A list of the sex acts banned today in the UK porn industry.

[ClawHandsIfYouBelieveInFreaks]

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


A link to the article in The Independent which explains more.

The newspaper claims that the "measures seem to take aim at female pleasure" and that they're "arbitrary" choices to make....I'm not sure what part of the list other than female ejaculation is synonymous with female pleasure though!

The writer is scathing about the bans.

Although veiwers in the UK will be able to continue to watch pornography including the above, it will no longer be legal to make such films here.

[almondcakes]

Fiyyase, the list (which itself is incorrect) is the interpretation of current obscenity law applied to film censorship. Obviously censors cannot give a classification to acts which fall under obscenity law. Amateur pornographers would be dealt with by obscenity law directly, not by film classification. Whether ornot they would be convicted has far greater scope for interpretation. So urination is frequently a component of highly degrading forms of pornography, but if the depiction appeared in a less degrading situation they would be highly unlikely to be convicted, despite it being illegal in pornography.

[FloraFox]

Prohibition in the US had huge problems with corrupt law enforcement which enabled the mafia to thrive. I don't agree that normal people were buying alcohol from the mafia and there is still a much greater attitude of temperance in the US than there is in the UK. Gambling is banned or highly restricted in a number of places and people generally comply with the law.

In many places where activities that are banned thrive, it is due to lax or corrupt law enforcement.

[WillkommenBienvenue]

This stems back to the days when they had to keep one foot on the floor by the bed when they made a movie - they had to have clear written boundaries. Things have moved on and determining whether something is damaging to viewers or society at large has become subjective and extremes are normalised - the system needs to change completely. The actors themselves will always say that they weren't harmed, that argument cannot be used any more.

This debate cannot continue to be run on the basis of consent any more. Abuse is abuse, people that are abused generally don't understand that they are. They may be 'consenting' adults but if they have been groomed as adolescents and teens then when they get to 18 does it mean they are consenting adults?

Someone with a healthy attitude to sex and relationships just isn't going to go down the road of producing abusive pornography. Just because abusive sex is one person's norm doesn't mean that it should be applied to everyone else because they have 'consented'.

[MoreCrackThanHarlem]

This for a million in my area.

Around £400,00 would buy you something like this.

Average house price is £220,000 which looks like this.

[MoreCrackThanHarlem]

Aaaagh wrong thread.
Meant to post in house porn, not actual porn

[JaneAHersey]

My thoughts are with the children and young people in the UK who are so hungry they are having to turn to prostitution to eat. They are being plunged into extreme poverty by Coalition policies/Welfare cuts. As a result sexual predators move in and exploit children and young people.

Current headlines include:

'Sexual violence in the UK is as bad as in war zones.'

'Children in London are so hungry they are having to turn to prostitution to eat.'

'There are no national intelligence gathering systems.' to address the sexual exploitation of children happening currently in the UK.

The is no regulation for children and youngsters who find themselves involved in prostitution and in the making of child sexual abuse images. Perhaps the Independent should investigate this.

[Alyosha]

All prohibition proves is that you can shut the door after the horse has bolted. Whenever an activity is illegal, people will seek to circumvent it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent people from killing themselves/maiming themselves/getting into horrendous debt/being sexually abuse on camera/being prostituted.

In fact, Prohibition proves that legalising anything is incredibly risky - if it goes wrong, you can't easily reverse the damage.

I actually read somewhere that during prohibition and for 10 years after, admissions for liver disease fell substantially. Not sure how accurate that is, though.

[Alyosha]

• that you can't shut the door!
  
  Honestly, it's also an awful argument to say that high taxes = illegality. No matter how low the taxes where on the goods, legal products would still be more expensive, because we have to pay our employees (rather than using slaves), we have to ensure safe working conditions, we have to employ HR people etc. etc.
  
  Legalising drugs/prostitution legitimises the illegal market and makes it easier for criminals to profit from other people's suffering

[HaroldsBishop]

Legalising drugs/prostitution legitimises the illegal market and makes it easier for criminals to profit from other people's suffering

Not going to comment on the extreme porn ban (I have no desire whatsoever to watch two people piss on each other), but this statement is so patently incorrect I don't know where to begin! Have you never heard of the prohibition?!

[TheFriar]

I think it's also how things are presented.
If you say 'X shouldn't be shown on porn because it's degrading fur the woman', it doesnt say the same than saying 'X shouldn't be shown because it's dangerous (eg there has been too many accidents doing X) or it's I suitable for you get viewers (and there will be some).
Because you are in effect saying that X is degrading do shouldn't even happen in the privacy of your own house.

In my view, I'm for example uncomfortable with BDSM videos because 1- it only show the scene but none if the context, which is essential if you talk about protecting viewers. You want to make it clear there are boundaries, that everyone has agreed to it, ways to actually says STOP (and if the woman does, it does stop). And 2- because none if the context is given, I'm always wondering the woman is really into BDSM or just desperate for money.

For the same reason, I'm just as uncomfortable with fisting, double fisting, double penetration and the likes.

I'm also wondering what has been the basis in the first place to decide what us and isn't ok. Eg if it's based on the follow on of a few cases going to court, maybe it's not representative of 1- the reality of the problem and 2- the best way to protect the viewers , if that's what we are trying to achieve.

Now what I would be happy to see is regulation that will balance the view in what sex is. So atm you only see porn with a man or men using a woman body. What about the opposite? Having a good percentage if porn being about the woman using a man for her own pleasure for example.
A bit like in France, on radio and TV you have to have x%of programs/sings that have to be French. So x% of porn has to show...

[JaneAHersey]

To clarify I would like to see regulation to prevent children having to turn to prostitution and exploited by sexual predators for the making of child sexual images.

I would also like to see Feminism more inclusive and fight for the rights of females of all classes and ages.

[FloraFox]

I don't see how it would be beneficial for women to have porn showing a woman using a man for her own pleasure. Maybe we could actually not commoditise sex and treat sex as something for mutual benefit.

If something can be regulated, it can be banned and that would be my preference.

HaroldsBishop it is not patently incorrect. The prohibition is a more complicated situation than you are suggesting, particularly given the lax and corrupt law enforcement at that time.

[HaroldsBishop]

I'm sorry but it is. Making something legal does not make the criminals more profit. Hence why there is no black market for, say, digestive biscuits. Maybe you're thinking of decriminalisation, which is completely different.

[FloraFox]

Digestive biscuits are only very minimally regulated. Heavily regulated legal activities create a market for illegal activities due to the cost and constraints of regulation. In Australia there are many illegal brothels although brothels are legal. Legalising the activity reinforces a value that the activity itself is acceptable. Then the question is just whether one does it through the regulated channels (restricted activity, more expensive) or the unregulated channels (unrestricted activity, cheaper). Either way, the market will increase.

[FloraFox]

Well it makes the people who were criminals for doing it, no longer criminals!

Exactly, Buffy It's the same people who will be running the business whether it is legal or illegal. You're not going to get BUPA setting up porn companies or brothels.

[FloraFox]

Only two dunks permitted per biscuit? No dunking in public?

[SolidGoldBrass]

FFS regulations on porn should be entirely about the rights, health and safety of the performers, nothing whatsoever to do with what acts are depicted. This current piece of legislation is not designed to benefit the general public in the least. Its purposes are:
To demonstrate that the government 'cares' - and throw a bone to the uniformed, uptight bigots who think that anything outside of the marital bed/PIV is 'disgusting'.
To protect the interests of the most corporate porn companies, the ones who produce the most 'mainstream' (ie aimed at the heterosexual male with minimal fetishes) material *by shutting down the independents (who are often women) and the LGBTQ producers.
To be held in reserve as further justification for state snooping and criminalizing of communications - the Big Scare which can alternate regularly with all those foreign-looking non-christians who also hate women and need to be spied on.

[SolidGoldBrass]

**UNINFORMED not necessarily 'uniformed'.

[HaroldsBishop]

Heavily regulated legal activities create a market for illegal activities due to the cost and constraints of regulation

Which is why we see such a thriving trade in black market alcohol....much more than if was made illegal. No, wait.....

When they legalised cannabis in Colorado the black market got much bigger. Oh no, wait, it more or less dried up because people would rather buy from a legitimate source.

Illegality is a form of regulation btw. In fact its the "heaviest" type of regulation there can be. If you recognise that more regulation = more black market then you surely can see that regulating something to the point of illegality = most black market of all.

I typed a load more of stuff but this is enough of a derail as it is. And of course completely irrelevant in terms of porn because it's digital nature means the government could ban all of it if they liked, and people would still easily be able to get it.

[HaroldsBishop]

To be held in reserve as further justification for state snooping and criminalizing of communications - the Big Scare which can alternate regularly with all those foreign-looking non-christians who also hate women and need to be spied on.

I heard that. It's a way of them to get their foot in the door RE: censoring the internet. And who would stand up and oppose this legislation? Anyone who publicly speaks out against it would just be branded a pervert.

[almondcakes]

SGB, there are many kinds of sex acts that are legal in porn that are not PIV. If your starting point is that we can only ban porn if one of the things banned is PIV then we are into a very different conversation.

Of course porn is ban based on harm to the public and not just to the participant. Porn in which an adult is being presented as a child is illegal in the UK, on the basis of the well being of people other than the performer.

Things that are most commonly experienced in situations of degradation are banned not because the individual performer finds them degrading (they may not do) but because they are normalising degradation in wider society.