North Carolina Castrators Get Convicted

I have had a lot of people ask me if I hurt people for fun. I usually reply with a quip, "Only if they ask politely". In reality, SM is something much more difficult to describe. We participate in activities most people would consider as painful, and yet we find enjoyment in them. We do lots of things that would shock most "vanilla" folk, but still we have a code of behavior that keeps us safe. We often speak of "safe, sane and consensual" as our bywords. These were invented years ago as a way to explain what we do, not so much as rules. That being said, they are not bad bywords and in fact make pretty good rules.

The safe part is quantifiable. Any activity which causes life threatening harm or irreversible damage is probably not safe. Consensual is an easy definition as well, but the "sane" thing is a gray area. What would constitute "insane behavior"? We as the judge said about pornography, "I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it." In other words it’s a little subjective.

Well the news story that came out a while back about the three guys in North Carolina that were doing backyard castrations and calling it SM, really looked insane to me. After reading more about their activities, I believe that it still qualifies as insane. More to the point, it is a case of people with a real pathological problem finding a willing practitioner to harm them. These guys had people flying in from other countries to have their balls cut off. They are not surgeons and the operation is about as irreversible as it gets. For me that is very hard to understand.

I have thought long and hard about this and still come to the same conclusion. They either were just plain crazy bubbas who wanted to cut guys balls off and post them on the internet (which they did). Or they were people dabbling in SM who got caught up in the role-play and just went too far. Either way what they were doing was not safe or sane though it may have been consensual.

They were convicted of felony castration and maiming. That charge carries some jail time but I think they need something more than that. They need a little real education in SM and some serious counseling to find out what the hell they were thinking! People like these guys make it harder on all the rest of us who are sincere about our BDSM and wish to continue to enjoy ourselves and our partners in safe sane and consensual play.