Dilation police

While Canada Customs has removed fisting from its list of inherently obscene activities, the Ontario Film Review Board (OFRB) has taken a step in the other direction.

After a period where it approved sex videos that contained scenes of vaginal and anal fisting, the board changed its tune in February. Fists in pussies are still okay (if participants appear to be enjoying themselves and aren’t pregnant), but not fists in butts (even if participants are enjoying themselves).

Last winter the board met with a representative of the Ontario Medical Association, who told them that vaginal fisting isn’t necessarily bad for your health, but anal fisting is.

“He gave us exact measurements,” says OFRB chair Bill Moody.

The OFRB doesn’t have a mandate to prevent Ontarians from seeing un-healthy activity: Most straight porn features sex without condoms and action movies are all about watching people do dangerous things. But the board decided that anal fisting in particular was abusive.

“It becomes physical abuse when the medical people tell us that it’s abuse,” says Moody. “You don’t need signs of physical distress or discomfort for something to be abuse.”

The board also had concerns with the healthiness of anal-oral sexual contact, but decided that as long as there is a warning before the start of the video, the board will approve it.

“We’re not germ police,” says Moody.

Paul Gallant

Paul Gallant is a Toronto-based journalist whose work has appeared in The WalrusThe Globe and Mail, the Toronto StarTHIS magazine, CBC.ca, Readersdigest.ca and many other publications. His debut novel, Still More Stubborn Stars, was published by Acorn Press. He is the editor of Pink Ticket Travel and a former managing editor of Xtra. Photo by Tishan Baldeo.

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