Contingency Planning

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Hywel — 5 Comments ↓

So it looks like the UK has elected a Conservative government. Of the possible outcomes for freedom of expression and freedom of sexual identity in the UK, this is one of the gloomier ones. The attitude of other parties was unknown, but we KNOW the Tories brought in the December 2014 regulations and promised to expand internet censorship to non-UK websites as one of their campaign pledges.

If this had happened two years ago, Ariel and I would now be house-hunting for somewhere to live and work outside the UK. Our friends in Britain might not have been able to see our work, but maybe the rest of the free world could still enjoy our romantic BDSM fiction uncensored.

But a year ago, we found a place and fell in love with it. We have a beautiful, slightly crazy, slightly tumbledown old house which Pandora Blake says is like Narnia. We live in a friendly little town. Not sure exactly how friendly they will remain if we are majorly outed in hysterical right wing local press, but so far all visitors to the house have been entirely unfazed by what we do.

We also pulled the financial trick of moving from the very expensive South East of England to a cheaper and much more beautiful part of the country. The upside is we could afford a house which feels like a mansion to us, complete with a stone dungeon under the bedroom. It couldn’t be more perfect for us. But it sat unsold on the market for 18 months before we bought it- so even if we wanted to sell up and move out of the UK, that is not a viable proposition for us on a sensible timescale. By the time we managed to sell it, we may have had a referendum and no longer even be in the EU!

I’m the first to admit I’m no hard-headed businessman. I’m a bit of a dreamer, a scientist-turned artist, not a practical man, and I suck at salesmanship. Nevertheless, even a rubbish businessman like me managed to build Restrained Elegance up into a thriving cottage industry.

I’m proud of that. I’m not going to let it slip away without a fight.

But, pragmatically, I need to have some contingency plans in place for if we get closed down by the censor. If you want an idea of how heart-wrenching this is, all I can say is read Pandora’s post about her site being censored. She puts it into words more articulately than I can. It’s heart-breaking.

I want to be completely open and up-front about this. So although I’ve not yet taken legal advice, and the censor’s letter has not yet come thudding through the door, here are my thoughts as to what we might be able to do.

Right now, the regulations only apply to sites offering a TV-like video on demand service. In the last few days a challenge has been made to the way the UK is applying this to anyone and his dog who posts a video online.

The best case scenarios- one of the current challenges works and the EU makes the regulator behave sensibly. Or they decide we are without the scope of the regulations as RE is all hosted and run by a non-UK company.

Slightly worse but positive would be that we get regulated, but that the individual censor looking at out work agrees with us that our work is romantic fiction, and doesn’t require us to take everything down. We’d have to pay the blood money to be allowed to continue, but maybe they would apply the regulations sensibly. (We are not hopeful of this. Consider the sort of person who wants make a living stopping “ordinary” people watching other people’s art.)

If the regulations still only apply to video, we could hive off the video parts of RE. Maybe a combination of GeoIP blocking and credit card address verification would allow us to block all video to the UK, or even just videos featuring banned subjects (which we’d guess would be gags and CP, but who really knows? It is up to the censor).

If the axe falls we might have to take all the RE video offline, I guess, and slowly bring it back up as the censor allows. Previews will get massacred, I assume, but maybe the core of RE would be allowed to remain.

The worst case scenario is that the regulator gets the extra powers they want to cover ALL media (so stills as well as video) and ALL websites, regardless of where they are in the world. In that case, the only options would be to leave the UK or close the site. Obviously we really, really hope it doesn’t come to that.

The real bugger for us is that as Ariel and I both rely on fetish work for our income, our ability to pay the mortgage, pay the bills and eat would be greatly threatened if any of the more drastic scenarios come to pass.

We’re not the sort of people to sit passively and wait for the worst. Ariel is working on viral videos. We’re talking to film-makers about campaign pieces and activism to get the worst excesses of these regulations revoked. If we had more money, I guess we would be looking at a bolt-hole outside the UK as a worst-case scenario, but that’s just not a viable proposition at the moment.

Despite the Tory victory, I don’t think the majority of people in the UK really and truly support censorship. There is just still too much stigma about admitting to being an adult and having a healthy interest in erotica in general and BDSM and other fetishes in particular.

Ariel does have non-fetish-related work. Right now, I do not. I’m sorry if it seems a bit cowardly, but I’m going to have to figure out some contingency for me being able to support myself and pay my share of the mortgage. I will try not to let it impact negatively upon the sites; so far I’ve been doing a day’s work then heading off to the hills. I’m trying to practice and see if I can get sufficiently good at landscape photography to make a sideline for the business doing that. I’ve tried mainstream film and video production too but no-one seems to be making any money at that on the cottage industry level (too many people keen to do it, not enough people willing to pay to watch what they produce). At least landscape photography has some proven sales channels, although it is also famously hard to make a living at.

I’m expanding on teaching and tutorials, but how much call for that will there be if the censors get their way? Purpleport and amateur photographers might not be allowed to show bondage photography for much longer either.

Another downside of the move is that I can’t exactly walk into a reasonably-paid high tech job in this part of the world, either. That sounds self-pitying… it isn’t meant to be. I’m an optimist at heart and I’m not afraid of running a business or doing some hard work. I will find some way of making a living. I just don’t want it to negatively impact on RE, because RE is my art, my romantic life, my erotica, my fantasies, and Ariel and my shared life together.

The thing which is going to have most impact on RE is the whole gags-plus-bondage ban in the new regualtions. Although I fucking HATE it, I would be foolish to have a two year stock of gagged videos on disk if we’re suddenly not allowed to show them- that would be tens of thousands of pounds of investment in shoots which I might never be able to recoup.

So the other concrete policy decision from today’s election result is that for the moment we’ll be shooting mostly ungagged videos, unless it is a custom shoot. Custom shoot fees cover the production costs up front, so even if we end up not being able to put the video up on the site, at least I won’t have lost money on it. Maybe enough people will want gagged custom videos shot in the RE style that it won’t change the mix too much. I can already say there are going to be a few more videos with shoes and stockings and ballet slippers and other foot wear; a lot of custom video requests want something other than bare feet. I won’t let it change the character of the site, but barefoot and gagged bondage videos might be a bit thin on the ground for a while if people don’t want them as custom requests.

If and when we get censored, I will not go quietly. I will keep you informed of everything we do or are required to do, and will explain why (as I hope I have in this post).

And with that, I will leave you. I’m going to work on July’s RE updates and cheer myself up. And maybe go out and by a huge fucking cake of a million calories to eat.

Restrained Elegance, Silk Soles and Elegance Studios are your sites too. We will do our best to defend them for you, every way we can. We will fight this.

Hywel

Blog/Forum issues

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Hywel — Leave a reply

Hi All,

UPDATE: Should now be fixed, let me know if you have any problems.

We’ve had problems with the blog and forums for the last couple of days. Blog is back, but forum is down- we’re working on it, will be back as soon as we can. All to do with needing to update the underlying software and finding problems with some plug-ins.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Cheers, Hywel.

Moral Dilemma

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Hywel — 8 Comments ↓

UPDATE: Many thanks to everyone who has kindly offered advice on my silly little internal debate. After discussion it has been jointly decided that the budget just won’t stand for one performer to be paid so highly.

We are now actively looking for another performer to fill the role, and who will be paid the same as everyone else. Which makes me much happier.

Sablesword hit the nail on the head for me by pointing out that it was not in fact a moral dilemma: there’s nothing immoral about paying the market rate for something. It’s not a moral issue at all. So it would have been perfectly OK to go ahead.

Nonetheless I’m happier to be able to continue the idyllic, idealistic, utopian nonsense we’ve built with RE over the years for just a little longer. I LIKE working in a collegiate, partnership-of-equals way. And that’s fine, it’s just my personal preference.

In case you hadn’t guessed, yes, I am naive and a bit of a dreamer as well as being a scientist, photographer and dominant. I like it that way.

Original Post:

Now there’s a thing.

I’m on the verge of turning down a project because of moral scruples.

Without wishing to go into details, the project involves casting multiple actors who will all be on set all the time for the duration of the film. The thing is, one person is likely to be paid much more than the others.

I realise there are legitimate reasons why this is so- that person is a bit higher profile.

This situation has pertained in previous projects, for sure.

But I was never the producer- I was never responsible for organising a shoot under those conditions, and for paying out the money to people knowing that one person was going to be getting significantly more cash for doing almost exactly the same job.

Furthermore, this is my “me” work- it’s fetish-related, not a mainstream film, which shouldn’t make a difference but somehow does. I don’t feel like the hired hand, even though technically speaking I totally am, I’m not paying the bills but it still feels too personal for me to be comfortable with this.

I know stars are paid more money. I know a skilled carpenter can charge more per hour than an apprentice, and think it is right that they should do so.

And yet- I just don’t know if I want to put myself in the position of knowingly paying people radically different amounts for doing the same job on set with me.

The pragmatic side of me says “Oh for the love of God, Hywel, it’s a paying job, it is the customer’s call anyway as they are paying for it all, get over yourself”.

But this little voice inside is screaming at me that this is wrong, and I don’t want to do it. Maybe I’d rather retain the “Fair Trade” stamp in my head and pass up the opportunity.

I know it is naive and stupid. But I’m really struggling.

What should I do?

The first British Fetish Film Festival

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Hywel — 2 Comments ↓

The film festival went very well. About 25 people attended. First of all we heard about the draconian new regulations affecting internet producers in the UK, courtesy of Pandora Blake. All was not dismal, we have the beginnings of a plan for how to take them on.

Then we had a workshop session on making a fetish film. I set a challenge- to make a short film, in one-camera, indie film shoot style, in under two hours. Thanks to the skills of Ariel Anderssen and Zoe Page, and great collegiate suggestions and camera-work from the people attending, we made it. Our intern Pippa even quickly cut it together for us during the tea and cake break so we could even show it at the festival screening that afternoon.

I’ll put the film up on Restrained Elegance once we’ve fine tuned the edit.

Then we settled down to watch the films which people had kindly submitted. There were some very funny ones, and some very intense ones, and some very sexy ones- and all was very positive and fun. If we have one regret it is that most of the films were mostly female submissive. Primarily because the circle of producers we contacted for this first film festival are the ones who work with my wife, who is a female submissive!

Our main goal for the year was to run something at a public venue, which we’ve now done.

Our main goal for next year, assuming we’re brave enough to run it again, is to broaden the scope and make sure we make contact with other sections of the fetish community, so we can show a wider variety of fetishes and orientations next year.

Cheers, Hywel Phillips

Is it OK to like Erotica and Bondage?

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Hywel — 5 Comments ↓

Added 10th October 2017

Well, damn. In the three years since I wrote this, the situation seems to have gone from bad to worse. A “social conservative” backlash seems to be pushing back at equality in the west and more generally in the world. This has horrified me and, I must admit, made me a bit less comfortable shooting BDSM. It’s getting harder for me to be comfortable with the idea that female submissive BDSM is OK for play because we don’t act like that in the real world when demonstrably a fair number of shit-bags DO act quite like that in the real world.

Which makes it even more important for those of us with some sort of platform to make it clear how unacceptable we find discriminatory behaviour towards any group of human beings. Not on grounds of colour, gender, or anything else.

The thing that gives me hope is that I think this is a last hurrah, a desperate rear-guard action from the bigots before they are properly overwhelmed by the tides of history. Let’s all do our bit to keep the pressure up.

Original post

Hi All,

There’s been a lot of thought provoking stuff recently about every-day sexism, for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A . Human being are clearly prone to discrimination, and one of the most deep-seated forms of discrimination is gender or sexual identity based.

I didn’t used to have very much time for the “all porn is bad” point of view. The more I see of the world, the more I realise where some of these protests are coming from. I believe they are misguided, but I have sympathy for the point of view.

Sexism is deeply ingrained in our media reporting. A male MP can attend cabinet without the newspapers feeling the need to comment on his hotness or lack thereof. Whilst I disagree with Esther McVey on almost every policy and opinion she holds, it is deeply wrong that her appointment to cabinet was hailed like this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2692722/Watch-Theresa-theres-fashionista-Downing-Street-Esther-McVey-makes-big-impression-arrives-Prime-Minister.html
not just by the Mail, but by almost every news report.

Is it OK that RestrainedElegance.com and SilkSoles.com present pretty young women, made up to look attractive?

I can see why it may not seem so from the outside. We know that we are ethical producers of erotic art. But we don’t tend to bang on about it, and maybe we should.

The models are paid (significantly higher paid per hour that they work for the site than anyone else involved in production). They are self-employed freelance professional women in successful careers.

The stories we enact are done in fun, in the spirit of roleplays between consenting adults. Shoot days are fun. We often lose shoot time from the giggles. Models are not forced or bribed or cajoled to do anything; they show up, have a hopefully fun creative shoot, get paid and go on to their next professional assignment.

There are arguments which trouble me.

It troubles me that we might be perpetuating the idea that a female person’s worth is primarily to be judged by her physical attractiveness, as rated by a 40-something white heterosexual man.

It troubles me that some idiots on twitter appear to be a bit hazy about the dividing line between respectful fan comments and sexual harassment.

It troubles me that my own sexuality is sufficiently unadventurous that I seem to be unable to do a really good job of creating art which lies considerably outside it (although I’ve greatly enjoyed the opportunities to shoot it with other producers when I’ve been able to).

The main thing that troubles me though is the realisation that I grew up in an anomalous bubble of time and place and society in which sexual equality was taken as a given.

My mother, although she would never recognise herself in the description, is a true Renaissance liberated woman of the 1960’s wave of female equality. When she wasn’t given interesting enough work to do in her first job at an aircraft designer, she stormed in to see her boss and made them give her something more challenging. She did a Pure Maths degree as a mature student, and worked part-time all through to retirement as a computer analyst and troubleshooter working with University researchers on cutting edge projects like early finite element analysis software for civil engineering.

She and my father had calmly and rationally decided how to divide up the responsibilities of raising a family and working full-time, and clearly have nothing but the greatest of love and respect for each other.

As a University kid in a University town in the 1970s, this was the norm. Friends’ families were like that too. And being Welsh, there was less social stratification and class bias than in England, I now realise.

Put together the kids of these University families in a single school, mostly in one or two classes, and the idea of gender equality was definitely the norm. I vividly recall the short shrift given to a (female) Royal Navy recruiter by (female) students who tried to defend why the Navy wouldn’t allow her to serve on a battleship. We had very progressive schooling, including classes on morals and social responsibility where many of these issues were discussed, led by teachers who also entirely embraced sexual equality.

I now realise that the rest of the world wasn’t like that then, isn’t like that now. It may not even be like that back home these days, I don’t know. The glass ceiling hasn’t fallen, women are still under-represented in many walks of life, and most shamefully underpayment for doing the same work as a male colleague is still a routine reality of life.

For me, it seemed entirely reasonable to enjoy bondage and fetish games where one real-life equal partner chooses to play a submissive role and one chooses to play a dominant role. It doesn’t impact on their equality, because I just assumed that in real life they are equal. Different, but of equal worth.

I still do think it is reasonable. But you have to really mean the equality thing, deep down, right down to your heart. If you don’t, I question whether it is really OK to play out the roles in bondage games.

If I had been brought up in a setting where sexual discrimination was the norm, I doubt I’d feel as sanguine about BDSM and erotica.

Similarly, I try very hard not to judge a person by their sex or by their appearance. I’m far from perfect at it; millions of years of evolution have gone into making me notice pretty girls. I can’t really help that.

What I can help is what I do about it. Not staring, for a start, and definitely not cat calling or slut shaming or judging a politician by their perceived hotness instead of their professed policies.

I’m aware that by running Restrained Elegance and Silk Soles I might be perpetuating the problem.

That’s why I try to explain what I am doing, why our stories are more than “I saw this slut on the street and I just had to tie her up and fuck her”. (It was Kate who came up with that – she said if our stories were like that, she’s not be happy to work with us).

RE and SS shoots are fun, collegiate, collaborative, friendly and cheerful. It’s just that some of the stories we like to tell are a bit cops-and-robbers, damsel-in-distress. It’s OK, because we all buy in to the shared fantasy in its correct, mutually agreed context. And by describing the models as valued artistic collaborators. If you ever see a word like “slut” or “bitch” on our sites it will be in the context of a character, and most often just one character accusing another of acting like a bitch, rather than “this fucking bitch deserved it”.

I’m delighted that there are some female-gaze erotica sites, BDSM sites with a wider variety of gender roles, wider variety of body types, and all sorts of things. If times were less tight, I’d probably run several mini-sites exploring some of those aspects myself, even though I don’t think I’d be very good at it. I’m very keen to collaborate with others and reach understanding of other niches and fetishes and orientation- which is at least part of the rationale behind running the British Fetish Film Festival, too.

So my current thought is that yes, looking at erotica, BDSM or fetish material of whatever flavour and orientation you happen to like is absolutely fine and healthy… so long as you genuinely do realise it is a game for fun, and there’s no malice in your heart, no sneaking disdain for the performers in the porn you like, no thinking that your fetish and your orientation is the “right” one, the “natural” one, the one true way.

Be a bit vigilant about your thinking and you can enjoy your artwork, erotica, roleplaying, videos, photos and whatever you like with a clear conscience. (Oh, just so long as you support its production and don’t pirate it.)

Regards,