British Nanny State In Spot Of Bother At Freak Mustachio-Ride Skinflick Demises

British porn fans are about to see some changes in the material available for their wanking pleasure -- or at least in the domestically produced stuff.

Last year, the Conservative government banned rape porn -- not in-real-life rape, which is of course evil and already illegal, but the pretend fantasy kind, involving well-paid consenting actors, which some people are into, we have been told. Now, under the guise of making porn safer for those involved in the business, the government arbitrarily banned a whole slew of sex acts (and this is where we probably should remind you that this article will name some of them, but not include any illustrations, so depending on where you W, what follows may be NSF that place).

 The Independent explains the bureaucratic hoops that British porn must now jump through:

The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 requires that video-on-demand (VoD) online porn now adhere to the same guidelines laid out for DVD sex shop-type porn by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC).

And of course, those standards are fairly arbitrary. The new restrictions won't actually ban British eyeballs from viewing foreign-made porn that includes the banned acts. Theoretically, the regulations will protect someone -- performers, apparently -- from a whole bunch of dangers:  

Acts that are no longer acceptable include: spanking, caning and whipping beyond a gentle level; penetration by any object "associated with violence"; activities that can be classed as "life-endangering", such as strangulation and facesitting; fisting, if all knuckles are inserted; physical or verbal abuse, even if consensual; the portrayal of non-consensual sex; urination in various sexual contexts; and female ejaculation.

It's quite a list, but one mostly made up of stuff that seems to have been picked out pretty arbitrarily (women orgasming, exactly which items can or can't be inserted into a consenting adult's body).

Yes, facesitting is apparently "life-endangering," although we are pretty sure that if there were a rash of cunniligus-related deaths, that would have been noted by someone in a position of authority. Probably someone holding a leash. As Vice notes, the practical effect of the regulations won't be to reduce porn-viewing, because Internet, but it will be very damaging to British producers of kinky stuff, which will probably make some Puritans somewhere quite happy, because it's a blow -- however meaningless -- against dirty movies.

Filmmaker Erika Lust (we suspect that may be a pseudonym) wrote in an op-ed that the new restrictions seem to be targeted specifically at acts enjoyed by female audiences; we hate to admit it, but we're not sufficiently advanced porn connoisseurs to be able to say whether we agree, and now we're flashing back to that media arts class we took on "Media Representations of Sexuality," and all we can think of is "the male gaze" and a lot of critical theory, thank you very much. Ms. Lust argues, persuasively enough, that the rules are arbitrary and illogical, aimed at reinforcing mainstream norms of boinking without any particular reason other than the other stuff is too squicky for the censors.

As far as we know, this performance will remain legal, at least for now:

And for once, we can truly say that we are proud to be Americans, where at least we know we're free.

[ Vice / Salon / Independent / Independent again]