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THE UK BANNED WHAT?!?!!

You know that feeling of white hot rage?

You know the kind of rage that makes the back of your brain tickle and your hands involuntarily arch themselves into raptor like claws that are desperate to savage the stupid faces of the brain dead morons who induced your ire?

I have that feeling today. Well I have that feeling a lot of days but I have it ESPECIALLY today. I’m not going to claim that the level of my rage is in anyway rational or proportional to it’s source of inspiration. The facts that I’m fighting with some unreliable Wifi and that I just got a splinter off the desk have definitely further aggravated matters...

These days when I see something wrong in the world I normally try to take two breaths and write about it calmly, rationally, and in a way that will be as approachable to as many people as possible. I should probably do this here. But I don’t want to do this here. Because I am angry. This means that I crave the catharsis of YELLING ABOUT HOW FUCKING STUPID THIS THING IS, and hoping maybe a few people get it.

“So what is it that has got you all wound up Timmy?” You are probably impatient to know by now.

Well I’ll tell you what has got me wound up:

THE UK HAS BANNED PRODUCTION OF BDSM PORN!

Ok. So I may have instantly lost a lot of you there, but FUCK YOU, listen to me anyway so you can be outraged at me being outraged at you being outraged… Or something. Yes maybe out of all the ill’s in the world the uk banning BDSM porn should not be on the top of my list to get angry about. Undoubtedly there’s a lot of worse shit happening out there, but I haven’t yet seen any rule anywhere that says “One must always get angry in proportion to the level of harm caused by what you are getting angry about.” That one’s probably not yet made it through the cretin committee yet. I am also potentially funnier when I am angry, and as I am kind of one of the ‘minority’ that this ‘victimised’ by this law I feel totally entitled to yell some things IN ALL CAPS!!!! 

If you want to read something balanced about what I am talking about, maybe click on one of these links for Guardian, mirror, Jezebel, or Vice articles. If however you want to ride the whirlwind, keep reading.

Specifically under  Audiovisial Media Services Regulations 2014 the UK is banning the production (and uk based distribution) of a whole bunch of BDSM based material, including:

Spanking
Caning
Aggressive whipping
Penetration by any object "associated with violence"
Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of whether it is consensual)
Urolangia (known as "water sports")
Female ejaculation
Strangulation
Facesitting
Fisting

FEMALE EJACULATION IS BANNED FROM PORN PRODUCED IN THE UK.

I mean that’s just fucking sexist. Men can cum on camera but women can’t squirt… How is that fair?!

In fact there’s a general sexist, bigoted, and “Down with this sort of thing” flavour to these new rules. It could be argued that BDSM is one area of pornography that in some cases can be empowering for women. Mainstream porn certainly doesn’t seem to be. However as a white male I run the risk of sounding like I’m using feminism to cover my true agenda, so I’ll leave that angle of the debate for the soon to be impoverished British dominatrixes and people otherwise more invested than I. But seriously. Fucking hell.

One gets the feeling that the sort of people that drew up this legislative shite-ballon are the sort of people who would prefer to ban ALL ejaculation from porn, as well as genitalia, deep breathing, and any form of suggestive physical contact. They really don’t understand why people can’t just be happy listening to Alan Titchmarsh talking about geraniums. For the most part these are the sort of people who are old and will hopefully be dead soon [1]. However before they shuffle off this mortal coil in their NHS issued orthotic loafers they seem committed to doubling down on the decades of moralizing bigotry and prejudice that they have already saddled our generation with for too long.

There are probably many things to be said about generational divides in the UK. The whole "Kids these days!” - ”Fuck off Grandad!” dichotomy is perhaps more exacerbated in England than in America due to the English experience of post World war II hardships, and reduced cultural diversity due to a rich British History of being dicks to foreigners. However figuring out the finer details of this divide and writing about them intelligently will take time and patience and dilute my ire with the cold water of understanding and consolation. Instead I will summarise

PEOPLE WHO THINK BDSM PORN SHOULD BE BANNED NEED TO FUCK THE FUCK OFF.

Oh you’re “Protecting young minds are you?” You can take that phrase, write it on “an object associated with violence” and ram it in deep alongside that broom handle which has been up there ever since you completed your national service.

You are protecting young minds from nothing. To begin with this law doesn’t block anyone from downloading BDSM porn from other countries, it just severely disadvantages any UK residents who want to compete in that production economy that generates taxes and jobs etc. (Something even the most geriatric voter should understand, even if they still haven’t got over the fact that ‘the balance of exports’ isn’t a meaningful metric anymore).

However out of extreme charity lets assume that this law could somehow shield young people from the subjects it chooses to ban. Instead of ‘protecting young minds’ what you’re teaching them is to persecute difference. WAKE UP YOU MYOPIC TIT-HEADS! Some people actually LIKE being dominated! Fuck that; A LOT OF PEOPLE LIKE BEING DOMINATED, in fact psychologists even seem to be reaching a consensus that it’s not a crazy thing to want. By banning BDSM porn you’re promoting the idea that there’s are right and wrong ways to have sex, and that some people are ‘right’ and some people are ‘freaks’ who should be stigmatized, regardless of how important they consider consent.

Apparently ‘these people’ think what you should be allowed to do in porn should be determined by an arbitrary list of what politicians and unelected turd-munchers decide is unpalatable or ‘dangerous’ according to their impressions (being gay or trans-sexual used to be on that list, but they’re OK now because they’re funny on TV [2]). We shouldn’t be shown dangerous stuff now? Fighting terrorists or driving cars fast or jumping out of planes are all considerably more dangerous than the most aggressive spanking, but no ones talking about banning them… You’re just fucking hypocritical prudes talking bullshit in an attempt to sound ‘balanced and reasoned’.

The BDSM banners might claim that “It teaches that sexual violence is acceptable”...

Erm allowing someone to watch something doesn’t teach them that it’s acceptable. telling someone “This is acceptable!” teaches them it’s acceptable. People learn things from other people around them, and if they choose to get into BDSM then there are actually a host of communities that have been formed around this interest. I’m not really a member of any in particular, but my impression is that these communities teach people more about consent, tolerance, and respect for each other’s limits and differences than anything else an impressionable mind is likely to encounter in this fucked up world of constant manipulation for commercial gain.

For comparison just look at how awfully sexist and dehumanising mainstream porn is! It is also just DULL. I mean how many permutations can you explore of androgenous and conventionally ‘beautiful’ people sticking dicks and tongues in various holes before it just becomes a repetitive act distinguished only by the size of the genitalia involved?

Maybe though instead of protecting us from ‘cultural decline’, (as if ‘these people’ ever really appreciated culture when they were growing up ‘back in the day’), a proponent of this law might argue that they are ‘protecting the performers’.

They might argue this because they really don’t have a fucking clue.

I watched some mainstream porn the other day; (what can I say it was a parody of a recent film and I was curious). It was just fucking awful. Also it was blatantly apparent the women in it were getting nothing out of the experience except a pay-cheque and a moisturised complexion. You can tell they’re not having fun from the pathetic ‘auh yeah’ sounds they make, which are apparently meant to suggest pleasure. It seems like these sounds have been learned from another porn performer, who learned from another porn performer, who learned from another porn performer, who learned from another porn performer who maybe had an orgasm on screen one time. If we continue this game of Chinese whispers long enough maybe everyone in the future will yell “Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!” during sex and no one will know why.

On the other hand I have watched a sizeable amount of BDSM porn in my time and I am eternally jealous of the orgasmic heights that some women appear to achieve while strapped down, tortured, and generally brutalized and violated. Some sites have little interviews at the end of the free clips I watch (because I am a cheapskate), with submissive performers who are more than happy to describe what a good time they just had being flogged, fisted, strangled, or generally fucked up. (“But HOW CAN THEY LIKE THAT?” you may ask. See this other thing I wrote. (Also you don’t have to understand something for it to be true!))

I don’t deny that there are some thorny ethical problems around consent when money is involved, (I am currently writing about this in another piece that has grown somewhat out of control (I am even making a ‘consent flow diagram’) *Update: I've written it*). After watching James Franco’s documentary ‘Kink’ I was left with a sense that levels of consent and other ethical considerations in BDSM porn could definitely be beefed up a bit (although the film was a vague and my impressions could have been inaccurate). However these are issues with consent that apply to porn in general and specifically legislating BDSM porn out of existence on England’s pastures green is just so dumb it makes Nigel Farage look positively academic, (Ok, it doesn’t, he’s still a twat).

Also there’s a naive assumption that if you ban a thing then it will stop. Are these people completely oblivious to the world they live in?

I expect banning the making of BDSM porn will reduce its production, but what you’ve done there is force the rest of it underground where performers will be less protected and more afraid of coming forward if violations occur [3]. WHAT A FUCKING BRILLIANT IDEA THAT IS! Take an industry which deals with potentially dangerous situations that require clear skills, training, consent, and transparency... and then force it into the shadows. It’s kind of like banning the legal distribution of petrol so people have to sneak it around in jerry cans; shit is gonna catch on fire! (Hey at least then you’ll be able to shake your heads and tut about how terrible petrol is).

If you’re worried about protecting the performers from being hurt and violated against their consent there are plenty of laws against rape and assault that could be better implemented. Maybe in a porn based rape case you might actually be able to get a fucking prosecution for once if there’s video evidence and no one can produce a written consent form. Maybe you should teach the police how to pursue actual rape convictions and generally bolster laws that protect women instead of persecuting those you consider to be deviant or immoral.

But no! The whole world has to tick to your antiquated sense of right and wrong and anyone who doesn’t get in line should be sent to the gas chambers… THAT’S RIGHT I JUST COMPARED YOU TO HITLER, BECAUSE YOU’RE FACIST SCUM JUST LIKE HE WAS!!! ALTHOUGH ON REFLECTION YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT REALLY AS BAD AS HITLER, BECAUSE HE WAS REALLY REALLY BAD AND THIS COMPARISON IS KIND OF INSULTING TO THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST, BUT THERE ARE DEFINITELY SOME VERY SPECIFIC PARALLELS… OK I’M GOING TO STOP TYPING IN CAPS NOW.

Do I disgust you with my deviant interests and defence of BDSM? Well you fucking disgust me with your moral prescriptivism and cultural condescension.

Now go away and stop banning things you don’t understand.

*Update; Someone has set up a PETITION that we should all sign here  *

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Footnotes

[1] Excluding my own family members from this equation of course...

[2] How ‘THEY’ may think, not how I think!

[3]This continued approach the sex industry is doubtless costing hundreds of lives globally every year. We need to sensibly legalize prostitution as soon as possible, but that’s an argument for another rant.

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