‘Fisting is not permitted’: criminal intimacies, queer sexualities and feminist porn in the Australian legal context

Abstract

This article demonstrates how classification and criminal laws in Australia reinforce a heteronormative and big business model for pornography, while reducing the ability of local, independent producers to produce pornography that challenges this model. The legal framework actively engineers specific types of bodies that can be viewed – bodies with large breasts and neat labia, bodies that do not participate in kink or fetish, and bodies that demonstrate their physical responses in restricted ways. Significant penalties for the production, exhibition and distribution of pornography in most states hinder the emergence of the kinds of pornography that have the ability to diversify the genre. Laws make it difficult and often illegal for people to represent themselves. Feminist, queer and independent pornographers report making compromises in terms of aesthetics and ethics in order to meet classification requirements and avoid law enforcement. The regulatory system criminalizes queer intimacies and non-normative sexual practices. Australia's unique classification system, which bans all depictions of violence (even consensual) in X-rated films, prohibits opportunities to model safer practices, health promotion and the negotiation of risk.

Keywords:

• pornography
• Australia
• classification
• queer theory
• feminism
• regulation

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