Vegan porn

Sep. 22nd, 2006 02:09 am
lavendersparkle: Jewish rat (Default)
[personal profile] lavendersparkle
Some of my friends may recall that for ages I have joked about opening up a vegan sex/fetish shop that would sell such essential items as vegan safe sex items and clothing for vegan rubber fetishists that doesn't require that they compromise between their ethics and their sex life. Someone appears to have beaten me to it. https://vegsexshop.com

I found it when boredly following links through which I found this website http://www.vegporn.com/ According to the blurb the site was set up by a woman who wanted to work in pornography but didn't like the repetitive stereotypes used in the mainstream industry so she set up on her own. All of the models are vegetarian or vegan. They have a range of body types and sexes and genders. The site give a percentage of it's takings to good causes.

My minds been on pornography rather a bit over the last few days. First of all I was looking at Annie Sprinkle's website http://www.anniesprinkle.org and decided that I wanted to buy a copy of her film Annie Sprinkle's Herstory* of Porn. I saw a clip from it in the lecture on pornography I went to in the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and became interested in her work. This should be a good introduction as it looks back over her work of the last three decades. It's quite reasonably priced given how weak the dollar is. However, this would involve effectively importing hardcore pornography so I've emailed HMRC to see whether I'm allowed to do this.

Hello

I am emailing to find out about legal implications of buying pornographic
DVDs over the internet from a US provider. Specifically I would like to buy
a DVD of a film called 'Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn' from Ms.
Sprinkle's US website. I believe the film contains hardcore pornography.
Here is a link to the film in question
https://anniesprinkle.org/html/shoppe/index.html I searched for the film on
the BBFC database but they do not seen to have a classification for it
although part of the film was shown as part of a lecture during the Lesbian
and Gay Film Festival in the National Film Theatre.

Is it likely that I would be committing some kind of offence if I ordered
this DVD or that the DVD would be confiscated?

Are pornographic DVDs treated in any way differently to other DVDs in terms
of VAT and import duties?

Thank you for your help.

--
Samantha Skinner
They haven't got back to me yet.

Continuing the theme I bought a copy of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy for the Oxfam bookshop. Since writing the book Levy has been continuously wheeled out to comment on any story involving 'raunch culture'. Through a lot of the snippets I heard I just thought 'Oh no, not another anti-pornography feminist trying to convince me that I'm oppressed because I have the wrong kind of sex'. However, I scanned an interview with her in some obscure leftist magazine in Borders and decided there was more to her argument than that. So, when I saw her book in Oxfam I bought it. It's quite an easy read and her main seems to be that the problem with 'raunch culture' is that it teaches women that they should express their sexuality in one particular (male fantasy inspired) way and therefore is no more sexually liberating for women than a 'missionary with the lights out' culture. The principle that women should be able to express the full diversity of their sexual identities and desires without feeling that they have the 'wrong' sexual persona should be something the feminists from all sides of the porn debate can agree on.


*Yes, I know that writing herstory represents a shocking lack of the knowledge of the etymology of the word history but I'll forgive Annie this.

(no subject)

Date: 2006-09-22 01:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hatam-soferet.livejournal.com
It's probably okay to send such things as gifts, so if you want to buy it and post it to my US address, I can send it to you as Gift if you like.

(no subject)

Date: 2006-09-22 02:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lavendersparkle.livejournal.com
That would get around tax issues but I think the import tax and VAT on a $30 DVD would only be a few pounds. I don't think that it would get around issues of whether I'm allowed to bring the DVD into the country. Customs check DVDs and videos sent into the UK to stop things like child porn and snuff movies being sent that way.

Thanks for the offer. I'll remember it next time I want to buy something legal with huge import duty.

(no subject)

Date: 2006-09-22 11:00 am (UTC)

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