With your remote control in one hand and your Crisco in the other, you watch the screen intently at the doctor/patient porn scene unfolding before you. Suddenly the scene jumps abruptly from the doctor walking to her cupboard, to the women making out. “W-w-what just happened?” you think to yourself as the scene cuts across.


Sorry, that’s my fault.


I was the video editor instructed to cut a chunk out of your DVD that promised “14 sexy lesbians who will blow your mind with their hot action”. I interrupted your ride to muff town because your DVD was hiding a secret from you. It contained footage deemed obscene by the New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification. 
The scene in question involved a very basic doctor/patient role-play, featuring two girls and a small, plastic speculum. After a little heavy petting, the “doctor” gently inserts a speculum into the vagina of the “patient”, who masturbates and “orgasms” (or at least has a good time). At no point watching this would anyone believe that this is a realistic set up. The New Zealand government obviously saw this scene very differently to me however.

The letter that was returned with the video stated, ‘‘One of the women wears a white coat with a name tag on the pocket but there is otherwise no effort to present the scene as role-play based on a medical examination”. I disagree. Have you ever seen an 18-year-old doctor? Or a doctor with a completely empty room except for an examination bed and a bare bookshelf displaying only one speculum? The decision continued:


“Nevertheless, concerns arise on public health grounds with a sensitive procedure that many women find difficult is sexualised by the use of a medical instrument during sexual activity. The use of speculums in this scene is also highly demeaning. Although both women masturbate and express sexual pleasure while the instruments are inserted, the resulting images make it clear that the speculums are not intended to increase the sexual pleasure of participants but are for the purpose of showing viewers the vaginal canal in extreme close up. The spectacle is clearly intended for viewer gratification and has little to do with any genuine sexual interaction.”


According to this description, both women “masturbate and express sexual pleasure” while the speculum is in use yet it’s considered “highly demeaning”. Excuse me, but how? 
Who is being demeaned? The decision says that many women find the use of speculums a sensitive procedure. Yes. That’s correct. But many don’t. And many who do may still get off on the porn fantasy of it; it’s not a black and white situation.

The description then basically goes on to say that although the women were orgasming and expressing pleasure, the instrument was obviously there to show the vagina canal in extreme close up (well, duh) and that the “spectacle was clearly intended for viewer gratification”. Again. DUH! On the basis of this censorship, anything that features a spectacle intended for viewer gratification is considered obscene and should be removed from viewing. On that basis you can say goodbye to 95% of porn produced worldwide.


I hate censorship. As an editor of porn videos, this can make life very frustrating. I struggle with a lot of the decisions made by the censorship office because I disagree with them on the basis that pornography and obscenity are entirely subjective – you can tell me what you personally find obscene but no one has the right to state what is obscene. As a judge once famously said, “I can’t definite pornography, but I know it when I see it”. 


The NZ Classification Office has freakishly blurry laws when it comes to what is considered obscene. Other than obviously banning child porn, other bans come to material that includes sexual violence, coercion, torture or extreme violence, bestiality, necrophilia and the use of urine. Seems kind of straight forward, right? Trust me, it’s not.
There are two things not on that list that are frequently banned – fisting and squirting. If I had a dollar for every time I had to explain to someone that fisting and squirting were not allowed and another dollar for every time someone said, “What? Why? What’s wrong with it?”, I’d be very rich.


The no fisting or squirting rule is one of the reasons I flat-out believe censorship to be dangerous, as it blatantly endangers healthy sexualities and expressions. Fisting, which is basically grouped among the horrors of child porn, bestiality and necrophilia, is not illegal. Censorship of fisting and squirting shrouds legal, natural, non-violent acts in shame. It’s a slap in the face to queer sexuality. Why are four fingers okay? What’s so obscene about a thumb? 
I am strongly against the idea of the government having the power to censor images and ideas. Censorship allows the moral majorities to dictate a standard about what sex/porn is allowed to be, which I think violates basic human rights. Above all, censorship defies the rights of pornographers and would be consumers by deciding what they should view. Legal paternalism is not cool.


One of the main arguments in censorship decisions I receive at work is “it’s degrading to women”. I loathe this statement, often because it’s a cop out blanket statement that’s rarely elaborated on. Which women is it degrading to? White women? Straight women? All women? You’re going to tell me that a particular sex act depicted on screen between consenting adults is degrading to every single woman of every single ilk, everywhere and always? Right. 
Despite what the government would like to believe, censorship isn’t helping women. It’s disempowering us. It teaches us to think of ourselves as victims and to live in a constant fear of sexual aggression, rather than liberating us. If there was the tiniest scrap of proof that even minutely proved that porn was detrimental, the risks of censorship would still be too risky. Plus, what crazy fool would believe that eradicating all porn tomorrow would protect women from sexual violence and discrimination? For those who are so concerned with the degradation of women, maybe you should look a little closer to home and check out the non-sexual media and the way it constantly bombards women with sexist, racist and discriminative propaganda. 


My thoughts on censorship can pretty much be defined by a famous passage written by John Stuard Mill’s On Liberty (1859), in which he wrote:


The only principle for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, it to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise or even right. There are good reasons to remonstrating with him, or reason with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desire to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to someone else. The only part of the conduct of any one for which is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute.

Like Mill, I think the individual is the best person to decide what’s best for his or her own interests. Porn isn’t the bad guy here. It’s an exciting tool for exploring and expressing sexuality and is an underused, empowering instrument that can be used to challenge traditional views about gender, sexuality and feminism. Porn has helped me shape my own identity as a sexual being. It has taught me that pornography can be liberating and has freed my sexuality from the oppressiveness of sexual conservatism and tradition. It has made me feel validated as a sexual, queer being. 
I propose any type of censorship be examined very critically and by a variety of people. We should be able to communicate and share ideas and opinions without being silenced. Hear-hear for the right to moral independence!

| Amie Wee