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Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
Both very good points; consent does have to have its reasonable limits.
And in fact, though our Supreme Court's jurisprudence is perhaps overly broad on the issue of "prior consent," they weren't wrong to want to place limits on what the scope of consent should be. Obviously you shouldn't be able to consent to serious harm--the policy implications wouldn't be good. But consenting to bodily harm is far different from consenting to BDSM, which unless it's pathologically weird and involves crazy mutilations is not going to amount to bodily harm in law.
As it happens, the court could have found that loss of consciousness was bodily harm, and didn't do so, holding instead that you can't consent to something you know will happen while you're unconscious. Which illustrates the proofing conceptual error in Brenda Cossman's article from The Globe and Mail, which simply stated that "the law doesn't care about consent." This is simply untrue, and a shocking overstatement coming from a law professor.
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Why does consent have to have reasonable limits?
I find it troubling that the Supreme Court can determine our own decisions on our own bodies (in the absence of provable mental illness). Perhaps a "women's body is her own" only applies to certain policies? But when those choices offend our delicate sensibilities (prostitution or rough sex), then the SC should step in to save us all.
But there is a long list of things that the supreme court decide with which I disagree.
I would assume the very reason that two hockey pugilists are not charged is because of consent. And yet, despite clearly damaging behaviour related to contact sports and hockey fighting, the SC is silent.
(euthanasia would be another example where consent to harm oneself should be permitted, but that's another thread for another day.)