In the ‘food for thought’ category of articles comes this one from the Guardian – Rough sex excuse in women’s deaths is variation of ‘crime of passion’. It addresses the growing use of BDSM as an excuse/defense by men when tried for killing women, based on a study by Prof Elizabeth Yardley. It’s not exactly the kind of BDSM article I usually feature here, but I think it’s an important issue for all kinky people to be aware of.
My limited reading of a few of the cases involved suggested a couple of things to me. Firstly, that the men involved were all monsters and deserved to be jailed for a very long time. Secondly, what they were doing looked nothing like BDSM as practiced by regular kinky people. It seems like violent abuse with rough sex gone wrong tacked on at the end as an excuse. I therefore found this somewhat odd…
She concluded that the normalisation of BDSM “has enabled abusers to justify and excuse fatal violence against women using formal sex equality and women’s liberation against them”.
The problem to me doesn’t look like the normalization of BDSM, but the acceptance by the courts that this behavior is a form of it and that this in turn acts as mitigation. BDSM wasn’t a gateway to their behavior. It appears to be a fig leaf hastily grabbed after the fact. Consensual kink has always been with us. So, sadly, has domestic violence. We clearly shouldn’t let the recognition of the former be twisted into an excuse for the assholes guilty of the latter. By way of analogy, the normalization of motor sports doesn’t provide an excuse for someone causing a fatal accident when driving at 90mph through a school zone.
Long prison sentences are clearly deserved for anyone guilty of domestic violence. Although another potential direction to adopt would be shorten a few things.
I’m not sure who the artist of this piece is. It has some similarities with work by Juan Payal and Stig, but I don’t believe it’s either of them.
Great and meaningful post. So spot on, and keeping it real. Said with style and class, and a bit of wit. And that image – oh my!
Celeste
Thanks for the nice words! Glad you liked the image 🙂
-paltego
Well said. I’d be a wee bit more merciful. Give the offenders a choice between 1) long prison sentences 2) chemical castration or 3) surgical castration.
Diane
I’m generally a fan of prison reform and reducing the number of people given custodial sentences. But after reading some of these cases, I’d happily lock those particular offenders up and throw the key away.
-paltego