This is a hard question to answer. On the one hand, I had to prepare for the worst. I knew the regulations were unjust and completely out of touch with current social standards, and I knew that ATVOD were enforcing them in a way that was totally unfair. I was just one woman standing up to the government and the law, and it was entirely possible that it would go horribly wrong. But on the other hand, I wouldn’t have stuck to my guns, refused to comply, spoken out against the regulations, and appealed if I didn’t think it had a chance of working out. I reckoned I had about a 50/50 chance of success. I thought it was worth the risk-and it turned out I was right. I’m very glad that it paid off.

Winning my appeal was an important moral victory, which got the issues the public attention they deserved; and for that alone, it was worth doing.

Dreams of Spanking is radical in that it provides a variety of gender orientations, with people of all genders in both dominant and submissive roles. For me, this is an essential part of shooting BDSM porn in a feminist way-ensuring that there aren’t any expectations that anyone will perform a certain power role on the basis of their gender. But apparently, this also meant we didn’t conform to the standards of acceptability that see submissive women as natural and okay, and submissive men as subversive and obscene; and I believe that this was definitely a factor in why my site was singled out.