marie2
Posts: 1690
Joined: 11/4/2008
From: Jersey
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quote:
ORIGINAL: CallaFirestormBW
So let me try to understand this -- you, as someone who has some exposure and experience, and even chooses to do risky activities on your own, would be harsher on a person who had -learned- about the risks of what they were going to participate in, and who knowingly consented to accepting responsibility for those risks than on a dumb idiot or non-consensual offender who acted without the full knowledge and consent of his companion/victim?
Firstly, I didn't mention anything about victimizing a "non-consentual" person. I refered to a hypothetical defendent who knew the risk vs one who didn't.
I would be harsher on someone (in any circumstance, bdsm or otherwise) who knew the risk of death and decided to chance it anyway. That's one of the critieria that separates the degrees of manslaughter; knowledge that you were doing something reckless and dangerous. Bdsmer's don't get a free pass on that. As a juror, I'm not supposed to apply personal bias, I'm bound to deliberate within the guidelines of the law. The same law that everyone else has to live by, including myself. It's all part of taking "responsiblity" (like you said) for the "consequences" of your choices. And one of the possible consequences of this action is that you'll be tried in a court of law the same as anyone else. If you cause someone's death having had full knowledge of that risk, you face the same consequences that a non-bdsmer faces who causes death by participating in something knowingly life-risking.
But it's not about what Marie2 would do. I used myself as an example to make a point. The point is that anyone on a jury could see it from the same angle I did, so I wanted to present that as food for thought to the OP. Taking it a thought futher-- How would that consent document (if it WAS allowable discovery in a case) make sense to a jury of non-bdsmers? I doubt this hypothetical defendent is going to get a jury of his peers who understand bdsm. I don't think that jury box is going to be filled with twelve official, card-carrying, RACK certified, "lifestylers". It's going to be a bunch of regular people. Those regular Joes and Janes sitting in that box are going to see "sex play that went too far, and a girl who ended up getting strangled to death for a thrill and an orgasm", because you know what, that's exactly what it is, when you remove the romantic bdsm packaging and the fancy acronyms. It's two people who respectively risked death, and a life sentence in jail, for a thrill. And now you live with consequences of your informed choice. The same as anyone else would have to.
quote:
Would you have the same philosophy when dealing with drug companies who gave dangerous drugs to people after doing no preliminary studies to determine the risks of the drug and without offering an informed consent, on the grounds that they "just didn't KNOW what that drug might do -- but we decided to try it anyway" or a doctor who did unauthorized, untested research on unsuspecting patients on the grounds of "well, I was in a hurry, and really, I just didn't know it would kill them, you know... it -might- have helped, if they hadn't died."?
Again, you're throwing "non-consent" into the mix. I'm speaking of "knowledge of risk vs no knowledge of risk" as it directly applies to the degrees of manslaughter and/or murder. Yes, hypothetically the girl consented, but the courts don't recognize written consent from dead bodies.
quote:
The purpose of informed consent is to place the responsibility for decisions regarding potential life and death or grave-illness-causing situations on the individual choosing to participate, with the understanding that xhe's been informed of the possible risks. To throw that responsibility back on the other participant as being solely and completely hir fault unless they were both uninformed and ignorant is contrary to all of the tenets of ethical participation and acceptance of personal responsibility.
Is this quoted legal statute?
quote:
If informed consent documentation is good enough for lethal-drug medical trials and base jumping, it should be good enough for kinky sex. The only reason that it wouldn't be would be because of puritanical pre-judgement of the sexual/fetish aspects, rather than the basis of informed consent and contract law.
It looks like you're leaning to the other extreme. You actually seem to want partiality and leniency for bdsmers, without considering the fact that if there's a dead body involved, the victim can't swear that they signed the consent, or that they weren't forced or coerced to sign the consent. Which is probably why it doesn't hold water. And I don't know about the drug cases you're referencing, so I can't offer my thoughts on that.
< Message edited by marie2 -- 1/22/2009 1:42:56 PM >
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