Happy new year! It's traditional to do an end of year review, and I've been chewing over my 2016 one. Damn, it was a hell of a year; comparable in craziness only to the year before it. Here are the headlines:

• I won my appeal to Ofcom against the ATVOD ruling that Dreams of Spanking was in breach of the 2014 porn regulations (the Audio Visual Media Services Regulations, or AVMS), and was able to reopen the site in June
• I researched and wrote over ten-thousand words in response to the government consultation on age verification for online porn
• I launched a Patreon campaign to crowd-fund my political activism, and did more campaigning than ever as a result
• I attended meetings in Parliament with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport discussing the age verification policy, and with the Liberal Democrat policy committee to consult about sex work and porn policy more generally. On request, I submitted my research into age verification to the Lib Dems to help inform their policy on online porn.
• Since the Digital Economy Bill was presented to Parliament in July, I've actively campaigned against it. I've written numerous blogposts, an article in the Guardian, given countless interviews to the media, organised a protest and a petition, sent int two responses to the MP Select Committee consultation, and supported the work of the Open Rights Group to challenge the Bill.
• Myles Jackman and I gathered protestors outside Parliament for fisting volleyball and a squirting waterfight in a pastiche of the UK's outdated obscenity laws
• I worked with Backlash UK, UK Adult Producers, and the Adult Provider Network
• I taught a workshop on how to get started making DIY porn for The School of Erotic Mysteries (I still owe the participants the promised showreel from the shooting we did at the end of the day; what with reopening Dreams of Spanking and campaigning against the Digital Economy Bill, I sadly haven't had time to edit anything extra)
• I went to Eroticon 2016, gave two talks, shot a documentary (see above; I'm hoping to finally find time to edit and publish it before Eroticon 2017, but we'll see), gave a spanking and caning demo, and shot a spontaneous porn film in a hotel room
• I edited and published a new spanking film, photogallery or audio story on Dreams of Spanking every week for the second half of the year - and the new content includes some of my favourite to date
• I produced and directed three shoots for Dreams of Spanking - with Zak Jane Keir and Charlie J Forrest at Eroticon in April, with Nimue Allen and Tai Crimson in London in July, and with Adele Haze, Molly Malone and Amelia Jane Rutherford for a super-exciting (and very nearly finished!) Victorian feature film, which was written and backed by a private sponsor and will be out on Dreams of Spanking soon...
• I worked as a wet and messy performer for Slymfords Sploshers, and as a spanking switch for Everyone Loves Spanking and The Havering Collection
• I went to Berlin, where I developed new porn crushes, watched a lot of amazing porn, and saw two films I was involved in being screened; Please May I Come, Mistress with Charlie and Zak, and Since You Asked So Nicely, my spanking, cunnilingus and pegging film with Parker Marx for Bright Desire
• I shot a new scene with Parker for Bright Desire which will be out in 2017, this time a slightly more traditional boy/girl scene which was super sweet, slow and sensual

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I made this documentary about the UK porn laws about a year ago, using interviews that were shot as part of my sponsored caning fundraiser to raise money for Backlash, the non-profit organisation dedicated to fighting for sexual freedom in the UK. In case you weren't following at the time, this protest project was intended to help fund them to provide legal support to producers affected by the AVMS regulations, which had recently criminalised the depiction of a whole slew of consensual fetish activities in online porn. Myself and nine other spanking enthusiasts volunteered to take one hard cane stroke per £10 raised, to a maximum of 50 strokes per person. We made a colossal £3836 in total, which was donated in its entirety to Backlash.

Each of the ten sponsored canings was filmed and released under Creative Commons - you can view them for free at Dreams of Spanking. We shot an interview with each participant before the caning itself, giving them the opportunity to talk about porn criminalisation, censorship, and why they cared about the UK legislation enough to put their bottoms on the line to help fight it. It amused me no end that when ATVOD were investigating my site, they had to sit through these interviews and listen to lots of well-articulated criticism about themselves before getting to watch the free caning scenes that they were so incensed about.

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Last November my friend Nimue Allen and I got together with our partners for a week to shoot some porn. We’ve both worked in the BDSM porn industry for years as performers and producers, and we were ready to delve deeper. We spent three days shooting a feature-length explicit documentary about our queer, kinky, polyamorous sex lives. We filmed interviews, video portraits, narrative sequences and hardcore sex scenes, capturing the intimacy and affection of BDSM play between people who love each other. The scenes were spontaneous and unscripted, a natural representation of the sex we have in private, and in the natural course of events they ended up including facesitting, fisting, squirting, caning, needles, breath play, dominance and submission and plenty of hardcore sex. It was authentic, caring and beautiful.

A week later, full of happy excitement about our new project, we learned that every scene we had filmed had just been criminalised under new UK porn laws. It would now be illegal for us to publish any of them. These honest depictions of our sex, pleasure and intimacy had been deemed so extreme that even informed, paying adults couldn’t legally watch them.

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I'm still reeling from the news. Thanks to our 105 generous funders, we raised a whopping 3836 for Backlash, and the money was transferred to their account yesterday. I met with David last week and he tells me the cash will be invaluable for funding legal support for producers affected by the UK porn legislation (which might well include yours truly).

I want to extend a personal thank you to each and every person who supported our sponsored caning campaign - whether by donating, sharing the link or writing a newspaper article. I had no idea when I launched this campaign  that it would turn into such a wild success, and it's heartening to learn how many people in the UK and worldwide support the stand we're taking against this unjust attempt to censor our freedom of expression.

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Wow, what a week it's been! Thanks to you, the kinky Indiegogo campaign I launched with Nimue Allen has raised more than five times our original funding target to help fight UK porn censorship - and there's still 18 hours left.

The fundraiser is running until midnight tonight PST (that's 8am on Sunday for us Brits), so there's still time to donate. Every penny raised will be donated to Backlash to help fight the UK's regressive new porn laws. Please do contribute if you can!

2000 stretch goal reached!

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Our sponsored caning fundraiser to fight against UK porn censorship has now raised 1400 - thank you so much to all who have donated so far! But we aren't stopping there. All proceeds raised (and I mean literally all - we aren't keeping a penny) will go to Backlash, who campaign against laws that restrict sexual freedom - and maintain a legal fund to help defend those prosecuted under such laws.

No UK fetish porn producer can afford an expensive court battle. We are all small independent businesses operated by solo kinksters or couples, working from home and barely making a living after the costs of running a website. Any producers affected by these regulations will desperately need Backlash's support - and it's up to us, the kinky community, to help ensure Backlash have the resources they need.

Encouraged by the amazing support we've received so far, we are continuing to promote the campaign and are adding new stretch goals. Every pound will help in the battle against the UK's draconian new censorship of consensual kinky porn.

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I finally got round to making a video blog about the new UK porn censorship laws. The Audiovisual Media Services Regulations (AVMS) 2014 impose dramatic restrictions on the sort of online porn that can be published in the UK, disproportionately targeting fetish, queer and feminist porn with no reference to whether the content was ethically and consensually produced. These laws criminalise me and my site Dreams of Spanking, and put me and other independent UK porn producers in a very precarious position. If you want to know more detail about the laws, exactly what is restricted, and how they affect me, watch this.

I recorded this at 1am a week ago without notes, because I've talked about this damn issue so much in the last six weeks I no longer need a cribsheet. As a result it's a little longer than I wanted - I might make some bullet points and attempt a 5 minute version at some point. I sent it to Backlash UK before posting to check I wasn't saying anything glaringly inaccurate, and they replied with a few clarifications as follows:

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When there's important stuff happening, there's usually not much time to write about it - and that's how things have been the last few weeks.

In December, what I was mostly writing about was the new UK porn laws that mean that I, along with countless other independent fetish and feminist porn producers in the UK, am now a criminal. There was a protest and a bunch of media coverage. I talked about the new laws on Channel 4 News. The petition collected a few thousand names, and then the signatures stopped coming in (If you haven't signed it yet, please do). Christmas happened. And now it's 2015, and I'm still a criminal, these regulations are still in place, they still haven't been debated in Parliament or been subject to any democratic scrutiny by elected officials. Many of my colleagues have signed their businesses over to international producers, and I have no idea whether that will be enough to save them. I'm still producing exactly the same material I always have, and the Sword of Damocles is still hanging over my head.

It's a new year, and now the best chance for me and every other producer affected by this is to join forces and support Backlash, the campaign group who are lobbying against these regulations - as well as defending freedom of sexual expression on many other fronts. The best way to support them, if you can, is by donating hard cash. They explain on their website:

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One of the things I love about working with Nimue is that she always opens my mind to new kinks. She is, hands down, the most interestingly filthiest person I know, which given the company I keep is quite an accolade. I love her mind, her acceptance of the darkest facets of her kinky psyche, and the way her fetishes and play personas combine strength and vulnerability in such fascinating ways.

On our most recent shoot she wanted to shoot a scene that was new to me - a point of view humiliation scene with me providing instructions and verbal abuse from behind the camera. This wasn't something I would normally consider, but I always feel very open to new ideas when I'm working with Nimue. She showed me the props she'd brought - a cheap blonde wig, make-up, high heels - and we discussed what she wanted, particularly the language.

Nimue is one of the few people I know who fetishises abusive language relating to her size. "Piggy" is her pet name from her top, and she enjoys "fat pig" humiliation play that criticises her body. As a submissive, this is a huge no for me - just as food control and starvation is another hard limit, another thing Nimue enjoys toying with. I admire the strength of character in someone who can choose to reclaim fatphobic slurs as a form of kinky play, thereby stripping them of their real-world power to hurt. Nimue described the mentality to me as follows - "I know I'm fat, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Call me fat, and you aren't insulting me, just stating a fact." She is no more immune to insecurity about her looks than the rest of us, and it takes a real strength of mind to resist and subvert the body-shaming messages we are bombarded with in media and advertising by turning them on their head, and using them as tools for kinky head games of her own devising.

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Kink

• I loved this Sinful Sunday image by Sub Bee. Trick or treat!
• Erica Scott's wooden hairbrush spanking from Paul Kennedy is getting some positive attention. From my vantage point behind the camera, I thought it was super hot.
• How do you find a partner who shares your interest in spanking? Jillian Keenan is here to help.
• It turns out your sexual fantasies aren't all that strange - new research backing up Charlie Glickman's stance that when it comes to sexuality, no-one gets to be normal. Girl on the Net, as ever, has an excellent take on this study, emphasising that no sexual fantasy is wrong, even if it isn't common - and that not every kinky fantasy wants to be acted out.

• Nimue's World has re-launched! Nimue Allen is now the sole owner-director of her own indie BDSM porn site - and there's some amazing new content coming out of it. Check out these blogposts about what's changed - and why having control over her own content is so important to her.
• Charities wont take porn money unless they can keep it a dirty secret. "Its not that nonprofits wont take money from the adult entertainment industry. Oh no, they simply wish the whole affair to be discreet."
• Failsafe porn to watch with a new boyfriend, a fantastic article by Girl on the Net on how to introduce the porn you like to your new lover. Namechecks MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, Bright Desire, and Clips4Sale - it's good to see the truly democratic, grassroots world of DIY porn given some love. I would also add PinkLabel.tv to the list.

• What does an orgasm look like? Some truly awesome artworks submitted to Girl on the Net's competition (sorry, she just keeps on being interesting!)
• You've probably seen it already, but this drone-shot porn is beautiful. "The plan was to take beautiful landscapes and just put people fucking in them."
• Feminist porn director Jennifer Lyon Bell shares six practical tips for shooting porn. I found number five particularly interesting - and something I could do more of.
• Some responses to Zoe William's Guardian article on ethical porn (on which more later, but meanwhile you can read my first impressions here). Erotic Scribes: "Porn is here to say 'Your fantasies are OK' when nobody and nothing else is going to say it." Yes = even if those fantasies are totally pervy. And the Telegraph acknowledges that "times are changing" - the radical idea that porn might not all be universally misogynistic and unethical (even though Gail Dines is still claiming women don't watch it). Also, apparently I'm the future of capitalism. Hokay.
• I love this new sensual film by Ms Naughty, which screened for the first time in Berlin: Tactile. Watch the full film at Bright Desire.

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