I was struck by a curious expression I found in a recent NYRB piece:
I faced criminal charges including hair-pulling, hitting during intimacy in one instance, and—the most serious allegation—nonconsensual choking while making out with a woman on a date in 2002.
As opposed to what? Consensual choking? So if you are on a date and the girl consents to being choked, then it is morally acceptable? And what sort of girl wants to be choked? Next stop: erotic asphyxiation. Why not, if it is consensual? You might even try mutual erotic asphyxiation. That might not end well, however. David Carradine's auto-erotic adventure in auto-asphyxiation in a Bangkok hotel room proved to be his last.
From another source, I gather that the hitting mentioned in the quotation is punching a girl in the head against her will. So if she wants to be punched in the head, there is nothing wrong with it?
I'd say we are living in sick times if the consent of the done to is sufficient for the moral acceptability of the doer's deed.
I'll leave it to you to work out why.
Related entry: Real Enough to Debase, but not to Satisfy
UPDATE (9/16)
A reader expands our vocabulary of depravity with a link to donkey punch. Not for the easily shocked. But I think it is important to look human wretchedness hard in the face and realize what becomes of morality when it is untethered from a transcendent anchor. This is what is happening in the RCC under Bergoglio the Termite.
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