On the 1st December the UK brought in a new raft of regulations (the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014) that seek to bring online content into line with existing censorship laws. The new rules specifically outlaw the depiction of a number of different sex acts including hard spanking, bondage, gags, caning, fisting, facesitting and female ejaculation. The latter three are sex acts are especially noted as being “life threatening”.
There’s been a huge outcry over the last week since it became widely known that these rules were coming into force (they weren’t debated in parliament, just signed off on by a committee). It’s obvious that many of the bans are on acts that place female/queer pleasure and power at the forefront and thus, these laws are pretty damned sexist and discriminatory. There are no rules prohibiting the depiction of male ejaculation, forceful fellatio or even double anal (which can easily be harmful).
On Friday the 5th I was pleased to have an article published on the whole shebang in Daily Life, the “women’s” section of the Sydney Morning Herald. Please have a read and come back.
There’s actually been a huge bunch of articles and blog posts written on this subject and to get a better view I really recommend these posts by Pandora Blake, whose spanking site is on the frontline of the fight.
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Online porn: The canary in the coalmine – Pandora’s original post decrying the new rules
Hyperlinks: ATVOD anti-porn law edition – A roundup of posts and articles about it
International outcry against UK porn laws – A further roundup of URLs
I’ve been watching the whole thing unfold with interest, partly because I’m watching the UK step backwards in terms of censorship and partly because the new laws echo Australia’s. We currently have a censorship category called “Refused Classification” which prohibits spanking, fisting and female ejacultion among other things. These rules are only applied to meat-world DVDs and films; so far Australia hasn’t tried (too hard) to regulate online content. This means I am able to run my porn sites, even though they have to be hosted overseas. I live in hope that our conservative government doesn’t get ideas from this UK adventure.
Also, as mentioned in the Daily Life piece, the Australian Law Reform commission recently published an extensive study recommending major changes to our censorship scheme, including changing or removing the RC category because it doesn’t reflect community standards. So far, the government has ignored the report and our laws remain the same as when they were introduced in 1984.
If you’ve read my previous rants on censorship, you’ll know that I have a problem with the idea of “community standards” being used to censor content. When it comes to sexually explicit material and sex acts that are legal to perform, privacy comes first. Who cares if the neighbours think a sex act is perverted? Why does the community get to decide what’s “offensive” when it comes to depictions of sex, especially when I can access those depictions alone at home? And who is this “reasonable adult” whose standards our censorship scheme is based on? And how does this standard even apply in an era of smartphones and the internet where publishing has been democratized and no censor can be the gatekeeper?
So even though I object to the idea of community standards, I’ve found the current conversation around the UK porn laws to be heartening, precisely because it seems to indicate that the “community” is far more open-minded about sexuality and porn than those who seek to censor it. The fact that so many writers, bloggers and tweeters have questioned the validity of the UK porn laws is encouraging. People are asking the important questions of the censors:
Why do you think I shouldn’t be allowed to watch this?
Where is your evidence of “harm”?
How is it that you can watch porn to review it and not be harmed but I can’t?
Who are you to make moral judgements about sexuality?
Why aren’t you polling the public to find out what people actually think about porn?
Why don’t your rulings line up with existing obscenity court cases, most of which failed?
It feels like a bit of a zeitgeist moment, though that may be just me listening to my own porn-friendly echo chamber. Still, the outcry has appeared in numerous high-profile, major media outlets. And when Murray Perkins, senior censor at the BBFC, wrote a wishy-washy justification article in the Guardian (“we know it when we see it”), the 360+ comments were overwhelmingly against censorship.
Online rights campaigners have pointed out that these laws are just the start of an overarching plan to control the internet, that it is part of a larger attempt to reign in the freedom of the web and to tax, regulate and control what British people can see and buy online. Already ATVOD have asked a credit card processor not to process payments for porn. And the new rules don’t restrict people from seeing foreign websites, just British ones, which essentially operates as an unfair trade restriction.
In any case, the whole thing has turned into quite a shitfight, one the BBFC didn’t anticipate. Here’s hoping the Brits stand up for their sexual freedoms and win the fight.
There’s a protest planned for the 12th December at the Houses of Parliament. Someone suggested a face-sit-in, which I love. If you’re in the UK and you care about your sexual rights, please attend!