Noah
Posts: 1660
Joined: 7/5/2005 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: octavia quote:
ORIGINAL: OnyxDelphi It all depends on your personal relationship with the person. I would never do that to someone who didn't first allow me to do it to them. Hence, no real abuse. Another person's acceptance of your bad behavior does not negate it. It doesn't negate the behavior (I'm not even sure what that would mean) but it can negate the badness. Isn't that concept at the heart of consensual BDSM? Behaviors, such as spanking, bondage, etc, which are generally thought of as bad things to do--in many cases abusive--are transformed by the mutual acceptance of the parties involved. Are there behaviors beyond the pale of such transformation? I think so. Murder would be one. But Octavia, just because certain behaviors would be abusive if applied to you, be slow to conclude that these are objectively "abusive behaviors" as murder is. Is it abusive to take someone on a Ferris Wheel ride? If you are deathly afraid of heights and were repeatedly subjected to this torture in your youth by some unethically sadistic person, then maybe it is abusive, for you. That doesn't make everyone else on the Ferris Wheel sadomasochistic. If, however, you have transcended that early influence and now find it thrilling, even erotic to be "subjected" to this sort of thing, you may consent to it. It is your consent ("other person's acceptance") which transforms the behavior from bad to good, or great, as I see it. What do you think? Consent isn't simple. It is easy to think of adequate and inadequate (for instance, violently coerced) consent. I don't think that the presence of any kind of consent whatsoever tells the whole story. Still, to suggest that that "the other person's acceptance" cannot make right a behavior which would otherwise be wrong seems itself flat wrong to me. I wonder if you would accept that?
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