Some of the basic submissive rights

[leah06]

Fetishdj, I'm not sure about not legally consenting to harm. I mean, people get pierced and tattooed and have elective cosmetic surgery. I think that, in general, although it differs in some states, battery is an unconsensual touching of a certain kind; you can generally consent to physical contact, even violent contact, again with some exceptions.

What you can't do anywhere is contract away your ability to withdraw consent in the future. You can't actually play without a safeword, legally, because the ordinary words, stop, no, I don't consent will be construed as a withdrawal of the earlier consent NO MATTER WHAT was previously agreed about the meaning of those words. The perpetrator might argue that he misunderstood and therefore did not intend to transgress the withdrawal of consent, but he will be on very shaky ground.

This is not given as competent legal advice; please don't structure your life around this, but I don't want people to think that you can't give consent to rough stuff, ever.

[fetishdj]

Fetishdj, I'm not sure about not legally consenting to harm. I mean, people get pierced and tattooed and have elective cosmetic surgery. I think that, in general, although it differs in some states, battery is an unconsensual touching of a certain kind; you can generally consent to physical contact, even violent contact, again with some exceptions.

What you can't do anywhere is contract away your ability to withdraw consent in the future. You can't actually play without a safeword, legally, because the ordinary words, stop, no, I don't consent will be construed as a withdrawal of the earlier consent NO MATTER WHAT was previously agreed about the meaning of those words. The perpetrator might argue that he misunderstood and therefore did not intend to transgress the withdrawal of consent, but he will be on very shaky ground.

This is not given as competent legal advice; please don't structure your life around this, but I don't want people to think that you can't give consent to rough stuff, ever.

Elective surgery (cosmetic or otherwise) comes under special regulations with respect to consent because there are ethical committees at each and every hospital who discuss each and every treatment and make a judgement as to the benefit/risk assessment of each one before they allow them to be used. This means that there is a careful consideration of the risks before the procedure is carried out both in general (we as a hospital beleive this procedure is benficial because the risks are outweighted by the potential improvement in prognosis) and specific to a single patient (I as a doctor beleive that this procedure will not be a risk to this patient for these reasons...). There is also the issue of medical council registration (BMA or AMA or General Medical council). If a doctor makes a bad call, going against an ethical committee decision, they can lose their registration.

Tatoos, piercings and similar are also managed by a similar system of registration and a piercer/tatooist can lose thier license if they do not follow the strict regulations.

BDSM is not covered by any such overarching body. Dom/mes (professional or otherwise) are not registered with any central body and while we do tend to follow a set of universal guidelines (SSC or RACK, depends which you prefer) these are not considered legally binding - they are merely a set of guidelines that all in the lifestyle tend to follow. Therefore, any contract or consent form between two BDSM lifestylers claiming that one gives the other permission to harm them in any way is unlikely to be supported by a judge in a court of law. Therefore, if a sub and a Dom fall out and the sub decides to sue the Dom for GBH and the Dom presents the contract/consent form the judge does not have to accept it as evidence that the sub did consent. Similarly, if the police find evidence of GBH and press criminal charges (which I think they can do in cases of GBH or murder/manslaughter without the involvement of the wronged party) then again the contract is not acceptable as evidence.

Of course, a judge can happily accept it if they so choose but they are not legally obliged to (as they would be for a medical consent form) and if they did this may create a precedent which could affect future cases of this type (which may mean that they are unwilling to accept it in order to avoid this precedent).

Now the above does mainly apply to serious cases and only those cases where there is a cause for the law to get involved - manslaughter, serious injury etc. 'Rough stuff' is probably ok to consent to, just be aware that a court will not take any 'slave contracts' seriously and they will not protect from prosecution if a sub who has consented changes their mind and you 'insist', the sub accidentaly gets more seriously injured than you intended or (worst case scenario, and these do happen...) the sub dies due to something which could be due to the BDSM activity.

[Miner]

Elective surgery (cosmetic or otherwise)

BDSM is not covered by any such overarching body. Dom/mes (professional or otherwise) are not registered with any central body and while we do tend to follow a set of universal guidelines (SSC or RACK, depends which you prefer) these are not considered legally binding - they are merely a set of guidelines that all in the lifestyle tend to follow. Therefore, any contract or consent form between two BDSM lifestylers claiming that one gives the other permission to harm them in any way is unlikely to be supported by a judge in a court of law. Therefore, if a sub and a Dom fall out and the sub decides to sue the Dom for GBH and the Dom presents the contract/consent form the judge does not have to accept it as evidence that the sub did consent. Similarly, if the police find evidence of GBH and press criminal charges (which I think they can do in cases of GBH or murder/manslaughter without the involvement of the wronged party) then again the contract is not acceptable as evidence.

Of course, a judge can happily accept it if they so choose but they are not legally obliged to (as they would be for a medical consent form) and if they did this may create a precedent which could affect future cases of this type (which may mean that they are unwilling to accept it in order to avoid this precedent).

Now the above does mainly apply to serious cases and only those cases where there is a cause for the law to get involved - manslaughter, serious injury etc. 'Rough stuff' is probably ok to consent to, just be aware that a court will not take any 'slave contracts' seriously and they will not protect from prosecution if a sub who has consented changes their mind and you 'insist', the sub accidentaly gets more seriously injured than you intended or (worst case scenario, and these do happen...) the sub dies due to something which could be due to the BDSM activity.

Not sure about other jurisdictions - but I have a feeling the response might be the same as here...

BDSM activity would still fall foul of the zero tolerance attitudes to domestic violence and result in a likely successful prosecution for assault and battery by the dom and (even worse perhaps) successful prosecution against the sub for aiding and abetting domestic violence (even though the sub would also class as the victim of domestic violence).

In other words - if the police or legal system get involved in any way as a result of BDSM activity it could turn nasty for the lifestylers.

The above was a bit off topic - the original post was excellent advice to all

[fetishdj]

Not sure about other jurisdictions - but I have a feeling the response might be the same as here...

BDSM activity would still fall foul of the zero tolerance attitudes to domestic violence and result in a likely successful prosecution for assault and battery by the dom and (even worse perhaps) successful prosecution against the sub for aiding and abetting domestic violence (even though the sub would also class as the victim of domestic violence).

In other words - if the police or legal system get involved in any way as a result of BDSM activity it could turn nasty for the lifestylers.

The above was a bit off topic - the original post was excellent advice to all

Yes, we are off topic slightly...

I think the main reason why the law is like this in most places is to protect against domestic violence. There are so many cases of this where the victim appears to consent to it but has been bullied into doing so. So if you open up a loophole like a BDSM contract then a lot more abusive bastards will slip through the net and BDSM will get tarred with a 'domestic violence' brush which will do our already beleagured PR campaign no end of harm.

Back on topic... any moves towards getting the original post put somewhere so all can read it? Doesn't need to be a sticky - it could be posted somewhere seperate (in the story section? In a section on its own dedicated to information for new people?) with a link to it at the top (saying 'information for those new to the lifestyle'). Add some more useful newbie FAQs (which we can easily get from a quick trawl of the forums) and we have a useful resource.