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ABSTRACT
Written in the style of an opinion editorial, this short article serves as a critical examination of Bill S-210, which proposes to restrict minors’ online access to sexually explicit material in Canada through age-verification technologies. Framed within the historical context of obscenity law and the feminist sex wars, the article underscores the impact of censorship and anti-pornography feminism on queer businesses and sexual expressions. Emphasizing the need for comprehensive sexual education rather than increased censorship, it critiques the impracticality of age-verification technologies as well as contemporary cultural anxiety around youth sexuality and the perceived need to ‘protect’ women and minors from pornography. Urging a re-evaluation of the Bill in light of its broader sociopolitical implications, the article cautions against rash policy decisions that may further stigmatize alternative forms of sexual expression, specifically queer, feminist, and fetish pornographies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Matthew Hays, Chloë Taylor, and Kristopher Wells for their helpful comments and edits on earlier drafts of this article. Tom Hooper and Gary Kinsman are also acknowledged as vocal supporters of this project as it neared completion.
Notes
1 Age-verification technologies were implemented in the UK subject to the Digital Economy Act 2017 and were overseen by the British Board of Film Classification (Blake Citation2019, 228). This part of the legislation was repealed by the Online Safety Act 2023, which ‘establishes a new regulatory regime to address illegal and “harmful” content online, by means of imposing legal requirements about this kind of content on providers of internet user-to-user services and internet search engines. In order to enforce the newly created duties, the Act confers extensive new powers on the Office of Communications (OFCOM)’ (Jones Citation2024, 265). For more on this, see Persson (Citation2024) and Smith (Citation2018). In Louisiana, House Bill 77 passed in 2022 with sponsorship from Republican senator Laurie Schlegel and took effect on 1 January 2023, aiming to prevent access of minors to online pornography (Marsden Citation2023, 235–236). Other state legislatures, including those of California, Texas, and Utah, have either passed or are considering similar laws. For research that supports age-verification technologies in the American context, see Marsden (Citation2023).
2 For more on the private use exemption, see Karaian and Brady (Citation2019).
3 For a recent article on pornography and sex education that emphasizes both the erotic and pedagogical value of pornography, see Meehan (Citation2024).
4 For more on the history of sexual and moral regulation in Canada, specifically youth sex panics, see Bell (Citation1995), Doyle (Citation2008), and Kinsman (Citation2023, 272–275).