It wouldn't have been a sexual assault or a rape. Having consensual sex with someone is not rape.

But you're 100% wrong. He did give affirmative consent, and he was not constrained in any way.

Why should a "decent human being" assume that having sex with an artist who has affirmed consent to have sex with them, and has not rescinded that consent, is a "violation"?

But she did, in fact, have a way of knowing that he did want it, and that was his affirmative consent to that act (and to any others to which it is possible to consent) which she was aware of and which he did not rescind.

No, it's on par with saying that your sexual partner consented to sex because they said "I consent to having sex with you" right before the two of you had sex.

He was, in fact, asking to be tortured. Nobody has any legal ability to ask to be murdered. I have no particular desire to torture anybody, or have sex with Shia LeBouf, but that doesn't change the fact that he had affirmatively and freely consented to those acts.

Come on. You know that's a facile comparison - people consent to sex all the time, even as part of performance art pieces, but it's legally impossible to consent to your own murder. Shooting him would definitely be murder. But having sex with him with his consent - and he had consented - cannot be rape. It's…

They say "a verbal contract is as good as the paper it's printed on"; what do you suppose they say about a "non-verbal contract"?

And my other weird question (which I predict will deservedly incur ire for victim blaming) is where does the line of consent fall in a situation where the victim has said ahead of time that nothing is off limits?

You can't consent to someone murdering you, no matter what you say. You can consent to sex with someone, though, and in this case, Shia had.

A reasonable person should know that audience participation does not include sex.

Yes, I would assume that someone who'd given me permission to physically torture him, if I wanted, and to do anything else besides, had really meant "sex". Because "have sex with someone" is something you can do. It's clearly within the set of "anything."

But he did say yes.

It's not beside the point. If you're saying that you can be coerced even by your own voluntary adherence to "the show must go on", then you're saying there's no practical sense in which any choice is truly free. That's absurd. We have to assume that people who are in situations in which we can detect no coercion…

Were you sexually assaulted during a performance of your own art piece, during which you consented to any and all acts the other actors decided they wanted to perform with you, and which you were in full control of and could have stopped instantly at any time?

No, but the fact that he did means he did.

He could have left the room at any time, taken the bag off of his head, or merely stopped the performance and clarified that "do anything you want to me" didn't actually include sex acts.

It's not "victim blaming" because Shia is a victim of nothing. As part of a performance he was in total control of, he took part in a sex act to which he had given expressed and enthusiastic consent. The performance could have ended at any time of his choosing. He wasn't coerced or forced in any way.

I might be wrong, but I thought the whole point of performance art was that you didn't get a time out.

He could only do that by ending the performance art and sending the 100s of people waiting home.