The idea that there is a special case for consensualbdsm
Graham Marsden, 16 Oct 2005 02:53:17
av8r0344@hotmail.com wrote:
> by alligning ourselves with the areas such as Necrophilia and
> Bestiality that the law does specifically target, we risk losing
> the important legal and moral gains that the community has won
> over the years.
We in the BDSM community are *not* "aligning ourselves" with these
areas, we have been *lumped in* with them by these proposals.
Whether this is through ignorance or malice, I don't know, but we cannot
*not* fight these proposals because of that.
> And perhaps most importantly, a key part of the govts case in the
> proposed legislation is based on the fact that the images to be
> banned would only be of acts which would already be illegal.
>
> The majority of BDSM clearly DOES NOT fall within this "illegal"
> category.
That isn't the relevant point. IF someone chooses to consensually
participate in what *appears* to be "an illegal act" how can that be
distinguished from a picture of an *actual* illegal act?
As I've mentioned before, there's a whole area of "Goth" photography
that involves "death" images, eg attractive girls covered with blood and
apparently dead etc.
Now personally it does nothing for me, but under the proposals, those
pictures, even though posed by consenting models and being fantasy
images, would most probably be made illegal and you could get three
years in jail for just *looking* at them.
That, to me, is simply nonsensical and not acceptable.
> [> These people think that the image itself "is abuse". There
> is no chance in hell that they are going to wake up smell the
> coffee and say that images of consensual bdsm are cute and fluffy.]
>
> They dont have to. We already have the law, and public opinion (for
> consensual SM, but NOT for bestiality, necro, etc), on our side.
But the point is that we are being tarred with one *huge* brush that, as
I said, lumps us in with what the Home Office considers "unacceptable"
and it would be naiive to expect that we could get a nice neat
demarcation line drawn between "us" and "them".
We would get caught in the backlash(!!) along with a lot of other stuff,
by a law that would, I don't doubt, be drafted *much* too widely and
that is something that I won't stand for.
> Furthermore the current edition of the House of Parliaments own
> magazine has a full article from SM pride in it.
>
> http://uksmpride.org/files/HouseArticle.pdf
>
> There has never been a better time to push this agenda.
>
> And whilst I do agree with pursuing the Backlash 'free speech'
> platform that is capable of bringing in a wider coalition of
> groups, I really feel we would be very remiss, almost negligent
> in fact, in not simultaneously pursuing the BDSM case.
I have no objection to us "pursuing the BDSM case", however the
arguments have currently been that we should *only* rely on the BDSM
case as our main argument and "give in" on all the other parts in the
(IMO vain) hope that this will somehow give us an advantage.
Cheers,
Graham.
AV8R, 16 Oct 2005 03:19:10
> I have no objection to us "pursuing the BDSM case", however the
> arguments have currently been that we should *only* rely on the BDSM
> case as our main argument and "give in" on all the other parts in the
> (IMO vain) hope that this will somehow give us an advantage.
> Cheers,
> Graham.
Well, I have repeatedly stated that the Free Speech case is valid, and should be pursued with as wide a coalition as possible, and I am wholly supportive of that.
However, it is needlessly risky to put all the BDSM community's eggs in the free speech basket, and we should also seperately pursue the BDSM case on it's own merits.
The BDSM case is just as strong as the free speech case. Why not try both?
zak, 16 Oct 2005 11:32:06
Original Message:
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av8r0344@hotmail.com, 16 Oct 2005 11:32:06