Judicial Punishment 2 (56)

Well, speak for yourself, chum.

I find consent is the difference between watching a hot scene and calling 999. F'rexample: I went to a fet club and watched two friends push another down a flight of stairs, beat her up and more - and I enjoyed watching that because it was hot and I knew she was enjoying it, however much she was shouting stop. (She had a safeword.)

A few months previous, I'd been walking down my own street when two muggers pushed one of my neighbours down a flight of stairs, beat him up and robbed him. That was *nonconsensual* and I called the police - and was quite upset by it, because it had hurt my neighbour and was upsetting to watch.

In substance the two events were fairly similar but one kept me awake at night for the right reasons and the other for the wrong ones.

So yeah, actually, for me at least, I can't find nonconsensual clips hot. Moral filter: I haz one. YMMV.

(And as for the argument that "well, he knew it might happen, therefore it's consensual" - c'mon. Every time I walk through the park at dusk I know I *might* get mugged or raped, I'm not bloody well consenting to it.)

That doesn't make it consensual - only legal.

Let me present an equivalent scenario for comparison:

Three housemates are sharing a flat, and they all decide, from the outset, to make all decisions on a 'democratic' basis. After a couple of weeks, it turns out that housemate C is a bit messy, and keeps leaving her dirty washing-up out on the side, so housemates A and B call a 'house meeting', during which they present a motion that anyone who leaves dirty washing up in the sink overnight should be punished with a severe caning. Whilst A and B are in favour, C thinks this is barbaric, and wants nothing to do with it. However, the majority have spoken, so one day, when housemate C absent-mindedly leaves a cup out overnight, she subsequently finds herself beaing forcibly held down by housemate A while housemate B administers the severe caning, in spite of her desperate and genuine pleas for it to stop.

So, given that the decision was totally democratic, was the caning of Housemate C consensual?

Edited 9 Feb 10, 12:47 PM by El_Presidente

No, absolutely not, and to extend the analogy, presumably C could not afford to move out.

If one has a divided society, even if it is a democracy, the poor are fundamentally disempowered, even if they do have the vote, and laws that further disempower the poor are fundamnetally bad laws.

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The failure of empathy isn't in imagining yourself in a similar situation, it's in failing to understand that what you are viewing with a licentious eye may be emotionally, physically and/or psychologically devastating to the actual participant. There is a word for being utterly focused on your own needs and desires, but that word isn't "empathy."

All three posters above me have done a better job of illustrating the point I have been trying to make regarding the abandonment of consent in actual JP canings. When the option of choice is removed whether by law, poverty, majority or other circumstance that is larger than the individual, it reeks of moral vacuity to disdain human suffering and distress as the compliant and just deserts of a democratic society.

I'm glad that I can't view that video with a detached and clinical prurience. I see nothing of sadism or masochism in it. I only see a human rights outrage.

love the brave but avoid cowards, knowing the gratitude of cowards is small ~Praxilla of Sicyon

In other words, given a choice, you would consent to the caning?

love the brave but avoid cowards, knowing the gratitude of cowards is small ~Praxilla of Sicyon

I see no real qualitative difference between a badly run foreign jail and a judicial caning,neither appeals particularly but one is over in minutes.

You don't seem to get the point. I am not arguing that it is morally right for such a non-consensual caning to take place, nor that it is morally right that people should get pleasure from seeing it depicted. My point is that what turns us on is not governed by morality because what turns us on is more basic than that. Bringing morality into our gut reaction to such things it is like saying that morality should govern whether we feel hungry or thirsty. These kinds of reactions are in built automatic reactions that we don't have conscious control over, much as we might like to. You persist in arguing about the moral dimension, when my basic point is that the reaction is not governed by morality.

As to the gut reaction of folks like me, shocking as it may be to you, the non-consensuality is an important part of the whole thing. Sick as it may sound to you, I do actually fantasise about being compelled to endure such as ordeal.

Someone else made a comparison with rape. Again the whole point about a rape fantasy is the non-consensuality. It wouldn't be a rape fantasy otherwise, would it? And before you get on your high horse about what a moral outrage rape is, you should understand that there are many who have such fantasies, and, as a sub, I'm talking mainly about people who fantasise about being on the receiving end, not perpetrators.

OK, it's sick. I'd be the first to admit that. But then all kinks are sick to some extent.

Which brings me back to my very first point. If we want people to be tolerant of our own kinks, we need to be prepared to show a little bit of tolerance to other people's kinks, even when we personally find them distasteful.

You seem to have taken the highest horse in the stable already. And with it the ability to philosophically disagree without stooping to personal insults.

love the brave but avoid cowards, knowing the gratitude of cowards is small ~Praxilla of Sicyon