Nails - illegal in England?

One of my pleasures is to go one further than needles, and to bang nails through my cock and balls, or at least the skin. Perhaps it is given added excitement by the knowledge that such harmless consensual acts are illegal in my home country, the United Kingdom.

What happens when Mistress Bella gets hold of a hammer and nails

The first time we tried it, Mistress Bella nailed my foreskin and scrotum to a piece of wood. As we started, and as she picked up the hammer and sterilised nails, I asked if she’d done this before – her slightly evasive reply elicited a follow-up query, and she then conceded that she’d, er, “watched” it being performed… Anything to raise the level of interest on the part of the guest! Of course, she delivered exquisite pain with great care, as always, and the nails only passed through the skin, not the glans or the testes, and the minor wounds cleared up within a day or two.

These harmless activities are reminiscent of the infamous “Operation Spanner” case, in which a group of men were found guilty of practising consensual BDSM by British and European courts. The verdicts were even upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, meaning that such practices are still illegal in England. A subsequent attempt to change the law, to decriminalise all but the most extreme consensual masochistic acts, failed. This means that, even today, willing, consensual partners can be sent to prison for engaging in BDSM in England.

It is interesting to see how the authorities entirely misunderstood the first principles of BDSM. They assume that it is about sadism, not masochism, and that it is driven not by the sub’s constructive desire for an intense experience, but by a destructive “pulling the legs off a spider”-style wish to hurt other living beings or damage others’ property. The judges’ comments are very revealing – but only about themselves, and not about BDSM. The judges in the House of Lords stated: “The violence of sadomasochistic encounters involves the indulgence of cruelty by sadists and the degradation of victims. … Pleasure derived from the infliction of pain is an evil thing”. No, your honour, there is no indulgence of cruelty, rather, there is carefully agreed set of boundaries. And no, your honour, BDSM is, crucially, about the pleasure of the giving and receiving of pain and degradation, and for a specific purpose in a specific context.

 

Fortunately, she still had a nail with which to attach the foreskin

I cannot imagine why the harmless activity of banging a few nails through skin should be illegal in a free society. The entire “Spanner” case in the UK was an outrageous interference into people’s private lives at the time in the late 1980s; to my mind, it is inconceivable that this should still be prohibited by the law, or that public money should be wasted on ruining people’s lives for private activities that have no effect on third parties or the environment. It seems to me to be a typical case of people imposing their own lifestyles on others, in just the same way as inter-racial sex was forbidden in parts of the United States, or some people try to “cure” homosexuality.

I have no idea why it is OK to make permanent holes in people’s ears for ear-rings, and or to wear rings through labia, but not to bang a nail through a foreskin. Why is it OK to circumcise someone – to cut their foreskin right off – or to put a ring through the foreskin, or even the glans, but not to make a temporary hole in the foreskin which heals up a few days later? Why is it legal to smoke cigarettes – an activity that does no good, that damages the smoker’s own body and that affects the health of others, but which nonetheless gives people pleasure – but not to stimulate someone’s skin?

As far as I am aware, there have been no further cases in which BDSM practitioners have been prosecuted in the UK in recent years. But I place little confidence in reliance on the idea that the powers-that-be choose not to apply the law. Ironically, you just need an actual sadist: a neighbour wanting to harm you, a policeman looking to damage someone, a prosecutor wanting to make a mark (of the kind that won't fade in a day or two), and you’ll have a salacious case splashed all over the tabloid press – and possibly a prison sentence. That is the legal system I expect from a prudish dictatorship, not the law as it should be in a liberal democracy.