UK Porn Laws: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know

There’s probably not a huge amount left to say about our idiotic new porn laws. Over the last 10 days they’ve been skewered – eviscerated – by everyone from Girl on the Net to Stavvers, Malin James to Myles Jackman, and I don’t disagree with a single word that any of them have penned on the subject. The amendment to the 2003 Communications Act is, at best, tragically and damagingly naive; and at worst another shining example of the kind of regressive, ignorant, and sexist legislation that this government has imposed upon us.

So what can I add to what’s already been written?

11 months ago, around the time I started blogging in earnest, I wrote a post about the lack of male nudity in mainstream media. It’s a subject about which I feel pretty strongly: partly out of solidarity, but also because, as I said in the post, men themselves will benefit if we ‘normalize the idea of male nudity, and…remove the lingering stigma from the idea of straight dudes looking at other dudes’ genitals.’

When I read through the list of activities that the BBFC will no longer deem acceptable, I experienced a similar wave of frustration and sadness. In a direct sense, it’s largely women who are the victims of these new regulations, but again, a big part of that unavoidably lies in the way that men will be prevented from learning about, enjoying, and engaging with activities that reference or prioritise female pleasure.

Sex education in the UK is so woefully deficient that most teenagers rely on porn to fill the gaps – to show sex as it really is. As we get older and more curious, porn provides an introduction to kink, and reassures us that the things we fantasise about, the things we want to do, are safe and normal. That we’re normal for wanting them.

If the new law means that young men will no longer get to explore their nascent desire for face-sitting, fisting, and female ejaculation, all of us will suffer. Female pleasure will be sidelined and marginalised, as will the men who get off on it, or who want to make it a central – a normal – part of their sexual experience. We become better than we are by educating ourselves, and through exposure to that to which we ought to aspire – in other words, if we want men to prioritise their partners’ sexual agency, it’s fucking stupid to consistently feed them the message that the ways in which that agency is expressed are dirty, dangerous, or wrong.

For those of us who are no longer quite so impressionable, the regulations are less pernicious and, at the same time, equally offensive. I fucking love it when someone sits on my face, whether it’s a loving and tender act, or a forceful and dominant one. I want to see it on screen, and to be trusted not to equate consensual D/S play with dangerous, reckless violence. I want to be able to watch a guy come on a woman’s face, but I also want to see a woman squirting uncontrollably all over her partner; hell, I want to be that partner, so of course I want to see it, and I’m not willing to accept anyone shaming me for finding it hot.

I don’t believe in completely unconstrained freedom of expression. There are images to which we ought to be denied access, and there is ‘pornography’ that should be criminalised, stigmatised and suppressed. One of the many reasons why this law is desperately ill-judged is that it dilutes our view of what falls into that category. If we start to treat complex and psychologically-driven scenarios involving consenting adults in the same way we treat images and videos that involve actual abuse, we will make it harder to take effective action against the genuinely harmful stuff out there.

Effective pornography legislation focuses on the production, not on the audience. It starts by preventing the exploitation of children and women; and in the long run it ensures that performers are physically safe, fairly compensated, and respected for what they do. If that involves missionary sex by candlelight, that’s great. If it involves watersports, or fisting, or weapon play, or any one of a dozen other things that I’m really not into, then that should be fine too. I can watch Daniel Craig be tortured in a Bond film, without wanting to strap my next-door neighbour to a chair and lay into him with a knotted rope – why can’t I watch a responsibly-shot spanking scene and be trusted not to attack my partner with a paddle or cane immediately thereafter?

There are millions of ways in which we can offer women better protection from sexual violence and mistreatment. The amendment to the Communications Act not only fails to meet that standard, it actively restricts and inhibits the expression of female pleasure and agency, thereby contributing to a culture in which men think of women as second-class sexual citizens.

Porn should not replace sex education. However, it would be stupid to pretend that it doesn’t play a formative role in the way that many young men view sex and sexuality. Instead of drawing arbitrary, hamfisted red lines around specific acts, we should be encouraging guys to seek out porn that emphasises consent, equality, and female pleasure, while clamping down on the material that’s genuinely abusive.

As a man, I want to see the full spectrum of female desire represented in the porn I watch, because that’s what turns me on. As an adult, I want my government to treat ‘extreme’ sexual content in the same way it does violent movies or video games, with an emphasis on safety, production standards and age restrictions, rather than crude, blanket censorship. On both counts, the new law is a resounding failure.