The criminalisation of sadomasochism infringes on individual liberty  Control of one’s own body is the most fundamental of human rights. No government should be permitted to define how its citizens can express themselves. The distinction between the permissible and the impermissible should be drawn at the line of consent. This is not a novel distinction. Your property cannot be stolen from you if you agree to give it away. You have no legal remedy if your property is damaged by another with your consent, or if you damage it yourself. Why should there be a moral difference when this property is flesh and blood? Paternalism in this instance only protects those who do not want to be protected.  The prohibition of sadomasochism is simply inconsistent with the liberty that governments already permit their citizens to exercise to injure each other and themselves. When people are entitled to risk pain, serious injury, or even death in sporting activity, why should they not also be permitted to suffer some discomfort in consensual sexual activity? The same piercing of flesh which attracts criminal liability in a fetishistic context can be performed legally in a chemist’s shop or tattooist’s parlor. The distinction between the rugby scrum, the bungee tower and the bedroom is an arbitrary one.  Some of the pleasure that is inherent in contact sports is derived from the adrenal thrill of flirting with injury. It is widely known that a significant proportion of individuals find jeopardy and danger as enjoyable as decadence. A sport purged of all risk would be unwatched and unplayed. Comparably, a corpus of law that did not acknowledge or protect the diversity of human sexual experience would needlessly limit individual sexual freedom, and would probably be ignored.