Article.
"Care home practitioners and old age psychiatrists have been warned that they could face long jail sentences if they allow a patient with dementia to have sex even with a long-term partner."
Wow. Talk about a rats' nest of problems.
Another illustration of the intense fear we seem to have of sex. We would throw caretakers in jail for years if they allow a demented person to have sex with their spouse, on the grounds that it's a judgement call if the person is enjoying it or not.
11 comments:
Old people should understand anyway that having pleasure is improper at their age. Even fun is out of the question! Also Sprach Jehovah.
And zoophilia should be systematically punished by jail, because there's no way for a horse or a german shepherd or orca to express their disapproval in case there's one. I mean, a human can just go and rape them, right?
Oh, and underage teens must be severely prosecuted if they have solo sex with themselves before they reach the age of consent, because that's child abuse! Probably combined with pedophile voyeurism over their own bodies, along the way. Even having dirty thoughts amounts for them to intent and conspiration of fornication, OFF WITH THEIR HEA... THEIR WHATEVERS!
When are we returning to closed bathtubs to use while wearing our undies, like in the victorian era?
Speaking of demented sex, have you heard about the edited scene of the Joker and Harley Quinn? I'll never look at a rutabaga the same way... And that thing with the ratchet and the albino leeches! (shivers)
Besides, everybody knows that wanking makes you deaf, demented, shorter, and stumps your eyesight. So letting it anywhere near old people is akin to euthanasia by worsening their oldness symptoms!
Back to serious again, for just a nanosecond: this is another typical Orwellian drift following the principle of "don't think, WE shall do the thinking for you". Namely, here, the lawmakers will decide whether a consenting adult must be denied the right of consent under the excuse of a clinical diagnosis label.
Reminds me of all those poor children, half knocked out with Ritalin because weary adults find their energy "excessive, therefore abnormal".
What I read recently in the Atomic Cinema updated essay, I was already saying years ago: if a repressive society won't change its ways, there shall still be change eventually, but if all other options are blocked this change will be through brutal revolution. That's universal.
I've composed a comment on the original blog article. I'm hoping it'll be read and get some of those involved to do some thinking.
It seems reasonable in this case. If you're not in your right mind, how can you give consent? You can't ask the person. Seems reasonable.
As for zoophilia, you usually have to be divine to get away with that. Zeus can turn into a swan and make it with a chick, but that's Zeus.
Zoophilia sounds almost wholesome compared with bestiality.
I agree that for someone to be consenting they need to be compos mentis.
I found a great word the other day. There is a character in one of the top export UK tv shows at the moment, I've seen him described as pansexual or omnisexual. Actually his sexuality extends beyond attraction to humans. The word I forget is the one that embraces attraction that knows no bounds.
He is not a marginalized secondary character he is the lead. Way to go BBC!
Which character and show?
I just read the Beep is doing a new show, called Cup, in Bolton.
Cpt. Jack Harkness he first appeared in Doctor Who, but is in Torchwood.
Strange John Barrowman's naked butt was cut from Doctor Who a few years ago, but Kai Owen got to show almost his all in the last episode of Torchwood Season 1. Amazing the difference in shows before the watershed and after.
Cup? Info please... Googling BBC and CUP just gets a bunch of soccer stuff.
It's just a short article in the local council fluff rag, that says they are filming here, and happy.
It's about competitive parents to children competing in some sport, maybe football. I think it's a comedy.
He is not a marginalized secondary character he is the lead. Way to go BBC!
Way to go BBC? I pity anyone who fails to understand that there is something truly pathological about an attraction to species other than your own.
Cpt. Jack Harkness he first appeared in Doctor Who, but is in Torchwood.
If you're talking about Harkness he doesn't count. In science fiction TV you always have "aliens" who are virtually identical to humans. Usually they can interbreed and produce offspring who are not, like mules, sterile. Look at humans and Vulcans. Different species? Doesn't look like it.
Probably now that Russell T. Davies is leaving Doctor Who there will be a marked decrease in the number of fag aliens. Torchwood is even more ridiculous. What are the odds that the entire Torchwood crew is going to be gay or bisexual?
Say, Mike,
If a god in form of a swan bonks a chick, is it zoophilia? After all, they're both birds.
One of which is underage!... ;-)
Alex,
Your principle is good, but it is under that same, very noble purported motive, that forced sterilization was performed on the mentally handicapped, the dubiously mature, and some people who were considered inept simply because they were poor and lived as marginal vagrants. And had no legal weight! Totalitarian atrocity is always lurking around the corner. Many people were forever deprived of their right to have children, while they were perfectly capable as the following years proved (many of those married people with kids of their own, or adopted). As a principle, WE MUST NOT toy with legislation that can so easily and swiftly become oppressive.
Because, let's face it: if it can, it will. Always. Look at past AND present history.
"Better risk letting a criminal off the hook than condemn an innocent". The only way for our society NOT to become criminal itself.
One of my most interesting college courses was Human & Social Sciences. It included, related to the topic of ethics, the "medical experiences" done by the nazis, which in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials strongly inspired the laws of therapeutic experimentation informed consent. Do you know how such extreme atrocities could ever take place? Not all those involved were drooling sadists. On the contrary, cinema gave us a very faithful image of the typically cold and sedate nazi/SS. They just didn't consider their "subjects" as human beings, since "they're just Jews". Sub-humans, animals, soulless things. THEY DID NOT THINK deep enough about what they were doing. Well, guess what? I see the exact same thing daily in Lebanon, explaining why it is such a primitive country. The people are normally very nice, and sincerely. Warm, welcoming, hospitable, more than generous. But too often, they don't bother to think. I see the exact same thing happening with bigoted moralists in the "evolved West" today.
The civilized man/woman is one that always thinks too much. Always wondering, questioning the obvious.
So remember: a little tiny bit of intellectual laziness, and you may very well wake up a monster one unwitting morning. An ordinary monster.
Practically all human monsters are ordinary. So ordinary it's terrifying. Look at serial killers. It is only in fairy tales that ogres look like ogres, that vampires have pointy teeth and werewolves transform into hairy freaks under the full moon.
We always have the reflex to say, "this law is good, this should be done, it's the right thing, so let a law back it up". But every law absolutely must be scrutinized with paranoid attention, lest it becomes a tool of oppression. I believe the founding fathers of the United States of America gave this requirement of freedom special attention. Court trials and jail and widespread suspicion with assumption of guilt are not the only way to make society safer, and they're certainly not the best. It always ends up with a police State where the initial concern (a.k.a. "the inflated excuse to serve the herd") gets completely forgotten, drowned by a far greater evil, the smothering of all civil rights. This happens because such a power was given to a handful, and that most mortals are very, very corruptible by the drunkenness of power.
In my previous comment I was making a point, which seems to have been missed: just how much is explicit and fully aware consent mandatory in sex?
When has sex itself taken the place of rape as a thing of intrinsic evil, when was violence replaced by its occasional means, originally harmless copulation?
Answer: when the word "immoral" was very consciously made ambiguous. Blurry. Malleable at will. A will that's VERY often ill intent covered under a slim burqa of virtuous crusading intentions.
This is a humongus barrel of worms kicked wide open right here: is a hopelessly shallow bimbo really aware enough to consent, if her IQ hasn't even been measured and approved by the State? You could as well decree that anybody engaging in extramarital and/or unprotected sex is proving irresponsible enough to be denied sufficient awareness for consent, because they are clearly stupid/irresponsible. I personally know several people who think precisely that, and dream of being granted the power to make such a call. Next step, what? Hey, let's castrate all socially immature teens who snuggle on a backseat, and return to a medieval past that probably never was that horrible in the first place. I know: let's return to a recent past, that's safer! Say... the year 1984?
I was 13 then, it's a perfect year for me. My very own "good old days" that should never have changed!
Suppose, to take an extreme case, that I sexually take advantage of a woman who's, let's not say brain-dead, just in a permanent vegetative state from prolonged cardiac arrest. I know she's got no awareness and is never waking up. I have bonus information that she's sterile. Am I hurting her in any way?
Sure, I'm a complete sicko, this is shameful, and immoral. But is it criminal, brutal, hurtful? Am I really so evil, that the State should take a police officer from the streets, where rapes of fully conscious people constantly occur, to monitor every individual living-dead? I don't know the exact status of necrophilia, but what's the point in lengthily prosecuting a pathetic perv morgue employee who fucks corpses, wneh the live and vulnerable people aren't, by far, sufficiently protected? He'll get fired and fined, that's quite enough in regard to the harm done. Whatever you say about respect of the body, the dead do not feel pain, fear, violation... anything! It's strictly a matter of moral disrespect, as much of a vicious crime as beating a dead horse. Pun intended.
When you abruptly broaden the scope of sexual criminals, you'll be wasting forever limited legal resources on a great many of the less harmful marginals. "Remember the Prohibition!"
Today I find myself witness of the sneaky, rampant establishing of a bona fide Sexual Prohibition. Tony Blair's government very officially defined a law breaking act of "fornication" resulting in the suppression of social aids to a girl under 18 who gets into celibate pregnancy. Some way to protect the children! (And remember, "abortion=abomination", so there always WILL be a baby in Moralistan.) We're not treading on the slippery path, we're there for good. Homebound, brothers and sisters, hallelujah! Care to visit the dungeon before signing the lease? The Iron Maiden is gorgeous...
Remember the can of worms metaphor, picture this image in your mind: you're in a residential area, passing near a fishing spot. Thousands of wriggly things are escaping all around. You have a litter-picking claw. What do you focus on grabbing: all you can, or the easiest safest ones, or you peel your eyes to make sure no venomous snake gets past you and into the nearby gardens? Do you try to protect the children from screaming in disgust at the sight of 1,000 maggots, or from dying silently from an unlucky step?
What's happening here in the real world, best case scenario, is that today they're bent on sniffing out every existing wriggling icky thing, because "it just might turn out to be a cobra". While among the very pickers, some conceal contaband pet mambas in their boots.
FYI, the mamba is a little-known snake, because his looks are less cool that a cobra's neck, but if it bites you there probably won't even be enough time to whip out your antidote kit and inject yourself.
Don't tell me ANYBODY is still naive enough today to obbliviate the fact that the worst corruption and cover-up nest among the very same people who bombard us with draconian moral laws. The word "draconian" comes from a fierce law man named Draco.
"It is said that Drakon himself, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, killed anyone who asked him that question." -- (Plutarch)
You know, I recall the very first time I had to place a urinary stent to a woman patient. Our anatomy classes has been crowded and disorganized, so in dissection (60 students, only two corpses, one of which a female) I hadn't seen the exact location of the meatus in the vulva. I knew it only from figures in the books. Turns out the pesky thing is both tiny, and just above the vaginal opening! Very hard to spot the first time.
Well, the patient was a lady of 63, and the nurse had warned me to "be very careful, Doctor [they called all us interns "Doctor"], because she's still a virgin". Don't giggle, in Lebanese society that's not something you want to mess with! So, with a comrade happening to be there, I struggled for several minutes to find the darn feminine mystery, and for a moment I got desperate, pushing that rubber tube around, until by deduction and elimination I located the bullseye and point-blanked it at last. The patient, who had been seemingly showing much discomfort all that while, heartily thanked me for my efforts when her bladder was finally relieved.
It was only when my buddy Michael, back in our quarters, told the others all about it and roars of laughters erupted, that I emerged from my medical concentrated state of mind to think of the situation: 63 y/o virgin, long struggling in her vulva just about everywhere...
Needless to say, I was never suspended or bothered for any "medical fault"!
Anon,
Ever heard of FETICHISM? Sexual attraction to objects?
It's been stiked out of the mental pathologies list a few years before masturbation and homosexuality.
And why seek outside Earth? Do you know that all snails are bisexual?
Of course, that's a tad unavoidable, since all snails are also hermaphrodite. They have both mare and female organs... Check it out if you don't believe me!
You can browse the internet, or grab a magnifying glass and see for yourself.
As for Star Trek, we've had that discussion before, rather recently, on another thread: there was a retcon explaining that all humanoid alien species ARE in fact of human genes. Because of some ancient galactic gene dissemination, something like that.
Well argued Pascal, for a life partner there is implicit consent to a degree, we all know that our life partners are generally willing, but not always. I wasn't thinking of sterile partners. I was thinking of forced entry and subsequent injury that could occur.
Isn't dementia a change in personality? If someone is mostly aware, but has forgotten their partner, and reject the advances of their partner, I don't think the partner should be allowed to force themselves on the demented party. On the other hand, to deny someone their conjugal rights is also cruel and hard. Rats Nest.
"My, Grandma, what big rats you have!", amazed the Little Red Riding Hood, for she was a very observing young person and loved to discover Nature.
"They are biologically bred and fed," the Wolf replied, "and so healthy and clean that a lady Minister in India advised that eating rats could significantly contribute to solving worldwide famin and malnutrition. Except in the terribly polluted Western cities, that much is obvious."
There's an ethny/caste of rat hunters in India, they rid the fields of them, and as a salary they get not only to eat them, but to keep all the grain that was stored in their nests. I bet such rats are a very interesting dish, coming practically with its own bread. But enough advertizing McDonald's healthier competition in Asia already.
It's sufficiently heartbreaking to have you lifelong spouse mentally wither away before you, day after day, their very spirit slowly vanishing shred by shred like a morning mist. I'm sure come the day when they don't recognize you any more and reject you, the mood for sex at your likely age should vanish by itself. Age dementia has this well-known characteristic (pun not intended) that the body stays able far longer than the mind, in fact it's part of the very drama of Alzheimer's. You die inside and yet you don't appear to.
So having the traditionally obtuse and authoritarian lawmakers decree what you can still do when it's still envisionable, forcing in on an old couple's intimacy before there is a couple no more, well that's just... atrocious. Abominable. Rattling. And this probably is precisely the intention.
(Guess who insidiously helped open my eyes to this very dangerous socio-political evolution and its underlying mechanisms? One dastardly anarchist propagandist by the name of Eolake Stobblehouse. "There he is, officers, the devil who made me do it!" ;-)
I'm sure if one day, all of a sudden, the senile one in a collective establishment says "no", there is very little chance that the partner will insist. Not to mention some medical specificities of elderly sexuality, which basically mean that you really need your partner to be cooperating otherwise it won't work anyway. Erectile difficulties, vaginal dryness... you get the general idea.
Basically, in this "politically correct" age where the rights of minorities are defended about as fiercely as said minorities can stir a mediatic annoyance, this evolution seems to me exactly like the moral Big Brother is saying: "WE decide when you're too old to have the right to a sexual life."
Please, the humanity! As if some common sense -and a huge lot of compassion- weren't far sufficient to handle such already painful dramas.
Old people are no more feisty. And let's be bluntly honest: nearly nobody cares about them. Therefore the New Millenium Inquisition chooses to bully them (see the photo-taking granny "affair"), they'll make yet another addition to the global campaign of moral intimidation of the whole population.
"Beware the Hankypanky, my son!
The sexual frights, the sins that hatch!
Beware your Zipper bird, and shun
The lascivil Ladysnatch!"
(My sincerest apologies to Lewis Carroll for the poetic piracy.)
So I'm taking a stand right here and now. Speaking for the elderly's freedom and rights, because one day I shall be one myself.
(And I speak for children out of similar solidarity, because once I was one myself. That's another topic.)
Remember that Simpsons episode where the adults decreed a curfew at children, and ended up voted the same by their elders? Made me meditate deeply on legal, "perfectly democratic" tyranny.
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