--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> 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/>
>
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