UK Law relating to BDSM could soon change

In Britain, our law makers are trying their hardest to protect us. They've decided that this protection should also include sheltering us away from "harmful" material. This, unfortunately, includes certain types of pornography. First, it includes beastiality. Second on the list is necrophilia. The criminalising of these two acts is nothing new in Britain. The third is what the BDSM community is worried about. The third is "serious violence in a sexual context and serious sexual violence".

What does that mean?

Well, a lot of people in the BDSM scene have been asking that question and concerns have been raised about the legality of two consenting adults taking pictures of their own acts for their own private viewing at a later stage.

Fear not!

The government announced their proposals way back in August last year and since then it has had a lot of help in defining certain terms. The words "extreme acts" and "serious sexual violence" have been replaced by less catch-all definitions.

Currently, the proposal states that pornographic material would need to meet these criteria to be deemed as illegal:

"In summary, material would need to be:
(a) pornographic [By this we mean material that has been solely or primarily produced for the purpose of sexual arousal.]
(b) explicit
(c) real or appears to be real act (these would be objective tests for the jury)

It would cover:
(i) serious violence*
(ii) intercourse or oral sex with an animal
(iii) sexual interference with a human corpse
*by serious violence we mean appears to be life threatening or likely to result in serious, disabling injury."

So it doesn't seem as bad as it did two months ago. With this proposal, it seems that those who have images of almost any BDSM activity would still be viewing them legally. The "serious violence" term was going to be defined as GBH, but this was objected to by various BDSM organisations for being too broad a term and has been replaced by the term above: "Appears to be life threatening or likely to result in serious, disabling injury"

What would happen to anyone who had this illegal material? You'd face a maximum prison sentence of three years and be put on the Sexual Offenders List. This is something we cannot risk, due to the careers we both want when we graduate.

With all this in mind, possibly the only images we'll be showing are the weekly HNTs. This is just to cover our backs until the new laws are finalised and passed through (It also said in the proposal that the new laws are to be passed "as soon as the Parliamentary timetable allows"). This is because we, as students, are detached from the "real world" of current affairs and we live in our own shell, only buying a newspaper once in a blue moon, and surfing News Sites even less often. We don't want to be caught out when the law changes, especially seeing as we probably won't know when it has changed.

The proposal, and the response to the public consultation (from which the above expert is taken) can be found via SM Pride. Another site to visit is Backlash, an umbrella company founded to protect the rights of BDSM practitioners.