U.K. Face-sitting Protest

First, it’s my birthday! I’m quite happy about it too! I did my hair, with dark purple bangs, I bought new eye-shadow, and I drank a bottle of cheap champagne, yada yada yada. No time for that now! There’s face-sitting afoot! I’ll admit it… I paid attention to this story because of the face-sitting. But this is actually an important news story for the porn industry in the U.K. with effects that could ripple way out across the pond.

A U.K. regulatory agency has banned certain sexual acts from being performed in online pornography produced and hosted within the U.K.  This is to coincide with a pre-existing ban on these acts in video/DVD porn for sale in shops (I believe the relevant law is the Obscene Publications Act). Online porn produced elsewhere can still be viewed and purchased there currently. There are a number of problems with this policy change, beyond the damage to the livelihoods of online porn creators and performers based in the U.K.

For example, there’s no ban on showing male ejaculation, but female ejaculation is forbidden – quite simply, that’s kinda sexist, and kinda arbitrary, and I know several women who would therefore have very brief and/or unsatisfying careers in British porn. Many BDSM activities are banned for being “life-endangering”… ignoring the fact that most kinksters take safety and communication more seriously than most vanilla folks do, as well as the fact that these acts are consensual.

Face-sitting is specifically on the list of prohibited, life-endangering activities… and has subsequently been wonderfully prominent in the protests outside Parliament on Friday. When I saw the headline image from this article on CNN.com, of extremely classy and stylish British dominatrix Mistress Absolute in situ, I had to do my best to pay homage – a tribute in solidarity with my U.K. porn allies, in defense of free expression and femdom!

Face-Sitting

Of course one must be careful not to spill a drop!

That’s Shay down there, by the way. She and the Magistrate have been on the giving or receiving end of quite a lot of activities that would now be illegal if I were producing my work in the U.K.

Here’s the list of what was banned on video, and is newly banned in online porn: “Aggressive” whipping, caning, face-sitting, female ejaculation (with no word on how this applies to trans women, or futanari characters), fisting, humiliation, penetration by an object “associated with violence” (or just say weapons), physical restraint, physical/verbal abuse, spanking (SERIOUSLY?), strangulation, underage role-play, and urolagnia or “watersports”. This is in addition to anything else that was already banned.

So… again in solidarity with my U.K. counterparts, I decided to create an entire gallery of images that may be banned in the U.K. if I produced them there. I’m afraid there’s something dreadfully immoral in every single one of my products!  Oh bother.

 

Actually… I think if they saw what kind of stuff I’m up to, they might have added a few things to their list! ^_^”’ …I think I may actually try to include more of the acts on that list, in my subsequent work.

Why is this such a big deal?

Okay, so censorship is bad, the bans are sexist and wickedly anti-BDSM, and some are idiotic, but censorship in the U.K. is nothing new. Why is this news? Well, mostly because of the colorful protests by pornographers and performers fighting for their right to fist… but it goes deeper than fisting.

There have been a few legal victories against state censorship within the U.K., but the director of ATVOD, the Authority for Television On Demand believes that porn sites outside the U.K. could violate the Obscene Publications Act when their content gets downloaded into the U.K., and there are new legal guidelines that support that idea. This would mean that sites selling in the U.K. could have to register with ATVOD, and therefore have to comply with their expanded online censorship policy, or else payments from within the U.K. to offending sites could be blocked. He specifically said, “Our view is that cutting off the funds to premium services… would disrupt and undermine the free and unrestricted provision of hardcore porn”… he said this about businesses outside his own country.

This is a bureaucrat, not an elected official, therefore someone with no direct accountability to the U.K. public, talking about imposing financial sanctions on industries in foreign jurisdictions, in order to enforce a moral code. It is not currently happening, and it can be prevented, but this is still the stated goal of someone in a non-elected government job in the U.K., with the purview to push in that direction. If it worked, it could set a dangerous legal precedent for censors and government regulators to affect other industries, and other liberties.

Porn is an easy target. No politician really wants to stand up for freedom of expression, if it’s porn. But state censorship of media is a slippery slope, (especially in a surveillance state like the U.K.), and porn could be the first domino to fall…

And that’s why I’m sitting on the side of the protestors.

Face-Sitting HD

If you prefer a widescreen image, click to download the HD version.

 

Bonus: if you don’t already read Oglaf, go check it out – maybe starting with this extremely apropos comic from last week.