For most people who are into BDSM, fetishism, and other sorts of kinky sex, it's really simple. It's all just theater. But, for some on the extreme end, it isn't.
<blockquote><http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0351,savage,49509,24.html> Savage Love The 'German Cannibals Gone Wild!' Story by Dan Savage December 17 - 23, 2003
Bernd Brandes was recorded on video in 2001 eating his own penis. Brandes isn't an auto-fellator, like others who've written in, but a man who wanted to be eaten by a cannibal. He found one on the Internet, and allowed this man to cut off his penis and fry it in a pan. Brandes's penis was overcooked and rather tough, it turns out, but the man who fried it, Armin Meiwes, killed Brandes anyway and ate other parts of him. Meiwes told a German court two weeks ago that eating Brandes was like taking Communion. What do you think? Is Meiwes—who had the presence of mind to videotape himself asking Brandes if he wanted to be killed and eaten before killing and eating him—guilty of murdering his alleged victim, or is he guilty of a lesser crime? And why did The Washington Post not include the bit about the penis in a recent story about the trial? Why has media coverage about this been so light in this country and so intense elsewhere? —Something's Eating Me
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Anyway, is Meiwes guilty of murder? At the very real risk of pissing off the "cannibal community"—and yes, Virginia, there is a cannibal community ("cannibal supporters" have been attending Meiwes's trial, lending him their "moral" support)—I take a hard-line position on cannibalism. I just think it's wrong. Meiwes may have had his victim's consent—Brandes's consumption was not only videotaped but also devoutly wished for—but there are times when the very act of giving your consent proves you're not competent to give your consent. A perfectly healthy person who consents to his own sexualized murder, for instance, and eats his own tough, overcooked penis before being killed, is in need of mental help, not meat tenderizer. His consent is meaningless, and obtaining it does not exonerate the man who murdered him. But guess what? Despite the fact that he videotaped his crime—the tape is four and a half hours long, will likely be released to the public during the ongoing trial, and includes video of Meiwes butchering Brandes "in a 'slaughtering room' he had built [in his farmhouse] containing meat hooks, a cage, and a butcher's table"—Meiwes may not go to prison for long. Or at all. Cannibalism is not a crime under German law, and since Brandes volunteered—and since Meiwes can prove it—under German law this may not be murder. Just dinner.</blockquote>
In the first trial, Meiwes was convicted of only manslaugher and sentenced to eight and a half years, but the case was appealed, and he eventually got convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, the German government and jury probably taking the same position as Dan Savage's: "there are times when the very act of giving your consent proves you're not competent to give your consent."
Though usually not as lurid as this case, the idea of consent -- the bedrock of political liberalism -- does raise interesting philosophical questions at its extremes. Can one consent to having oneself killed? The right to assisted suicide has yet to become legal in most nations. At what age can one become competent to consent to sex or marriage? The ages of consent vary greatly from nation to nation. Etc. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>