United Kingdom Ramps Up War on Porn and Women's Sexuality

UNITED KINGDOM—At first glance, the news out of the United Kingdom appears like something The Onion might concoct to lampoon the nation's recent devolution into what everyone thought was a bygone sexual morality. But no; like a nightmare from which one cannot awaken, the government quietly enacted new regulations that went into effect yesterday (Dec. 1, 2014) banning certain sex acts from being produced and sold in the U.K. From Whitehall's point of view, the new regs simply expand the parameters of already existing guidelines imposed on brick-and-mortar retailers. As reported by The Independent, "The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 requires that video-on-demand (VoD) online porn now adhere to the same guidelines laid out for DVD sex shop-type porn by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC)." But it is the list of now prohibited acts that has made the announcement such an eye-opener, leading The Independent to observe caustically, "Seemingly arbitrarily deciding what is nice sex and what is not nice sex, the board has banned the following acts from being depicted by British pornography producers: "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" Notably, the paper adds, the last three on the list "fall under acts the BBFC views as potentially 'life-endangering,'" which might in fact be a fair warning if most (or even many) of the people who strangle, face sit and fist during sex are homicidal, which fortunately they are not... even in Britain. While the new regs have been introduced ostensibly to protect children, the specific prohibitions contained in them indicate a decided bias against women's sexuality, along with an infuriating indifference to the idea that women actually enjoy and seek out unorthodox types of sex, which in the end turn out not to be not all that unorthodox. It is this facet of the new censorship that most shocks the conscience. How in 2014 could a Western nation possibly outlaw female ejaculation? There is disturbing precedent, however. Australia has been trudging down Orwell's path for years, determined to exert a level of moral (i.e. sexual) control over the populace that the English have been comfortable with for generations. Indeed, the Aussies made a pact with the devil years ago when they imposed similar restrictions on so-called BDSM or fetish sex acts while leaving tamer porn under the close regulatory eye of a classification regime that can be tightened at any time. Let's not forget that in 2010 Australia banned the importation of films featuring female ejaculation as well as women with small breasts. Therefore, history is indeed repeating itself, and the idea that these nations feel compelled to expand that control to the internet should come as a surprise to no one. That said, for producers who live in these countries, nothing will truly prepare them for the real-world fallout from yesterday's announcement that a Victorian-era sensibility is once again de rigueur. Jerry Barnett of Sex and Censorship complained bitterly to Vice UK. "There appear to be no rational explanations for most of the R18 rules. They're simply a set of moral judgments designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British people from watching pornography." Nothing of the kind will happen, of course. Swaths of adult content featuring oodles of just the sort of content now banned from being produced at home is available online, 24/7, via non-UK-based sites. The greater concern now is what will happen when the government realizes that even this level of censorship will fail to deliver the desired results, whatever those might be. In the United States, producers of porn do not live under the types of content restrictions that now plague producers in the United Kingdom and Australia, but for an idea of the hoops mainstream producers in the U.S. must jump through to keep the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from imposing a kiss-of-death NC-17 rating on a movie, this blow-by-blow from director Kevin Smith about two problematic scenes in 2008's Zack and Miri Make a Porno is entertaining and eye-opening.