SEXIS WRONG

Fire, Brick, Sand, Concrete
An Unlicensed Sex Shop in Britain
David Kerekes
The legal availability of hardcore pornography in the United
Kingdom is only a relatively recent phenomenon. Whether
in magazines or on video, up until 2000—the year in which
hardcore was effectively legalized in the UK—an erect penis
or penetration constituted the loose benchmark for what was
considered hardcore, and any depiction thereof or anything
more gratuitous was taboo. Possession itself was not an offense,
but the means of obtaining it generally were. Because
of numerous statutes—notably the Obscene Publications Act
of 1959, the Post Office Act of 1953, the Customs Act of
1876, and the Video Recordings Act of 1984—hardcore pornography
under British law could not be imported, published,
sold, or distributed.
As they do today, sex shops prior to the legalization of hardcore
required a license, which meant that the stock had to
These tended to be watered-down
versions of magazines available in
more liberal countries like Denmark
or the Netherlands.
adhere to the law or there was the risk of a police raid, prosecution,
a fine, and possibly a jail sentence. Contrary to what
the staff would promise in some of these establishments,
the magazines lining the shelves may have looked like the
real thing, with tantalizing covers bearing titles recognizable
as the European trademark of porn quality (such as Color Climax
or Rodox), but in reality it was often a deception: These
tended to be watered-down versions of magazines available
in more liberal countries like Denmark or the Netherlands,
substandard reproductions that removed the hardcore altogether.
Worse still, sometimes the covers were the most hardcore
element of the whole deal, the covers having been removed
from the genuine article in order to mask softcore magazines
of a sort readily available from any high street news agent.
Imagine the frustration and disappointment of dashing home,
tearing open the shrink-wrap and finding that the promise of
unadulterated hot, steamy sex was in fact a several-monthold
edition of Razzle—having cost four or five times the price
one would normally expect to pay for such a thing.
The videos in licensed sex shops bear the R18 certificate.
As with most material released theatrically and on video in
the UK, these were films passed by the British Board of Film
Classification (BBFC). Despite the fact that the sale of product
rated R18 was restricted to sex shops and therefore only
available to a discerning few, their content still had to conform
to strict guidelines, and in reality the tapes were only marginally
more explicit than regular 18-rated films,
which were available anywhere.
Prior to 1997, the difference between the two
ratings was that R18 allowed the depiction
of non-explicit group sex and came with the
somewhat ridiculous category guideline: outer labia in, inner
labia out. Films were submitted to the BBFC in accordance
with this criteria (it would be foolish and expensive not to, given
the cost of getting a film examined by the BBFC), whether
they had been shot in Britain, like the “Ben Dover” series—
available overseas uncut—or imported, like the “Buttman”
adventures, cut accordingly.
These were the licensed sex shops. Unlicensed sex shops
were an altogether different matter—they operated within a
twilight zone that was outside of the law but carried a thin veneer
of legitimacy in that they didn’t exactly call themselves
sex shops.
170 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG