The Glade 4.0

What level of harm is acceptable between consenting adults?
Can you consent to be harmed but not consent to be killed
however you can consent to risking being killed?

If someone consents to something that robs them of the ability to give consent is what happens later ok? (not just thinking sex, what about being knocked or choked out)

I know what the laws say (at least around here) but where do you stand ethically?

And where does mental illness fit in here. A self destructive person or depressed person may legally be able to consent to high risk behavior?

If For example I consent to allow myself to be whipped but my whipper knows I seek this because if some past abuse, and will only perpetuate my low self image, is it wrong of the whipper to follow through?

You can consent to anything for yourself.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

You are not only discussing mental illness, but also a very active form of fetishism. It is hard to address one but not the other.

I'd suggest talking about it with a professional, or even an amateur (we have at least one among us) dominatrix. You would probably get a lot more information through PMs than they would subject the rest of the community to in a thread.

My feelings on it is that the act of self or paid mutilation is a fetish, that most of it is legal, and for those who truly want it, need it, can't live without it, there is a living to be made by people willing to do it. Think Tattoos and Piercings at the low end, to the professional dominatrix - many of whom do not allow sex, but will beat and humiliate to your heart's delight at the other end, at several hundred dollars a session. Reportedly, most of their customers are highly paid professional men who come off as alpha males but have their deep dark secret.

Finding someone like the professional beat down artist featured in Dirty Harry is a lot harder.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

you know... I do not know how far it is considered to be moral or ethical. I can only echo Micheal's words.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

I guess in lieu of therapy there is nothing wrong what you laid out above. Much better for someone to have a safe outlet for their mental issue/hang-up than to fall into a cycle of escalating abusive relationships.

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I know what the law says, and I know what I consider ethical in my own relationships. There are two major schools of thought within the kink community: SSC (safe, sane and consensual) and RACK (risk aware consensual kink). All of the possibly damaging stuff generally comes in under the RACK heading, and the GOOD 'players' are the ones who understand and respect limits while pushing boundaries. The best of them are also adept at recognizing and avoiding unhealthy patterns of behaviour.

Personally, none.

"harm" is far too far.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Make sure you have a safe word.

Make sure your partner is someone that you trust to stop when you use said safe word.

Play.

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Holy shitsnacks!

If you engage in risky behavior, accidents are acceptable. However, if you do something that any reasonable person would expect to harm another, you're in for some trouble.

Which type is the kind that gets pissed off when you tell their 'sub' to move the car because its in a fire lane while they (the 'Dom') ar inside the gas station?

(I had this happen once; apologies if I told this story before)

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

DE:

The kind who shouldn't be playing in the first place. That would have been a lifestyle Dom of the not right in the head category.

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I haven't heard it

So what happened?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Did you see the episode of "Modern Family" where the gay son gets bumped by the redneck's truck and Bozo comes to his defense? It was like that.

And then there's the old joke than when the masochist says "beat me!" the TRUE sadist says "No."

The sub moved the car rather than get a ticket. The Dom was informed that the police are not concrende with, and do not need to respect, whatever code of sexual roleplaying ethics they observe in order to enforce the traffic laws.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That would mean professional fighters such as boxers or mixed martial artists are performing an unacceptable job.

And what about full contact sports? Injury is definitely something you consent to the possibility of when you participate in gridiron football, soccer, basketball, rugby, hockey etc.

Do you find that to be too far? I'm not challenging you, I am just curious.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

Well, I looked up "harm" in the dictionary: physical injury, esp. that which is deliberately inflicted.

Now, folks who "consent to the possibility" are totally different than folks who engage with "harm" as the objective of whatever peccadillo they seek. I see a distinct difference between those behaviors. Further, to specifically address your post, the extreme forms of boxing and martial arts fall in that same category, in my opinion.

"Society should discourage folks who intend to cause harm to others" is a broad but acceptable position, in my opinion. Consent is irrelevant.

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In time, this too shall pass.

What about football and hockey where the intention isn't necessarily harm (i.e. the rules don't reward inflicting injury), but the rules of the game invariably mean the players suffer a high chance of injury?

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

If the intention isn't to harm, then I'm OK with it.

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In time, this too shall pass.

So Takiss, consenting adults cannot engage in activity which leads to bruising? Scarring or bleeding?

So, as a direct question: Suppose I want someone to cane me. Do you believe I have the right to consent to a caning? I know what the law says... what do you believe?

I can only reiterate what I've already posted, Taamar - I don't think people should harm one another, consensually or otherwise. It's a behavior I think should be discouraged. I have no idea if canning causes harm... like anything I suppose it's quite possible to go there without harming one another and it's also quite possible to go there and do great harm.

There are always circumstances one can postulate to illustrate the boundary between what is and what isn't "harm". I'm totally not qualified to judge which side every conceivable act falls on, harm or no harm, so I really don't see need to go there.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Why don't you actually go out on a limb and state your opinion instead of sitting back and letting others expose their beliefs for public consumption?

Yeah, I know that doesn't always go so well for you, but still. It will go a long way towards not making you look like a troll. 'Cause, you know, that's one sign of a troll - starting potentially controversial topics and encouraging folks to pile on from both sides while sitting back unexposed.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The problem here is that "harm" can mean a number of different things:

1) It can mean any action that inflicts discomfort, however small. This is the definition usually used when determining if something is legally assault or not.

2) It can exclude things that cause pain but not anything that causes any sort of visible injury. People often use this when determining whether a corporal punishment is too severe or not.

3) It can exclude any sort of force that does not cause significant injury; significant being anything that reduces the ability of the body to perform some function.

Taskiss apparently is using 3, not considering things like, say, caning harmful becuase they don't (generally) cause any injury beyond the cosmetic. Others are using a more stringent definition of harm.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

^ this

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In time, this too shall pass.