Persuasive Speech On Neecrophilia

Death has always been a controversial topic amassing countless theories revolving around the psyche, the soul, the spirit, and what happens to them after we die. After the progress made with science, technology and our understanding of the human body and the world around us, we are still left wanting when it comes to the topic of death. As humans, we have a history of fearing the unknown. Not knowing what happens after we die makes death an often-difficult topic to broach. With countless theories surrounding the soul and the spirit after death, usually deriving from different religions and philosophers, we tend to overlook what happens to our physical form. Science has given us the physical breakdown or stages of deterioration that takes place

These are all notions that we take into consideration when we are alive; but as society has continued to evolve, so has the level of fear resulting in sexual crimes against women to now include males, infants and animals. Considering these living fears, we tend to overlook sexual crimes that may take place after we die; such as, necrophilia. Necrophilia is a form of sexual assault seeing that it is sexual contact inflicted upon a person (s) without consent; consent being “the voluntary agreement of the complainant to participate in the immediate sexual act” (Canada.justice.gc.ca, 2017). Studies on this type of paraphilia has led to necrophilia being divided into subcategories due to the lack of reported data and case studies. Necrophiles are people who receive sexual gratification from viewing or engaging in sexual intercourse with a corpse. There have been many stipulations as to what causes someone to act or even have such desires, but this essay will focus on a comprehensive study carried out in 1989 by two psychiatrists working at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, USA. Doctors Rosman and Resnick examined 122 cases of necrophilia, 88 from world literature and 34 unpublished cases of their own. The results from the cases showed that the main motivation behind necrophilia is the desire to possess a sexual partner

If that is so, then necrophiles should be charged for their offence against corpses. If sexual assault is a sexual interaction forcibly carried out without consent, then necrophilia is a form of sexual assault as a corpse cannot consent to sexual interactions. Dr. Martin Kafka (2010), one of the worlds leading paraphilia experts, argues that “necrophilia is technically a fetish as the sexualized object of desire is non-living”. Fetish being defined by Dictionary.com as “a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked, to an abnormal degree, to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.” Necrophilia involves behaviours that do not fall under the above definition of a fetish, seeing as it can be accompanied by sadistic acts and can motivate murder. Under section 182 of The Criminal Code, everyone who neglects to perform any duty that is imposed by law; who defiles or improperly interferes with the burial or remains of a dead human body, whether buried or not, is guilty of an indictable offence punishable with no more than five years imprisonment. Even so, none of the laws mentioned above specify whether sexual intercourse with a dead body is an illegal or punishable crime. As you search the criminal code, Part V. Section 150-162, further for information on crimes recognized as sexual or forcible assault,