This summer I went to the theatre and watched George Orwell’s 1984 – the production was great with the madness of censorship and the “Thought Police” being especially scary. However Orwell might not have been so mad in his prediction as the latest change in UK Porn Censorship legislation passing moral judgement for all of us as to what is morally and socially acceptable to watch in porn. Female satisfaction especially seem to be condemned as immoral.
Firstly, let’s talk about how exactly this legislation came about. Before we go into exactly what was banned, I want to porn out that the government neglected asked the public their thoughts on censorship (but do they ever in dystopian stories?) or their thoughts on what constitutes as acceptable adult entertainment before deciding for everyone and putting it into writing. Rather, the new bans come under an act of “amendments” to legislation from 2003’s communications act.
#ThingsNowBannedInUKPorn :
Spanking
Caning
Aggressive whipping
Penetration by any object “associated with violence”
Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of if consensual)
Urolagnia (known as “water sports”)
Female ejaculation
Strangulation
Facesitting
Fisting
Gagging
Restrictions of all four limbs
When written down and taking out of context then I can see why some may see these acts as violent and life threatening. For example, if you overheard a conversation going along the lines of “He restricted all four of my limbs, gagged me, strangled me and the aggressively whipped me.” you may assume the speaker was a victim to domestic violence. However UK pornography isn’t domestic violence, rather it’s consensual acts between adults who derive pleasure from certain acts.
The fetish community will be most hard hit, especially independent producers and fem-dom or LGBT companies/ workers. This comes despite fetish porn being one of the most successful genres of British porn, both domestically and internationally. The fetish community in the UK is also very strong, London alone being a hub of parties, clubs and conventions. There is also a very vague description for some of the restrictions such as “object associated with violence” because surely, anything can be made into a weapon?
The claims for the new UK Porn Censorship have been backed that some acts are life threatening, including fisting and face-sitting. At a stretch, I can see how face-sitting may lead to death, and fisting can be dangerous, but then, anything can be dangerous and we’re not banning “vigorous hand jobs” More importantly though, is the fact a lot of the new bans seem to target women’s pleasure. Or at least acts that are most associated with female satisfaction whether from a dominate or submissive position. If female ejaculation is now banned, why is male ejaculation allowed? Does female ejaculation offend people somehow? Why don’t we just ban females from reaching climax at all?
The internet’s reaction, in fact, everyone’s reaction that I’ve come across so far seem to indicate that the new legislation for UK Porn Censorship is unfair and thoughtless. As if the members of parliament didn’t attempt to access pornography 300,000 times from the houses of parliament itself last year! Instead, the feel like some neo-victorian snob passing moral judgement on all of us. It’s simple one of the numerous steps the UK government have taken to increase UK porn censorship, and I’m not exactly sure what their end goal is. To stop all porn in the UK perhaps?
Follow the reaction on twitter with #ThingsNowBannedInUkPorn for hilarious, but also insightful news on the issue!
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