Breathing Room

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]e seemed a nice guy — a friend of a friend who I hit it off with — so it was only natural a few hours after we met that we were back in his flat kissing, clothes quickly coming off. If the foreplay seemed a little rougher than I was used to with hair-pulling and intense biting; if his hand grazed (in retrospect, almost questioningly) along my throat then; I didn’t really think much of it. Recently out of a relationship, I was ready for something new and this guy seemed exciting, fun and different. The fact that he just went for it then with no word of warning — squeezing my neck while I was on top, staring into my eyes almost aggressively – was surprising, yes, but I would never have thought to stop him. There was kind of a thrill about the vague suffocation, and there was something exciting about letting myself completely trust this guy I had just met — plus, if he was into it I was happy to go with it.

I heard something really weird about you recently — I heard you were into really kinky sex.

My friends, it seemed, had a significantly less lax attitude towards the idea of such encounters. “I feel like I would be scared if that were me”, said one girl, “I’d be concerned they were actually going to murder me.” Another friend agreed: “I don’t think I would enjoy that… I’d be concerned they’d get too into it and actually hurt me.” Another girl threatened to kick her boyfriend out of bed when he tried it and, in fairness, I can understand all the reservations.  By the very nature of what it is, breath play is a risky game, with links to incidences of people passing out during sex and, even more worryingly, cardiac arrest. Precautions do have to be exercised and you absolutely have to know when to stop. I can’t say I wasn’t a little bit freaked out when it first happened, but I suppose that was part of the rush — and in the ensuing hook-ups with said guy, there was definitely something titillating about the aggressive nature of it all.

“I heard something really weird about you recently — I heard you were into really kinky sex,” a drunk male friend recently probed. Not that it was really any of his business what I get up to, but the notion of there being some kind of sexual “norm” beyond which everything else is deviant and wild seems an anachronistic idea at best: everyone likes different things. As long as you’re getting choked consensually then there shouldn’t be an issue. Ultimately, though, the bedroom is a fun place to enact fantasies, and it’s okay to be a feminist and still enjoy being dominated — the FKA twigs video for Papi Pacify does a great job of illustrating how darkly sensual and erotic rough sex can be.

This considered, there’s something a little off about the recent censorship placed on porn produced in the UK, essentially banning anything even a little “fetish” and, perhaps more worryingly, seemingly trying to erase any notion of female empowerment in the bedroom. Male “cum shots” remain a standard but, bizarrely, showing female ejaculation has been banned. What doesn’t make sense is that the ban to distinguish between consensual and nonconsensual acts — while understably banning the production of porn that shows rape acts is very much justified, it paints consensual acts that are viewed as “weird” with the same brush. While there is a danger in conflating pornography with real life experience, banning these acts implies that they are in some way “wrong” — shaming people, notably women, for their sexuality. The ban is nothing more than an attempt to impose moral judgements and restrictions on consenting adults and, by extension, on the private sex lives of consenting individuals.

The list of acts that have been banned is pretty long, but the most interesting are perhaps those which have been deemed as “life-threatening”. I do understand the particularly sensitive, triggering implications of strangulation, with its fatal links. I won’t claim to be an expert in fisting, but its apparently life-threatening status seems a bit dubious — though it is hilarious that it’s only banned with the arbitrary proviso of all knuckles being inserted. As for face sitting, perhaps there was a poorly publicised incident in which someone tragically died from being smothered by a vagina, but otherwise this just proves the point that images of dominant female sexuality are being curtailed.

The UK government’s ban ultimately binds the smaller, more fetish and feminist porn production houses, making the porn available conform to the more “normal” mold. If people want to watch “weird” porn with physical restraints and aggressive whipping then they will. If people want to consensually practice “weird” sex with dirty talk and spanking then they will. Being made to feel morally inferior or ashamed for those desires is frankly archaic, and enforcing a nanny state psychology on it all is deeply misguided and judgemental. The conservative, paternalistic sex brigade telling you what’s “normal” should be ignored: if you want some, go out and get some consensual kink.

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