The UK is trying to criminalize roleplay
I really wish the title of this post was hyperbole…
The United Kingdom (where I live) is currently in the process of writing up an extensive Crime and Policing Bill that has a pretty large list of aims, which you can read in one of the government’s policy papers.
There are some obviously good things in this Bill1 that are worthy of serious legislation, which makes me all the more miserable to have to point out just how dangerous this Bill really is. Thankfully the government has written a press release that exclusively talks about the very bad parts:
If you read near the bottom of the press release you’ll see they’re taking aim directly at specific categories of sexual roleplay in pornography:
- Publication of pornography depicting adults roleplaying as children or depicting incest will carry a maximum sentence of five years.
- Possession of pornography depicting adults roleplaying as children will carry a maximum sentence of three years. Possession of pornography depicting incest will carry a maximum sentence of two years.
— GOV.UK press release
And if you’ve read my Bluesky or even just the title or domain of this blog, you’ll see why this is more than a little scary for me and my friends 🫠
I got a lot of eyes on me for this
My initial reaction to seeing the news of this was a frustrated Bluesky post that is, unfortunately, kinda funny out of context. What was a spur-of-the-moment rant post quickly spread to Twitter where literally millions of people saw it, including some non-furry friends I know IRL2 when it popped up on their feeds.
Some big YouTubers ended up covering it:3
I got a lot of people yelling at me, telling me this is a good thing, that I deserve prison, that I should die.
It was the most “heat” I’ve ever had for anything online. I had some artists unfollow/block me over it. Shit sucked! I only bring it up here to bring some context as to why I’m even writing this blog post. I think this is a serious topic with huge ramifications that needs to be considered beyond just my unintentionally funny post.
Haha, I’m in danger
I don’t want to delve too deep into the legal back and forth or the arcane processes the UK has that led to this specific amendment being written, because to be frank it’s hard to follow. I’d instead like to clarify some common misconceptions:
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It is not just about depicting someone as underage
A lot of outlets have been misreporting this as only applying to incest roleplay where someone is pretending to be underage. This is a completely separate amendment, which itself has potentially serious ramifications for ABDL/age regressing furries. -
It does criminalize step-incest roleplay
There was a time when step-incest was not going to count, as the Labour government were concerned this would be criminalizing depictions of something that is legal to do in real life. Because believe it or not, it is not actually illegal to have sex with your step-sister in the UK…After a bunch of MPs threatened to rebel, the government has done a U-turn on this. It will now be illegal to roleplay a kind of relationship that is actually legal in real life. Make it make sense!
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This is not at all like the facesitting ban
A long time ago it was widely reported that various fetishes were being banned in the UK, with facesitting being the most commonly cited example. People even protested against it.That law never had any real teeth. This new provision in the Crime and Policing Bill, on the other hand, is an amendment to the “extreme pornographic images” section of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act, under the same law that criminalizes necrophilia and sexual abuse of animals. You can go to prison and be put on the Sex Offenders Register for this.
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It currently does not seem to apply to drawn pornography
At the time of writing, there is a line in the amendment that seems to let drawn pornography off the hook:a reasonable person looking at the image would think that A and B were real[…]
[…] That is to say, A being related to B as parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece. — Page 107 of Crime and Policing Bill
Now unless the UK legal system has a bizarre definition for real4 furry porn should be fine…
So where’s the actual danger?
I’ve had a few people point to the fact that there is a possible exemption to drawings that puts me in the clear, so I shouldn’t be worried.5 I think this is missing the forest for the trees.
I’d like to think this wouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone but I do this stuff IRL with friends. It is literally a core part of my sexuality. It is the only way I can really engage in sex comfortably. It is fucking insane for me to consider that if I (or any other queer person for that matter) were to yell “daddy” mid-sex in a video, that there is a risk of serious prison time on the level of actual CSAM.
I don’t expect to be standing in front of a judge in a few months’ time with my esoteric furry porn commissions being shown on a projector, no. I also don’t think we’re too far off that being a possibility.
If an amendment was proposed to extend this to drawings, I don’t think I could confidently say it wouldn’t pass. This is a serious escalation as-is, and let’s be honest, no politician is going to stick their neck out for this, especially if it’s in a huge bill like this with countless necessary reforms.
So yes, I’m scared. Like really scared.
What am I gonna do about it?
This ultimately depends on what degree of enforcement actually ends up happening. The Bill isn’t law yet, so what this actually looks like in a courtroom is up in the air. There is, however, a big push with this and the Online Safety Act to make platforms very trigger-happy on taking down and reporting infringing content.
Beyond the actual wording and consequences of the law, I would not be surprised to see some platforms and services suffer from a chilling effect and ban stuff that isn’t technically infringing too. So there is a risk this could affect people who don’t even live in the UK, much in the same way the Online Safety Act has laid the foundations for all the age verification stuff globally.
This means I’ll probably have to stop tagging my art commissions as incest on Bluesky. Sorry. This really sucks, because I hate the idea of making someone uncomfortable and I saw pulling my posts into people’s keyword mutelists as a way of preventing that. But I think the danger of drawing attention to myself is too great.
On that note, I’ll probably be switching my NSFW Bluesky account over to my own PDS6. I should’ve probably done this ages ago, and it makes things a little less dire if Bluesky gets cold feet about hosting me.
Hopefully this blog will always be around, considering it is purely text-based for the most part and I’m in complete control of it. I guess my only concern here would be my hosting company throwing me off, but I’ll cross that bridge if I get there.
For now at least, you can find me on Bluesky.