Yesterday, the UK censored what porn can be shown on video-on-demand, restricting BDSM (bondage/dominance sadomasochism) acts like spanking and caning and women’s sexual pleasure, like female ejaculation.
Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014, an amendment to the 2003 Communications Act, now requires that video-on-demand (VOD) porn ban the following acts from being depicted onscreen:
- Female ejaculation
- Spanking
- Caning
- Penetration by any object “associated with violence”
- Physical or verbal abuse (regardless if consensual)
- “Water sports”
- Aggressive whipping
- Facesitting
- Fisting
- Strangulation
The restrictions aren’t entirely new: these are already the guidelines for porn DVDs sold in sex shops. So, to be clear, these acts aren’t necessarily banned from being filmed, but films depicting these acts are banned from being released on VOD.
Look, I know most people will not be attracted to, or even approve of, every act on that list. And that’s fine. A lot of those acts don’t do it for me, either. That doesn’t mean, though, that I think it’s ethical to stop other people from having access to enjoying them — especially not when performed by professional adult film actors and actresses.”Squirting” is apparently banned because they think it depicts pee. Seriously. (Spoiler alert: it’s not pee.) More broadly, this list is problematic because censored acts are directly targeting BDSM, also sometimes referred to as kink. The fear driving this censorship — and driving pearl-clutching around kink in general — is a need to control sexuality that is seen as deviant and dangerous. As Jerry Barnett from the anti-censorship group Sex and Censorship told VICE UK regarding these new restrictions, “They’re simply a set of moral judgments designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British people from watching pornography.” (Their excuse seems to be that it will “impair” children who happen to be watching VOD porn.)Indeed, fetishes and paraphilias (meaning an arousal to an atypical situation, object or individual) can be seen as too unappealing, politically incorrect, even scary to be condoned by society at large. The reality, however, which is misunderstood or ignored by those who are dismissive or condemnatory of kink, is that the paraphilia or fetish will exist whether outsiders condone it or not. To borrow from Lady Gaga and Madonna, they are born this way and it’s human nature. It’s normal and it’s common.
Certainly, physical and verbal abuse, whipping, spanking and other acts on this list are dangerous. They’re inappropriate for real life and our hinkiness about them comes from well-intentioned concern. But sexual behavior —and especially the behavior depicted in the mediated sexuality of porn — are fantasy. What stimulates us in the fantasy realm (say, George Clooney rubbing our feet as we lay in a hammock) need not happen in real life, and perhaps we don’t even want it to happen in real life. We only want it to stimulate our sexuality in the privacy of our own home. Yet censors have decided that Brits can’t get off while watching a consenting adult actor or actress be spanked or whipped or caned, be verbally degraded, or be urinated upon because it might actually condone that behavior in real life. (Nevermind that there’s already plenty of actual verbal and physical abuse that could use some attention.) Given how the last three items (facesitting, fisting, strangulation) were considered “life-endangering,” it is very clear the UK thinks viewers will try this in real life.
These attitudes show too little faith in human ethics around sexuality. Responsible practitioners of BDSM adhere to the code of “safe, sane and consensual” — meaning every act is done with safety guidelines in mind, it has had thoughtfulness put into it, and it’s between consenting adults.
Frankly, I find the concern to be offensive. Because it’s hard not to view these restrictions as a condemnation of sexuality that isn’t privileging “vanilla” heterosexual men attracted to cisgender women — your stereotypical man-fucking-a-woman-with-big-tits-while-she-moans-orgasmically-before-the-money-shot. Sexual desires, thank God, are more complicated and inclusive than that. British censors are on the wrong side of history on this one.
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