UK porn legislation: The long list of sex acts the government just banned

Pornography produced in the UK must adhere to the same guidelines laid out for DVD sex shop-type porn by the British Board of Film Censors.

18:08 03 December 2014

An amendment to the 2003 Communication Act has quietly censored future pornography produced in the United Kingdom.

The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 requires that online porn adhere to the same guidelines applied to DVD sex shop-type porn by the British Board of Film Censors which effectively bans the following acts:

• Spanking
• Caning
• Aggressive whipping
• Penetration by any object "associated with violence"
• Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of whether it’s consensual)
• Urolagnia (known as "water sports")
• Role-playing as non-adults
• Physical restraint
• Humiliation
• Female ejaculation
• Strangulation
• Facesitting
• Fisting

Jerry Barnett of the anti-censorship group Sex and Censorship told Vice UK: "There appear to be no rational explanations for most of the R18 rules. They're simply a set of moral judgements designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British people from watching pornography."

However, Itziar Bilbao Urrutia, a dominatrix who produces porn, said that the new guidelines are “absurd” and could be damaging to women’s power in the industry. "I mean, why ban facesitting? What's so dangerous about it? It's a harmless activity that most femdom performers, myself included, do fully dressed anyway. Its power is symbolic: woman on top, unattainable."