Yes, you shouldn't be able to murder someone by cutting off their air supply. I think we all agree about that. And there's no legal confusion about that either. It's a crime.
But that's the whole blooming problem - it should be a crime, but it frequently isn't being.
Recent case - man meets woman, they sleep together. She is found dead from loss of blood from knife wounds the next day. The knife was found under his pillow. He claims he always kept a knife under his pillow just in case the opportunity for consensual blood play arose. He claims that they met, discovered they were both into blood play, it was consensual, he misjudged it.
She is dead, so not there to contest whether or not it was consensual.
He is found not guilty.
There are men in the UK getting away with murder using BDSM as a defence. This is a very real problem. It's not some hypothetical problem, to be wafted away with a quick bit of waffle about "YKINMKATOK".
There are men in the UK getting away with rape by claiming it was consensual rough sex. Again, real problem, not hypothetical.
The BDSM afficionados on this thread say "but that's not BDSM, that's a travesty of BDSM." But juries, the CPS, the police, the judiciary are not making this distinction. They are simply seeing an increasingly pornified culture in which BDSM (whether the real deal or some travesty - to the outsider it looks the same) is being mainstreamed.
Again - recently on MN a poster pointed out that the police no-crimed her rape complaint because her bruises and cuts were not evidence, because apparently violence is a normal part of sex these days.
And that mainstreaming of BDSM is vitiating my right to withhold my consent - because my withholding of my consent no longer means anything in the eyes of the police, the CPS, juries, the judiciary, because apparently some man's claim that all women, me included, like it rough outweighs my testimony.
So BDSM is not just your private kink, it's impacting my life and the lives of millions of women in the UK.