as being a "public nuisance", regardless of how difficult that might be in your mind to define.
Being a public nuisance is fairly simple to define. When you're shouting it, raving around in a threatening manner, or otherwise clearly making a nuisance of yourself, in public, you are a public nuisance. Fairly straight forward. When you're making a statement, be it verbal or nonverbal, without doing so in an agressive manner (shouting, threatening, etc.), then you're just exercising your right to free speech.
Anyone being arrested for cussing by themselves, holding a public speech, or anything like that, is being arrested in violation of the intent of the law, or lives in a country that has no respect for the individual.
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With all that said, I firmly believe in SSC - Safe, Sane & Consensual play.
I believe most people on this board do, for some definition of the three terms involved. That definition shows a lot of interindividual variation, however.
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When we do WIITWD, to me its important that we don't involve others without their informed consent. Its my opinion, that public scenes which involve bystanders do EXACTLY that and therefore by definition violate the precepts of playing as SSC kinksters.
I'd beg to differ. It's a matter of degree.
When an acquaintance (I'll never go so far as to say "friend" in her case) was leading her boyfriend on a leash and jokingly tried to convince the busdriver that she should pay the fare for 1 adult and 1 pet, that was in good taste, and did not involve anyone else in their kink any more than kissing him in public would have. Indeed, I'd say far less.
Slightly stronger is the case of the Folsom Street Fair, which might be construed as being inappropriate, except that it's obviously a special event, similar to a gay rights parade/fair. In the opinions of some, this might be over the line, but I don't think so, since the community is a minority that is lacking important rights and recognitions.
In order to find things that are actually legally and perhaps ethically wrong, and require the consent of the general public, you will have to look to examples analogous to things already covered by existing laws and ethics. Displaying a different orientation in public is IMO no different for power-exchange relationships than for LGBT-relationships
I'll use discipline as an example: A stern talking-to, or a quiet "that will sting when we get home", is entirely acceptable. A face slap would be over the line in an area that would not allow you to discipline your children in a similar way (e.g. single spank to the buttocks), but not in an area that does allow that. A whipping would be over the line in either case, as it has no acceptable parallell, and would be covered under assault/battery, even if consensual (just like it is when it happens in the home).
Fetish clothing is obviously acceptable if it doesn't inherently violate the legal standards of your community. The ethics question is the potential kicker, of course, so would you consider it okay to be dressed as a punk? A hippie? A goth? How about a neo-nazi? Goths wear collars all the time, so that would seem acceptable. A leash might be considered offensive, but for most of us, the leash isn't explicitly sexual in nature, so I'd say it's equivalent to holding hands in public from an ethics point of view. As for the offense, people get to wear religious symbols that may be offensive to the religious majority, such as pentacles, upside-down crosses, or even in some areas the sun cross. The leash is no worse in this respect.
Sexual activities? Those are already prohibited, so nothing special there. They don't fly.
Crawling? Gray area. Posing? People do that all the time, so that's all good. Kneeling? Looking at it from the objective perspective, it's not any different from sitting down in an uncommon way, e.g. the lotus position, which is how I wait for my bus and something that occasionally draws a glare. If you're considering it from the content/context/meaning perspective, it is no different than couples staring adoringly at each other, which most people find outright positive. Hence, nothing new here.
Foot fetishism or similar might be questionable, since it's hard to define the camp that this fits in. If you think of it as sexual, it would be equivalent to public sex, which may be illegal and/or unethical, depending on laws and ethical standards, respectively. Personally, I'd equate it to LGBT couples "french" kissing with similar intensity in public. The French call it "english" kissing, btw.
Many people dislike public breastfeeding (of babies, I mean), yet most places seem to allow this. A toddler sucking a breast can hardly be said to be objectively better than an adult sucking a toe, to put it bluntly. That said, I wouldn't consider either to be suitable in a very public area like, say, Burger King, although I'd say it's okay in a less public area, such as a remote corner of a park or somesuch.
Legal and ethical standards apply equally to vanilla people. Nothing special here.
If it's illegal, don't do it unless you want to get arrested. If it would be unethical for a vanilla person to do it, without the meanings we put into it, it's unethical for you to do as well. If vanilla behaviour with equivalent emotional or sexual content, or equivalent meaning, would be unethical, then it's unethical for you.
Obviously, there are limits to what is appropriate in public, as for anyone, but I don't think our lifestyle requires any considerations that wouldn't be the case for the vanilla population as well.
I noticed you are from Texas, so it might be useful, in order to understand your position, if you elaborate on how far it would be okay by you for an LGBT couple to go in public. That might give grounds for comparison, as many people find that offensive, yet it arguably is ethical, IMO. People have a right to display their relationships and their affection in public, and the manner in which they may do so is really the question.
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When that happens it hurts all in the lifestyle, not just those who created a particular problem when the police have been called or offended bystanders who observed a spectacle that was created which they have no way of understanding and to which some of us in the lifestyle might understand but wouldn't necessarily agree with anyway.
A lot of SSC play has hurt the lifestyle. Or, to be precise, the public and media response to a lot of SSC play has been harmful.
With any kind of alternative relationship, it will take a lot of time to get it accepted as legal, and even more time to make it socially acceptable to the majority. And some people will always take offense. LGBT couples have only recently received this status in Europe, and it seems it will be a while before they get such status in the USA.
BDSM, of any kind, is either an alternative relationship form, alternative sexuality, or both. Social acceptance does not come from hiding it away and treating it as something "dirty", "shameful" or forbidden. It comes from standing up, fighting for recognition, and demanding equal rights.
Womens' suffrage did not come about because women passively talked about it among themselves, it came about because they fought for it. LGBT rights did not come about from pretending to be straight, hiding one's relationships, and so forth; it took a lot of activism and lobbying, and is an ongoing process.
And for both of these cases, there were people who claimed that what these avant-gardes were doing was wrong, that it was harming those that kept their lives secret, that they were breaking the surface. Yet it was necessary for progress.
I don't play in public, just as I don't have sex in public. But I have no issues with displaying my relationship in public, except insofar as doing so might inconvenience myself, my partner, my friends or my family. "Coming out" is still a sensitive thing, but this remains the case for LGBT as well, and the reason is not that it's unethical, illegal or somesuch; the reason is that people aren't comfortable with the reactions they will receive. If you don't care about these reactions, or the people your care about already know, there's no reason why you shouldn't have the same variant freedoms as vanilla people: expressing non-sexual affection, etc.
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RE: how to humiliate a man - 
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Thanks for looking up stuff for all the posters.
A bystander could object to my spitting on the sidewalk, littering, or walking on the courtyard grass. In many, if not most places there are laws against those things as well. If you adjust your "package", you could also be arrested for lewd behavior whether you realize it or not. And certain kinds of public speach are regulated as well. People can be arrested in many communities for shouting obscenities. If not for that, they'll arrest them for some related crime such as being a "public nuisance", regardless of how difficult that might be in your mind to define. 
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