As much as I agree with their goals, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the recent ‘porn protests’ that have taken place in the UK. The first gained plenty of coverage as photographers elbowed each other out of the way to get shots of girls whipping their boobs out, spanking each other or engaging in face sitting, but the issues at hand were mostly ignored / sneered at, and subsequent events have been pretty much ignored entirely. And the ongoing suggestion that the BBFC – and thus the other governing bodies – are unfairly targeting feminist / indie / radical pornographers with their rules is a dreadful, and easily disproven fallacy. After all, the rules banning ‘violent’ or ‘abusive’ porn (intense BDSM, choking, ‘degrading’ language etc) were put in place back in 2000, and were designed very much to safeguard women from the effects of men being inflamed by the ‘wrong sort of porn’ – still condescending, insulting and arguably sexist, but to the male viewer rather than the female one. The fact is that no one was complaining about these laws when they only affected DVD producers, who were (and are) routinely having material cut or banned outright.
Still, whatever it takes to make this a public issue. And while I doubt any government minister has lost a single minute’s sleep over the issue, at least it shows that not everyone supports the ludicrous overkill legal restrictions being placed on internet porn. I’ll welcome anyone to the free expression fight, even if their motives are not ultimately the same as mine – their goals generally are.
With the utterly dreadful, privacy invading, sexual freedom crushing Digital Economy Bill cruising through Parliament with barely a blip of opposition, assorted campaigners including porn producer Pandora Blake, obscenity lawyer Myles Jackman, the Open Rights Group, NO2ID and Big Brother Watch are organising a day of protest in the form of the Backlash Kink Olympixxx, which will feature satirical games including Fisting Volleyball, a Spanking Relay Race and Squirting Waterfight in, as they state, “a playful parody of the sexual acts that are legal to perform in real life, but illegal to represent, possess or publish under UK sex laws.” Actually, none of those acts are illegal to possess, as none fall under the legal definition of Extreme Pornography, but let’s not split hairs at this point.
The Kink Olympixxx will be held outside Parliament between 12-2pm on Monday the 17th October 2016. There will be speeches from the organisers and civil liberties organisations including Privacy International, Index on Censorship, and the English Collective of Prostitutes.
Myles Jackman, an award-winning specialist in obscenity law, commented that:
“Whilst the Kink Olympixxx was conceived as a playful protest, the Digital Economy Bill poses a serious risk of users’ personal sexual preferences being leaked; will adversely affect sexual minorities’ ability to freely express their sexuality; and most frighteningly, imposes State censorship and surveillance of consensual adult sexual content in the UK.”
For further details please see the Kink Olympixxx website: kinkolympixxx.com
