I was heartened to read today about an “extreme pornography” case in England resulting in a not guilty verdict. Although it’s depressing that the case was even brought to trial, at least the jury saw sense.
I’ve written about this issue before. Back in 2008 the British government introduced legislation to outlaw what they defined as extreme pornography. The part of the act that concerned all BDSM lovers read as follow…
An image falls within this subsection if it portrays, in an explicit and realistic way, any of the following—
(a) an act which threatens a person’s life,
(b) an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
When the law was introduced it was accompanied by lots of scare stories about snuff films and non-consensual torture. Inevitably, as anyone with a brain might have guessed, it ended up getting applied much more broadly to anything the police thought they could get away with. I’d probably be in trouble because wrapping a plastic bag around someones head is life threatening. And burning someones genitals clearly could result in serious injury.
In this particular case it was fisting and urethral sounding that got the unfortunate victim into trouble. Neither of those things had resulted in serious injury, but obviously the facts weren’t about to get in the way of the prosecution. They also tried the usual tricks of exaggerating the evidence and smearing the defendant. As the defense lawyer describes, they originally suggested it was thousands of images, some involving children. In the end it was down to 5 images, all of consenting adults taken at a private party. It took the jury less than 90 minutes to acquit on all charges.
I’ll leave you with an image that will hopefully now not get my British readers into trouble. It features January Seraph and a nice long shiny sound.
This image is originally from the CBT and Ballbusting site. I found it on the Women with Whips tumblr.