The other day I sat on a guy’s face. I know, right? With no regard to his personal safety, I put him in a potentially life-threatening situation. Except I didn’t, of course, because I am not a five-year-old playing at being a pro-wrestler, I am an adult who is capable of making my own sexual choices.
As of yesterday, some ludicrously restrictive new rules around porn came into play and they’re such an odd combination of bizarre, sexist, and nannying that I don’t really know where to start. I thought I’d throw together a few outraged cries of ‘WHAT THE FUCK?!’ though, in order to encourage you all to get involved, and support Backlash, an organisation which is fighting against this weird ‘we think it’s a bit icky’ porn censorship.
For more measured and detailed discussion, written in the spirit of genuine campaigning as opposed to the fuzzy, swearword-laden outrage that is all I can muster, please do go and read the summaries from:
– Myles Jackman, obscenity lawyer and searingly brilliant person, who explains why “Pornography is the canary in the coalmine of free speech: it is the first freedom to die. If this assault on liberty is allowed to go unchallenged, other freedoms will fall as a consequence.”
– Pandora Blake, whose excellent post highlights how the smaller, independent porn producers are disproportionately short-changed by these regulations, and why she’s fighting them. She also has some deliciously cheeky guidelines on how to complain directly to ATVOD about the new regulations, and a thorough list of all the coverage the issue has been getting.
– Stavvers, who points out why the new restrictions disproportionately affect women, and why that’s fucked up on a number of levels.
– Backlash, an umbrella organisation providing academic, legal, and campaigning resources defending freedom of sexual expression.
Update: 05/12/15 – UK-based people, please do sign this petition calling for a repeal of the law.
Male vs female ejaculate
As a fair few people have already pointed out, the new rules ban squirting, or ‘female ejaculation’, particularly if it is subsequently consumed. Which is a fucking weird thing to censor on any level – sex is a bit sticky and messy. That’s just how sex is. And some people ejaculate while they’re shagging, or masturbating. On a simple discrimination level, I’d consider this a weird thing to censor, because if you’re going to allow adult humans to sell films of them fucking, some of those adult humans are going to squirt.
I’m compelled to point out here that it’s totally still cool to ejaculate if you have a penis.
Spanking/whipping and BDSM
Spanking is still kind of OK in porn, as long as it doesn’t actually hurt. That’s pretty much what they’ve gone with, for reasons I can only assume are clear to them, despite being deeply un-clear to any person who’s enjoyed a good beating, and who understands that often the most enjoyable beatings are going to leave marks that give you a tingling sense of pride the day after. A spanking can cause ‘slight reddening of the skin’ but no marks or welts, and any kind of caning/whipping that causes pain which is likely to be more than ‘transient and trifling’ is now banned.
But, just to clarify, it’s totally still cool to get fucked in the ass. Spanked on it with a paddle that leaves a sexy round bruise the next day? No. Fucked in it? Yep.
Peeing/enemas
I appreciate that piss-play isn’t for everyone, but the rules around urine and enemas seem to have come from a place deep inside the censor’s own mind where they’ve carefully considered all the possibilities then hurled out any rational thought in favour of a knee-jerk ‘eww.’
Peeing is apparently acceptable as long as it’s ‘not performed onto another person and/or then consumed.’ Enemas are acceptable in similar circumstances, with the added rule that they do not ‘contain faeces.’
Again, though, for clarification, the ‘not consumed/put onto a person’ thing does not apply to jizz, even though jizz often comes out of the same fucking hole that urine does.
Vomit
Puking in porn is still sort-of OK as long as (get ready for this one because it’s fucking AWFUL) “it is not performed as part of a sexual act; and is not visibly enjoyed by the participants.”
So I’m not allowed to suck someone off until it makes me puke if I visibly enjoy doing that, but I am allowed to accidentally puke during a blow-job if I don’t enjoy it at all and actually find it a horrible experience? Hooray for sexual enjoyment and liberation!
Trampling
“This will depend on the surface upon which the person is being trampled on.”
No joke, this is actually a thing. Trampling on someone is totally cool as long as – what? There’s a carpet with pile at least 1/2 and inch deep beneath them? As long as they’re not on a bed of nails? What?
Fisting
Yeah you can’t get fisted.
You can take two cocks in your cunt, though.
Facesitting
You can’t sit on someone’s face in a way that might restrict their breathing even if you’re restricting it for a second or two. Because censors think that if you do something a bit for Sex Reasons then other people will try it at home and not understand that sometimes humans need to breathe.
Again I must take pains to clarify here in case you thought the rules had any semblance of logic to them – it’s totally still cool to fuck someone in the face with a penis. That has specifically been deemed ‘acceptable’ and so I can only assume that it doesn’t restrict people’s breathing. Maybe I’ve been doing it wrong.
Gagging and bondage
It’s not OK to show someone gagged and bound, because there is no ‘visible’ means of that person withdrawing their consent. This is a REALLY interesting one because anyone who is even vaguely interested in BDSM pornography will know that the best porn producers go to great – and worthwhile – pains to ensure not only that they have the consent of their performers but that the consent is clear and explicit within a scene.
As with real life sex, which is not done on camera, it is perfectly possible to tie someone up and gag them while also having some really clear signals agreed that allow them to remove consent or ask for a break at any time. Those who do not understand this are likely people who have never had this kind of sex, or have no interest in it. That’s cool and all – I’m not going to make you tie someone up and fuck them while they’re gagged – but don’t try and tell professional BDSM performers exactly how to do consent if all you know is that you once read a Cosmo article that advised you ‘have a safeword.’
The key problem with the new porn restrictions
OK, if I were being completely honest I’d say that there are about a million and one key problems with the new porn restrictions, but let’s try to settle on the thing that makes me most angry.
The main focus seems to be on any kind of sex that falls outside what I’ll loosely class as ‘mainstream.’ To clarify, it seems like it’s totally still A-OK to watch a woman getting fucked by a gang of huge-cocked men: no specifications about how a fairly energetic gang-bang must be ‘transient and trifling.’ Likewise it’s still OK to have a dick shoved down your throat before licking the jizz off your own lips. It’s not OK to sit on a guy’s face, though, in case people try it at home.
While people are given a teeny bit of credit in some situations – enough to know that they shouldn’t hold a cock in the back of their throat until they’re starved of oxygen, in other sexual situations we’re treated as if we are barely intelligent life-forms – mere amoeba in the face of our own sexual desires. With no ability to distinguish good from bad.
Despite a couple of references to certain activities being ‘life-threatening’, the rules are absolutely not there not to keep people safe. On what planet is female ejaculation dangerous? Nor are they there to protect us, because a) we are not children and b) none of this stuff is illegal to do in the comfort of your own home. I’d hazard that the restrictions are there to dictate exactly what is and isn’t sexy – what we can and can’t be acceptably turned on by.
It’s massively ironic that in a world screaming about how important it is for us to teach people the difference between ‘porn sex’ and ‘real life sex’, porn censorship is forcing any kind of sex that doesn’t fit the mainstream porn formula (girl sucks guy off, gets fucked facially, vaginally and anally by a succession of dudes before eating all their jizz) off the screen. In short, the law is telling us that we cannot possibly be trusted with our own sexuality, and our fantasies must be strictly controlled and limited in case we show that desire and sex can be more than just cock-in-vag fucking followed by a cumbath.
Not in case we hurt ourselves, or damage other people, but in case we make them go ‘eww.’
28 Comments
You’ll note that the rules about wee and squirt fluid are the same – that’s basically because officially female ejaculation doesn’t actually exist…
Good point – it’s really, phenomenally odd, right? As if the rules were made up by a group of people who had only ever had one type of sex, and were terrified to even consider the possibilities that other types existed.
If you search http://www.melonfarmers.co.uk/bw_guidelines_2014.htm for ‘Female Ejaculation’ then you’ll find the BBFC position statement re. same. It doesn’t seem to have the firmest grasp on logic or reality.
The banning of female squirt and yet still allowing male ejaculation really upsets me. Not that it’s my kind of porn (it isn’t), but on principle, it feels like we’re back in Freudian times when it was believed that the clitoral orgasm was deemed to be “immature”, and the only “proper” type of orgasm (if acknowledged at all) was vaginal. (Look up anything related to sexuality and Freud, and you’ll see what I mean.) I’m a science-minded person (though not actually in the field), so denial of scientific facts really pisses me off.
Absolutely – this ‘it looks like piss to us’ response belies a very paternalistic attitude. Your orgasm can’t be real because it doesn’t look real to us. Maybe it doesn’t look ‘real’ to them because they haven’t seen it happen much because – SURPRISE! – much mainstream porn focuses very heavily on male ejaculation and orgasm.
Good to see we’ve come down on the side of more than lukewarmly rejecting this approach….. >.>
It’s not like it’ll even stop people getting porn with those things in them. A few years back, I recall reading about porn distributors campaigning to have R18 mailorder ban lifted, because Euro mailorder were just shipping far harder stuff and doing them out of business, proving that censorship doesn’t work. How much more so on the internet!
It’s just a chance for people to say “eww!” and try to punish people who don’t.
Where are these new rules in place? Everything’s the same here in the States.
Check the things i linked to at the start.
Just checked — it’s all legal here in the States. Maybe you all can access here.
UK viewers will be able to access foreign sites, for now (although many suspect that these new regulations are the start of a slippery slope that will result in all non-compliant foreign sites being blocked in the UK internet filters). For now, it’s independent UK porn producers of fetish and feminist content (like myself) that will be affected.
DomSigns on Twitter has a #thesexilikeisnotacrime
So true, this post. More people need to understand the concerns this poses
So, if I beat someone with my cock (fat chance I know), then I presume straight sex will be outlawed because I have “an object associated with violence”?
That is how it reads isn’t it?
There are works already where people were beaten up with dildos (Guy Ritchie films, video games)..
Therefore dildos are illegal in porn.
I’m slightly perplexed why watersports are out but hardsports seem to have escaped mention. Presumably whatever repressed loons compiled this list couldn’t imagine such a thing happening…
A great post, impassioned and cogent. I feel so angry about these ludicrous, offensive and wrong-headed regulations that I’m just glad that you and others are writing about the subject and drawing attention to it. The glimmer of hope I have is that these regulations are so bad, so cack-handed and so offensive to so many people, are such a dog’s breakfast of ignorance and prejudice, that they will provoke such a backlash that the law will prove to be unworkable and change will be forced.
What controls over the Internet are in place in the UK? Would it be legal to log onto a foreign web site and watch things there?
If it’s not, ssd.eff.org suggests several possible workarounds.
Yeah, you can watch stuff that’s produced in a foreign country. These rules only apply to what is *produced* in the UK. Which is ridiculous, because as you say it’s more than possible to simply log onto a foreign site and watch whatever you want. Check out the links at the top of the post, specifically Pandora Blake’s – the actual effect of this law will be to put lots of UK-based producers out of business.
I love that once I finished reading this I scrolled down to the next blog that immediately broke the rules with a drawing of a girl bound and gagged.
What annoys me is how sexist it all sounds. I can cum on my gfs face but she can’t to me. I can choke her with my cock but she can’t with her pussy. 16 guys could arse fuck her but she couldn’t give me a bit of a slap. And trampling- I didn’t even know this was a thing?
What gets me is I loved watching a homemade vid of a girl drinking a bfs piss and clearly loving it but if I saw her eating faeces I’d stop and watch another vid. Each to their own, which is exactly what the censors are trying to destroy.
Insane.
Ah, see the images probably don’t break the rules because they wouldn’t fall under the definition of ‘TV-like’ – the new rules only affect content which now falls under BBFC classification – so porn videos mainly, usually video on demand but potentially also camming, etc. And yeah, you’re right – it’s a way of destroying uniqueness (or at least refusing to acknowledge uniqueness, and thus giving people a really skewed view of what sex is or should be.
I was outraged when I saw these new ‘laws’, they are extremely sexist and show that Britain hasn’t quite yet been stripped of our ‘Prudish’ ways. Visual sexual preferences are not something we should be ashamed of, and as long as the acts are consensual there should be no problem with acting them out for an audience who want to see it!
Keeping on the lighter side of things, I shall now protest this with my new chat up line… I want you to do things to me that would be illegal to record.
And on a more serious note: thank you for speaking out
An interesting protest this Friday: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/porn-censorship-to-be-protested-with-mass-facesitting-at-parliament-9914354.html
“Transient and trifling” pain, eh? I don’t think that’s accurate enough, could we have a number from 1 to 10? Because we all know that this is totally objective and easy to quantify, even if you’re merely looking at it and not the person experiencing the pain! Actually, the more useless pain scales have smily and frowny faces, and maybe those would be more useful for categorising sex.
I’m still going to have to resist the temptation to tell the Pain Clinic that sometimes my pain is trifling and transient, though. It’s going to be enough fun when I discuss the meds that bugger up my orgasms.
There was a photo of the face-sitting protest where a woman was sitting on someone’s face and cheerfully drinking tea. BECAUSE WE ARE BRITISH DAMNIT.
Haha, that female ejaculation bit is fucking mental. What on earth’s their thinking behind that?
Ah, they think it’s piss. Which is obscene apparently =\
Yeah but… even then, piss is sterile. Which means it’s cleaner (if that’s the ‘problem’) than anything else you could expel during sex. In a big list of ridiculous things that’s the most ridiculous.
I am sincerely in favor of all expressions and desires in sexual fantasies, that is, in the performance of the fetish. It is very enjoyable to fulfill a hidden desire as long as it is good for all involved in the sexual act. I especially love to enjoy in the mouth of my girlfriend. The first time I asked her for it, we were 21 years old. It was simply wonderful to see the sperm of my hard cock in her mouth.