Misty Media Sex Blog

March 12th 2006, 17:52 Jeff Sela

Tony Comstock has an interesting rant about how the video classification systems in Canada and Australia—supposedly designed to protect the unwary public from nasty dangerous porn—are far more stringent than the legal requirements for sex toys. In fact manufacturers of so called ‘sex toys’ can sell whatever kind of toxic rubber dildos they want if they label them as ‘novelty items’. But really, if you're going to be inserting something in intimate parts of your anatomy, shouldn't you expect that it's been purpose designed for that?

Tony didn't mention the UK's film censorship system, so I'll provide my own rant to fill the gap. There are few subjects I enjoy griping about as much as this one.

Here in the UK our film censorship system follows basically the same model as that of Canada. Every single film sold has to get a rating from the BBFC—which used to be called the British Board of Film Censorship before the Home Secretary decided that ‘Classification’ was less scary word. At least you only need one classification for the whole of the UK.

The worst part though is that porn (except for the softest of soft core) can only be sold in licensed sex shops, of which there are only a couple of hundred in the whole of Great Britain. The hefty licensing fees keep new shops from opening, and councils regularly find excuses to turn down applications. Mail-order porn isn't allowed at all.

I asked the guy in one of the London sex shops if they had any Comstock films, and wasn't particularly surprised that he'd never heard of them. Shops can't afford to take risks on niche or unusual films. And while sex toys are becomming more acceptable nowadays, with dildos and vibrators available in a few chains of mainstream highstreet shops, pornography is still treated as though it's apt to explode and release poisonous gas. What hope for a more rational attitude to sexually explicit material when it has to be hidden behind blacked-out shop windows in the seedy part of town.

2 Comments

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1. ::: Paul, July 13th 2006, 10:25:

   It's these stupid britsh laws that keep me from opening a sex shop! I wanted to sell porn, but I simply cannot afford to pay to be licensed. It's about time we were allowed to buy what we want and NOT what the government says we can watch!!!.

   As for me, I will just stick to selling top quality sex toys on the web. Paul. intimate-times.co.uk

2. ::: Jeff Sela, July 26th 2006, 18:30:

   Paul: the part that most annoys me about the Video Recordings Act is that it prevents mail-order companies like yours from carrying R18 material. It means a lot of people who don't happen to live near a licensed shop, or who don't want to be seen going into one, simply can't buy porn flicks from British companies. It also prevents people selling niche films, some of which probably wouldn't be worth even getting classified because their market is so small.

   It just doesn't make sense for the government to send this business abroad, and force us to run the risk of Customs confiscating our porn. I can't see them wanting to change something so controversial though, so we'll be stuck with it for quite a while.