extreme pornography laws

This is another feature written for uni, targetted at The Guardian. It's more opinionated than anything I've written before, but hopefully not biased.

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In January a new law came into place, banning the possession of ‘extreme pornography’. This puts thousands of law-abiding adults, who happen to have an interest in an alternative sexual lifestyle, at risk of prosecution. Natalie Blachford looks at exactly what the law means, and what effects it may have.


So what exactly is considered to be ‘extreme porn’?

According to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, it is any image which depicts an act which appears to threaten someone’s life, or an act which appears to injure or may cause an injury to a person’s breasts or genitals. The image has to be produced in a sexual context, rather than in say horror films, where obviously there are millions of images where lives are threatened and people are killed.

Note the use of the word ‘appears’ in the description. This law is not exclusive to images in which a crime is actually being committed, but includes staged acts as well. This leads to one of many questions – why should it be illegal to look at an image of something, when it is legal to actually do it?

In the Spanner trials of the 1990’s, it was ruled that you cannot consent to serious assault. However, it was later ruled in the Court of Appeal that any activity which causes injuries which are ‘transient or trifling’ should not attract the attention of the law.

There are many examples of images included by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act where the act taking place, if between consenting adults, would either cause no injury at all, or one which is transient or trifling. For instance, an image of someone holding a knife to someone’s throat, in a sexual context, could now be illegal. But this could easily be a scene acted out for the cameras, where no one gets hurts.

The same can be said for asphyxiophilia or breath control (the act which sparked the campaigning for this law). This is a sexual act when your oxygen supply is cut off to increase arousal, through strangulation or suffocation.

In 2003, Brighton schoolteacher Jane Longhurst died from strangulation. Graham Coutts was found guilty of her murder. Coutts admitted to an eight year ‘obsession’ with using the internet to find pictures of women being strangled. The logic then followed that it was looking at these pictures which led to him killing Jane Longhurst, making it murder rather than manslaughter.

However, after one unsuccessful appeal, Law Lords Bingham, Nicholls, Hutton, Rodger and Mance said there was insufficient evidence of intent, and a verdict of manslaughter should have been offered. The courts heard evidence that Coutts had safely practised breath control with other partners, and that Longhurst had admitted to a colleague that she had experimented with it as well. The Court of Appeal then quashed the murder verdict.

Despite the manslaughter ruling, Jane’s mother, Liz Longhurst, began a campaign to introduce a law to make the images Coutts had looked at illegal, based on the idea that looking at pictures of something will make you do it.

There are many people who think that this assumption is wrong, and that is the basis of the argument against these new laws. Writer and liberal radical John Ozimek has been particularly outspoken on the subject, and he believes that “the idea that mild porn leads to extreme porn, and extreme porn leads to rape, is primitive and unsubstantiated.

“When the Government produced their consultation paper,” he continues, “their ‘evidence of harm’ was cobbled together at the last minute.”

Daryl Champion, a political journalist and author, and one of the first people to respond to the consultation paper on the laws, is in agreement.

“There is no evidence that there is a link between looking at violent porn and committing violent crimes, in fact there has been substantial research which actually says there is an inverse relationship.

“With regards to the Longhurst case, it shows the inadequacies of the British law system, you can find ‘experts’ who will say whatever you want.”

Both Champion and Ozimek are extremely critical of the Government’s approach to this subject. From the start of Liz Longhurst’s campaign, she had the support of her local MP, Martin Salter, who took the issue to parliament. She then gained the support of almost every other MP, including the Home Secretary David Blunkett, and the Government have completely backed the new legislation since.

As far as Champion is concerned, what they are doing is nothing more than social repression.

“I specialised in Middle East politics,” he says, “and I think that the porn laws reflect the social repression that I have seen in other aspects of life. It’s a severe attempt by a Government to control a very important aspect of the nation’s private life.”

“There is total arrogance in the Government’s moralising,” says Ozimek. “It attacks free speech and they’re only looking at one side of the equation. The law should be kept to a minimum and only legislate when there is some sexual harm.”

As well as outspoken writers like Champion and Ozimek, there have been several high profile protests against the law. In October last year, fetish photographer Ben Westwood (son of fashion designer Vivienne) led a chain gang of bound and gagged models through central London on behalf of CAAN, the Consenting Adults Action Network.

Clair Lewis, spokesperson for CAAN, told John Ozimek in an article for The Guardian that “it is easy to trivialise this as being about a bunch of people worried about their porn stash. But the issues run far wider. Individuals are feeling scared, angry and under pressure. We do not believe government reassurances about our sexuality. We think they are as bigoted about kinkiness as previous governments were about homosexuality."

Despite the protests and arguments against the law, the fact is that once the bill was passed in the House of Commons, there was little anyone could do to stop it. Now people have to face up to what the new law means, and the overall feeling in the BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism) community is one of extreme ill will towards the Government.

Even people who have no interest in looking at extreme pornography are concerned, because there are fears that this will simply set the ball rolling for new legislation which encroaches on their alternative sexual lifestyle.

“I don’t own anything disturbing,” says Aaron Dawson, a 35 year old fetishist from Colchester. “But I am into bondage, and I like seeing pictures of girls tied up, so how long will it be until the goalposts are moved and I can’t do that?”

It seems that this sort of wariness of what will happen next is what is worrying a lot of other people, in the BDSM community especially. There are also fears that being outspoken about it will lead to being targeted by the law, and it may make people less willing to talk to the police. Parallels have been drawn between this issue and the homophobia of 40 years ago.

“In the 70’s, gay men wouldn’t talk to police because of pure paranoia of arrest,” says Ozimek. “It could easily go the same way with this”.

Tim Woodward, editor of the worlds leading fetish magazine, Skin Two, draws the same parallel, but with a more positive long term outlook.

“It used to be completely illegal to have gay sex, but people still did it,” he says. “It will be the same with this, the law won’t stop people looking at what they like. But hopefully, alternative sexuality will become more accepted, like homosexuality has.”

Before this law came into place, anyone in possession of extreme pornography could still be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act (in fact, they still can, and later this year a man will face trial for writing a fictional story about the kidnap, rape and murder of Girls Aloud). As a well known fetishist, Woodward was once a target of this law.

“I was once raided by a custom and excise officer, looking for obscene material. They took the view that what I had was not worth bothering with, and I hope police take that view with the extreme porn law.

“I mean, some policemen are kinky fetishists themselves,” he continues. “What would they do if they were put in that position?”

So, for anyone who hasn’t been scared into burning their porn collection, how likely is it that they will actually face prosecution?

A Ministry of Justice ‘Impact Assessment’ has suggested that by 2010 there will have been no more than 30 prosecutions under the extreme porn law. This is essentially admitting that the majority of people have absolutely nothing to worry about, making the law rather pointless. So far, there have been no arrests, and Woodward, who works at the heart of the fetish scene in the UK, says “nothing’s been heard about it, not a sausage.”

The real fear is that now this bill has been passed, the Government will try to expand on it. The Government’s motive in passing this law is what concerns many of its critics. Baroness Miller, the Liberal Democrat Peer who has been most vocal on this issue - despite having no personal involvement in it – expressed this in her public response to the law which has been widely quoted.

"People don't understand what the government was up to in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill and why they're interfering in their private affairs. No legislation should leave law-abiding citizens criminalised for private sexual behaviour that harms no one."