We are proud to be hosting The Porn Review at The Common Press on 5th March from 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm with industry leaders and special guests for an insightful panel. Join Dr. Carolina, Dr. Sarah Welsh, East London Stripper Collective, and Max Disgrace in collaboration with Lover Management for a beautiful evening. If you can't join in person, sign up to the livestream link below to join online.
When it comes to porn, its visibility, and its impact on society, everyone has an opinion. But is that opinion based on facts and research, or fears about sex, exploitation, and technology?
Following the impending new regulation of online pornography by UK law, we sit down with experts and practitioners to bust myths about the visibility of digital pornography and discuss how new rules could affect not just the adult industry, but all our sex lives and our sources sexual health information.
The UK Government has recently opened a public consultation asking viewers, performers, creators, parents and experts for their views on the impacts of porn on work, relationships, society, violence and young people towards creating new regulation as part of their newly approved Online Safety Act. The consultation is open until March 7th, meaning that for a very limited time sex-positive people, sex workers, creators and allies have the chance to share their thoughts and attempt to counteract the anti-sex,anti-porn lobbies that will no doubt be flooding the page with research-informed data, lived experiences and more balanced information. Join Dr Carolina Are, Sabrina from East London Stripper Collective and Sarah Welsh co founder of HANX to discuss:
- The real forces behind porn regulation (e.g. anti-sex work lobbies, the evangelical right in the US etc.)
- Porn’s impact on sex and culture
- What moral panics about porn are
- The impact similar legislation has had on digital sexual speech, sex work, sexual health and wellbeing information in other countries (e.g., see FOSTA/SESTA in the USA)
- How the new regulation will affects not just porn, but sexual expression, art, work, education, events and health as well
Guests will leave the event with research-based information and experiences to draw from while discussing porn regulation and/or to submit to the UK Government’s porn review.
About Dr. Carolina
Dr. Carolina Are is an Innovation Fellow at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens, researching social media censorship, content moderation and de-platforming. Following her own experiences of censorship, she has been conducting studies on algorithmic bias against nudity and sexuality on social media, and has published the first study on the shadowbanning of pole dancing in Feminist Media Studies. Her work has been published in Social Media + Society, New Media & Society and Porn Studies, and it has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vice, the BBC, Wired, the MIT Technology Review. Carolina is also a content creator, blogger, performer and a pole dance instructor at @bloggeronpole.
Dr. Sarah Welsh
Dr Sarah Welsh is the co-founder of HANX, where she leads development of trusted, effective and stigma-free sexual wellness and intimate health care. With a background in NHS gynecology and obstetrics, Sarah provides expert medical commentary to global titles including Women's Health, Vogue and Refinery 29. She strongly believes that shame-free sex education is crucial in empowering individuals to take control of their personal health journey.
Sabrina Jade
Sabrina Jade from East London SC is a veteran sex worker of several years! From strip clubs nationally and internationally, bachelor parties and pop up queer sexy nights to live streaming on cams and fully committing to solo and queer porn. Originally discovering the industry while acquiring their (first class) masters in biochemistry at 19. Sabrina has seen firsthand the way stigma can harm the industry, and is here to argue that amplified stigma and increased legislation and bans on the entire sw community is not the answer and this can actually benefit exploitative situations!
East London SC
East London SC is a network of feisty, feminist and fiercely independent women, who also happen to be strippers. Founded in 2014, the ELSC are committed to supporting and promoting self-organisation among strippers and lapdancers, challenging stigma around sex work, standing up to exploitation and fighting for improved safety and harm-reduction in the wider sex industry. ELSC has grown up out of a grassroots collaboration of striptease performers working together in East London SEVs (Sexual Entertainment Venues). The founding members of the collective were all united around a shared set of workplace grievances, and a mutual desire to see their safety, dignity and employment rights acknowledged within their industry. Changes in licensing law and economic trends have led to deterioration in working conditions in SEVs, leading to greater levels of workplace abuses and business malpractice. The business model of SEVs relies on the misclassification of workers, and their subsequent lack of access to employment rights.
Max Disgrace
Max Disgrace is a London based, award-winning film director, trans man of Chinese descent and proud pervert. Max’s work focuses on queer desire and sexual intimacies, inhabiting realms of mischievousness, playfulness, resistance, sensuality, leather and pleasure.
An alum of Berlinale Talents 2020 and BFI Network x BAFTA Crew 20/21, his work has screened at the BFI, Tate Modern, the Barbican and queer & porn film festivals internationally.
Max’s new T4T dark comedy-romance short film "Dismantle Me” associate produced by Lilly Wachowski (The Matrix), premiered in 2023 at Outfest LA and screened at Leeds International Film Festival, NewFest and Oslo Fusion. On this film he worked with a majority trans and non-binary cast and crew, in collaboration with Trans+ On Screen.
Max was a programmer-organiser of the London Porn Film Festival for three years (2018-2020), an independent, non-profit, queer sexuality festival which started in resistance to repressive censorship laws – including the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014. In 2020, Disgrace was a guest curator for the inaugural San Francisco PornFilmFestival. Disgrace’s films have also featured in “Edging” an exhibition at LUX Moving Image, London, at the Schwules (LGBTQ+) Museum, Berlin.