I recently chaired a panel at Housman's Radical Booksellers in Kings Cross, discussing Feminism, Sexuality & Obscenity. This was a bittersweet opportunity. The event had been devised by journalist and author Catherine Scott, author of Thinking Kink: The Collision of BDSM, Feminism and Popular Culture. Catherine had just finish her second book, To Deprave and Corrupt: Obscenity Battles in British Law and Culture. 

Catherine organised this panel to bring together feminist thinkers, sex workers and activists, to discuss the issues facing women around sex and obscenity today. It was with great sadness that I learned that Catherine suddenly passed away a couple of weeks before the event.

Her friends knew how much she had been looking forward to the panel, and how much it meant to her. They felt that these were important issues that deserved a platform, and they wanted to honour her memory by making sure it went ahead.

Keep reading »

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I gathered protestors outside Parliament for fisting volleyball and a squirting waterfight in a pastiche of the UK's outdated obscenity laws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

Keep reading »