Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sweetNsmartBBW Just because someone 'agrees' to something does not necessarily mean that the person consenting is of sound mind. If not, can they truly consent? A more useful question would be "is their consent valid or meaningful?" Which comes back to whether the right to self-determination exists, and whether it is universal. It also comes down to determining the difference between a person's essential self and any conditions they may be affected by. A depression is superimposed over the essential self, and if it caused a person to seek out self-destruction, that would not be their "true" will. Some forms of schizophrenia, most forms of PDD, and so forth, are fundamental aspects of the essential self, however, and could be considered to express a person's "true" will. In short, is the person consenting, or is something else consenting? Very hard to determine, so I've drawn my line for extreme play at having a professional evaluation for the ability to think rationally about what is involved, along with having said professional evaluate their level of comprehension of what may happen, and what consequences may stem from this, as well as whether they have conditions that may bias their judgment. Many drugs, sleep deprivation, and so forth, are of course also things that void consent in my book. quote:
While I hate to sound like a spoilsport, I strongly suspect that if I were acquainted with a cannibal Dom, and knew He'd found a 'willing' partner (or should that be victim?)- I'd intervene. Question being, would you intervene in the sense of verifying that the partner was "willing", or in the sense of disregarding whether the partner was "willing"? The former is quite understandable. The latter embodies a principle that, if applied universally, does not allow you to practice your own kinks. I think not applying things universally is the very essence of hipocrisy and double standards, so I would not do the latter, unless other reasons compelled me to (like the prospect of being implicated judicially). quote:
After all...not like the submissive is going to have much chance to change their mind, is there? In most such cases, it's not a submissive that's involved, but a fellow fetishist. Apart from that ... no, once an intervention has been done, neither party gets to change their minds about anything. Their minds will be changed with drugs during in-patient "care", regardless of their sanity, because some "illnesses" depend on the status of the surrounding society, not the status of the patient. For instance, you cannot be diagnosed as delusional if the belief you hold is common to your culture or surroundings, but if it is not, you can be. In that respect, the USSR was following "best practices" when it chose to imprison people for holding the "delusional" belief that communism had flaws. I'm not sure either party would consent to you sending them down that road. quote:
It's a difficult thing, though- when does protecting the innocent, or the mentally incompetent become an infringement on individual rights? And I'm not even talking legalities here...just every day stuff... This one is complicated. Suffice to say that there are few people in this world who are mentally competent to manage their own affairs completely.
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"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way. We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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