24 September 2016

Dazed: People are protesting Russian censorship by narrating porn

Government censorship agency Roskomnadzor blocked access to the sites, and now anyone trying to access them gets an error message that says they’ve been blocked “by decision of public authorities”. Last year, the watchdog banned 11 other porn sites, citing that they were failing to protect children “from information harmful to their health”. Court rulings were able to bring in the ban due to very vague, extreme legislation based around child protection.

And although sexually explicit content isn’t necessarily illegal in Russia, “the illegal production, dissemination and advertisement of pornographic materials and objects” is.

In an act of protest, people are uploading videos of themselves to social media watching porn and narrating what happens. They can be found underneath the hashtag #rospornobzor. [...]

Another protestor, Natalia Istomina, asserted her issues with porn as a whole, while also drawing attention to the dangers of government censorship. “While mainstream pornography is abusive as fuck, we’re not talking about that right now, but about the fact that censorship is an even greater violence and the way to total hypocrisy and isolation, where no honest conversations are possible, not just about sex, but about anything at all,” she said.

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