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CallaFirestormBW -> RE: Your HARD LIMITS (12/30/2010 2:03:31 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RLMK
quote:
ORIGINAL: Toppingfrmbottom
Technically a lot of bdsm is considered illegal. You can't consent to being beaten or battered or anything the law considers assault.
Just an FYI, people do all the time - its why you don't go to prison for knocking out an opponent in the boxing ring.
Actually, from a legal standpoint, this is not accurate. Boxing, football, rugby, etc., are considered sports, and a knock-out within the confines of the boxing ring, when performed according to the rules of the sport, is not typically prosecuted. This, along with the "showmanship" guidelines, are also the reason that you don't see most professional wrestlers going to jail, either -- but every so often someone crosses the line, and those individuals typically -are- arrested and even prosecuted and convicted.
However, outside of the boundaries of a sport with defined rules (including injuries caused by excessive force or committed outside the rules of the sport, even -during- a match), there is no lawful way to consent to these activities. When there are no defined rules in place, according to my dad (who is a recently retired judge) it leaves too much open to interpretation. This means that, while a boxer who is abiding by the rules probably won't be arrested for knocking out an opponent, if that same boxer does not abide by the rules (continues to beat the opponent after he's down, uses weights in his gloves, etc.) he would likely be arrested, and there would be a decent chance of conviction.
For BDSM, my dad says that there's just too much "open ground" -- how does the law account for things like coercion, and how does a cop or judge discern between "allowable damage" and "excessive damage" when there are no clearly defined rules. Even within the BDSM "community" we can't agree among ourselves about when is "too much" and whether or not people should have the right to consent to whatever they want to consent to... so how is the law supposed to make determinations. Because of this, BDSM is -not- considered, legally, like a sport, and has NO legal standing. The only reason people are not arrested for this when groups meet is because most groups -do- put definable boundaries in place (and in some areas, even that isn't enough, and BDSM clubs -are- raided... though it's most often commercial establishments that get raided, not small private groups or individual homes).
According to my dad, even in the small city that he was a judge in for 45 years there are a few arrests a year for "domestic violence" that turn out to be BDSM related. He said that before he knew more about the community (because I've been educating him for almost 20 years now), he would send the "perpetrator" (usually the dominant party) to jail in a heartbeat -- now, he said I've made his life harder, because he spends a lot more time trying to sort out the truth behind these -- but he reminded me that most judges simply don't have the same experiences to give a royal toot. They will most often abide by "community standards" in these cases -- meaning that the perpetrator will be convicted of "domestic violence" and will typically serve at least -some- jail time.
Calla
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