'Blind regulation'

How governments and banks are preventing the porn industry from becoming safer

I started Freyja wanting to solve issues around sexual violence, racism, child abuse, bad sex education and more. When wanting to solve such important issues, I wasn't really expecting the government and banks to be the ones stopping me from doing it, with what I like to call ‘blind regulation’. Now, this is when you have a politician or government making policies about the adult industry, in an attempt to ‘make the industry’ safer, but they do not consult with anyone in the industry, therefore making ‘blind’ regulation which results in more harm than good.  

So, why do these ‘blind regulations’ come about? 

Reason number one: let's not talk about porn at the dinner table 

The industry is ‘taboo’ and no politician wants to discuss sex at the table. Nevertheless, they are under increasing pressure from various parties to do something about the “sin” industry. Therefore, they address this pressure, by putting in place some law, or rather attempting to since none of them can get anything done. However, they don’t want to be seen talking with companies or porn stars, because we all know how talking to a porn star doesn’t always work out for politicians. Therefore, they try to push through a law without understanding the industry, often leading to more harm than good.

Now think of it like this, you don’t want a politician to make regulations about the agricultural industry or medical space without an understanding of the industry, or without talking to the professionals, so why are we making laws without the adult experts?

The UK government is currently trying to push through age verification on every single user as an attempt to look at though they are solving the issues of the industry. But, in reality as we’ve seen in other countries who’ve done this, this doesn’t change the consumption of people on porn sites, but rather will push consumers off regulated sites, and onto unregulated sites on a VPN. In turn, this leads to more harmful consumption and puts the sites and users at a higher risk. Now, data wise governments and politicians are aware of this fact. But, that doesn’t matter. Just got to look like you’re doing something for public image. 

Reason number two: Banks become law 

Let’s be honest a lot of governments are pretty slow to push laws and regulations through. As a direct result, banks become the ones to put the ‘laws’ in place, especially for the adult industry. One of the biggest challenges for any adult company is getting and keeping a bank account.

In May 2022 we received our first letter from our bank that said you have 60 days to get out. This was a pretty terrifying and upsetting letter to receive. But, I thought to myself, it’s okay, I’ll find another bank. Well, that started to feel like mission impossible, and the whole situation got a lot more stressful. I found this very frustrating, and found it challenging to understand why this was such an unnecessary obstacle. I couldn’t comprehend why I was being treated like a terrorist or arms dealer when I was doing something legal, and trying to make an industry safer. To be fair, they would probably give the arms dealer an account over us. 

This is a very interesting and complicated industry issue, but if you’re not from the industry, it’s probably the first time you’re hearing about it. 

Now, we can’t fully understand these blind regulations without discussing one of the key influencers here:

The role of the media (ikr, another person going on about media bias how boring) 

We’ve all heard a lot of complaints about the media in the last couple of years, and yes I agree it’s a bit annoying, but when it comes to covering the adult industry there is a big issue here. Once again, we come back to the issue of ‘taboo’ (yawn). Because the industry is taboo, the media only really tends to cover the industry in a specific narrative. 

Firstly, most articles or documentaries are on the performer only narrative. Now, this is not to say that that is not an important narrative, but it usually takes a very focused negative approach that many performers find quite frustrating as it likes to paint all porn performers as trafficked or on drugs, which is simply not true. And this constant narrative is why a lot of performers like to stay away from the media. 

Secondly, the media likes to only talk about two specific companies who’ve done a couple shady things. And yes, that needs to be covered. But the issue here is that because of two bad players, all of the industry seems to get thrown in the same bucket, when they don’t deserve to be. This would be the equivalent of assuming that because one restaurant was money laundering, that every restaurant is, and none of us should eat at a restaurant again. Bit of an extreme comparison, but you get my point … Because of this narrative, other companies who are trying to make the industry better suffer. For example, when I started Freyja it was virtually impossible for me to find a PR agency to work with because no one wanted to be associated with an adult company, and a lot of newspapers didn’t want to cover us because of their sponsors and advertisers. It becomes virtually impossible to get media visibility or even social media visibility due to shadow bans and censorship. And this plays a large role in why some good companies go down, and you never even hear about them. 

Summary:

The issues that are in the porn industry stem much deeper than what you might think, because the industry and the performers are not given the space or opportunity to talk about them. Because the industry is ‘taboo’ there is only a specific narrative that is given out, and some of the other important issues are shoved under the carpet.

Now, I’m not saying that there are not big issues in the porn industry, because there are. However, there is clearly a deep issue if the regulation is directly preventing companies from coming through to make a positive change. And it all comes down to nothing more than ‘taboo’.