Culture

The UK Has Banned A Big Ol’ Bunch Of Sex Acts From Porn, Doesn’t Want Anyone To Have Any Fun

No spanking, no whipping and no facesitting, kids.

by Meg Watson  3 December 2014

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Finally, David Cameron has fixed sex. After taking issue with a large sub-section of their local porn industry, the UK government have banged out a resolution — just ban the nasty stuff. In a move that is so goddamned British it hurts, they’ve amended their Communications Act so certain sex acts are now banned on screen.

These include spanking, caning, aggressive whipping, penetration by any object “associated with violence”, physical or verbal abuse (regardless if consensual or otherwise), urolagina (a word I probably shouldn’t have just Googled), female ejaculation, strangulation, facesitting and fisting.

The standards were already in place for DVDs sold in sex shops — presumably for the horny grandfathers whose minds would explode if they ever discovered the internet — but it will now apply to all online video on demand too. The legislators have reportedly amended the rules to ensure pornography won’t provoke hatred or aggression or “impair” children.

You can see where they’re coming from — so to speak. The acts on the list do mostly hail from the taboo (and very un-British) worlds of BDSM and fetish. While we can all generally agree that young boys shouldn’t grow up thinking that strangling and fisting is the average sexual experience, legislating against that lands us in a murky place. If everything’s consensual, is it really the State’s place to start ruling lines between ‘right sex’ and ‘wrong sex’? That hasn’t worked out well in the past.

But here’s the thing. Where’s the harm in a little female ejaculation? Though you might expect most of the condemnation of these laws to come from horny young dudes, it’s in fact been from outspoken feminists. If everyone’s into it, why can’t we see a bit of spanking? What’s wrong with the weird stuff? Does nobody remember that movie Secretary?

“The new legislation is absurd and surreal,” a professional dominatrix told VICE. “I mean, why ban facesitting? What’s so dangerous about it? It’s a harmless activity that most femdom performers, myself included, do fully dressed anyway. Its power is symbolic: woman on top, unattainable.”

“While mainstream porn will be peddled without fear by the large [companies], more niche, less clichéd sexual interests will disappear,” she continues. “It’s the corporate shopping chain crushing independent shops on the high street by piling it high and marketing it to the dumbest common denominator. In five years’ time we may only have one-size-fits-all porn, peddled by the porn equivalent of Primark.”

This’ll no doubt have consequences. Though Brits are still free to watch porn from all around the world, there will undoubtedly be pressure on the local market to compete. If  When an underground industry pops up, those who work in porn will be at a much greater risk. Frankly, that’s a little worrying when government themselves classed some of the items on the list — strangulation, facesitting and fisting — as “life-endangering”.

–

h/t The Independent.