Organisers of a pornography festival have been forced to move their three-day event from the Horse Hospital, a London arts venue, to a secret location, which will be disclosed only to ticket holders, in the face of possible feminist protests.
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Having revealed the information about the relocation on the website, the organisers said that the decision was prompted by the fact that a "transphobic hate group is trying to stop London Porn Film Festival 2019".
Object has also sent a letter about the festival to the Camden Council, prompting an investigation, with the group's chair Janice Williams, namely, pointing out a festival event titled Sex Work Is Work, the online description for which includes hashtags such as #necrophilia and #violence.
Williams insisted that if "this celebration of men's violence against women goes ahead", Object and other groups would stage protests.
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The porn festival's programme includes screenings titled Soft Tender Tuff Bois, described as a "love letter to all genderqueer and transmasculine people with people of colour front and centre", and The Kinks Are All Right, which focuses on the theme of "seductive humiliation".
One of the festival's organisers, Rude Jude, said that "Britain likes to think of itself as a place tolerant of queer people, but when queer people assert ourselves, we're attacked. […] These are not violent or extreme in the legal definition. Some of the films show practices that some people aren't into, but that is very different. No one has even seen these films yet. Obviously there in no necrophilia involved".
Another pressure group, Women Against Pornography, called feminist porn an "oxymoron" and denied accusations of transphobia:
"Feminism is not about individualistic wishes or desires, it is about liberating all women from the oppression of males. This can never be achieved by being tied up in a bed or by telling women that torture makes them free. In the letters we sent there was no mention of transgenderism. However, if transgenderism is apparently so closely linked with pornography then that's not a very good advert for it. As radical feminists we are gender critical, although this didn't form part of our criticism of the festival".
The festival, first held in 2017, was staged in response to 2014 legislation that banned a list of sexual acts in online porn films, Rude Jude revealed, and has since become an annual thing.
"It banned so many queer acts. It banned the depiction of female ejaculation, caning, breast play, flogging. These things are part of queer sexuality. The festival was formed as a protest".
