New Act Regulates UK-Made Porn But Is It Sexist?

Well, it’s not great news for Fifty Shades of Grey fans.

On Monday, a new act passed quietly through parliament restricting the sexual behaviour that can be portrayed in UK-made pornography. And already people are speaking out over the seemingly arbitrary list of now banned acts.

While the idea of regulating pornography for the sake of the safety of performers should be encouraged, it appears to many that these new restrictions are less about safety and more about some assumed moral imperative.

It’s no coincidence that female ejaculation and facesitting are both popular acts in female-centred pornography and are now both banned, with facesitting actually being described as “life-endangering” by the new law.

“Money shots”, depictions of men ejaculating on women’s faces and bodies on camera, are a staple of pornography in 2014 and according to the new act are much less offensive than images of women ejaculating.

In fact they’re totally fine, while the sight of a woman climaxing is now so offensive it must be banned.

According to The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014, these now include:
Spanking
Caning
Aggressive whipping
Penetration by any object “associated with violence”
Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of if consensual)
Urolagnia (known and “water sports”)
Female ejaculation
Strangulation
Facesitting
Fisting

Another worrying inclusion on this hot list of banned acts is the reference to banning physical or verbal abuse regardless of if consensual.

The notion of consent is such a powerful and important factor in healthy, safe sexual acts that to dismiss it entirely throws shade on how we define violent sexual crimes like rape.

By ignoring the idea of consent when it comes to these sex acts, the new laws are equating violent sexual assault with professional pornographic actors acting out a BDSM routine agreed upon and performed in a safe environment.

One of the main objectives of the new policy is to “protect people under-18 from accessing and consuming content via video on demand (VoD)” but we’re not quite sure how banning all consensual acts of BDSM from British produced porn comes under that remit.

And you can forget talking dirty.

While you can see where these new restrictions are coming from, like previous attempts to make representations of women and sexuality “safer” the act has fallen back on staid and regressive stereotypes to bolster its moral crusade.

What they’ve in effect done is to alienate women from the already male-dominated world of pornography by banning sexual behaviours most enjoyed by females.

A poll by The Mirror found that over 50 per cent of their female readers have fantasied about being tied up, which is now outlawed in Brit-made porn, while 23 per cent of women are interested in being spanked or whipped.

If the British government doesn’t want under-18s to watch pornography, crack down on internet providers or parents who use iPads to babysit their kids.

Banning female ejaculation and spanking isn’t the answer.

Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industry who put his name to the act, has been contacted by Yahoo for a comment.

What do you think of the new laws? Let us know on Twitter.

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