Unacceptable Behaviour?

Formula 1 chief Max Mosley has denied that his much-publicised orgy in a Chelsea 'torture dungeon' wasn't Nazi-themed. Well, thank God for that! It was just a regular S&M session - that's OK then! Is this to be the new standard in public life? You can indulge in any kind of behaviour you like, just so long as it isn't linked to any form of political extremism. I guess that means my regular Friday night session in that replica of bin Laden's cave are out. Of course, it does the beg the question of what fantasy scenarios would be acceptable to use in sex games. How about getting the girls to dress up as US soldiers and re-enact scenes from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, with you as a prisoner? Or maybe even a Guantanamo Bay scenario, with prison guards subjecting you to 'water-boarding' and other favoured CIA tortures (sorry, interrogation techniques)? Obviously, the main objection to such things would be that the events which inspired them are recent enough for there to be surviving victims, and such behaviour would be inappropriate, disrespectful and insensitive. So, presumably, if Max Mosley had re-enacted the Spanish Inquisition, that would have been OK. The actual events are safely in the long distant past, with no survivors to remind us of how horrific they actually were.

But there are plenty of fantasy sex scenarios which most people (including, probably, the News of the World, which broke the Mosley story), would say were perfectly harmless, which, on closer examination, are actually pretty dubious. Take those 'schoolgirl' scenarios, with girls in pigtails dressed in school 'uniforms' being spanked and caned by the 'master'? Just a bit of harmless fun? Perhaps. But doesn't the whole scenario have just the slightest whiff of paedophilia about it? And how about those dominatrix scenarios with some Ann Robinson-type treating the man like a naughty kid? Child abuse, perhaps? Of course, it could be argued that as long as these things go on in private, between consenting adults, what harm is being done? Well, fair enough. Except that they surely tell us something about the mind-set of those who derive pleasure from such scenarios - I ask you, what sort of man would want to spank schoolgirls? Now, in Max Mosley's case, perhaps there wasn't a Nazi theme, but we're still left with the question of what sort of person would want to be beaten and humiliated in order to get a sexual thrill? And would you want them in a position of authority?