Our sex-positive columnist Topher Taylor shares a personal experience with censorship last month.
On Friday 15th August, I was invited to a private, 18+ screening of sex education videos by JOYclub, which got censored and cancelled by Everyman Cinemas in Broadgate, 103 minutes before the event was due to start. Not only was it out of order, aggravating, and bullshit, but it endedup wasting thousands of pounds and lots of people’s hard work.
We will get into how this happened and why I’m so infuriated. For those of you that don’t know, JOYclub is a long-standing online sex-positive community that provides a dating and educational platform, and also promotes erotic events and sex parties, all under one big digital roof. It’s hot. They’ve been doing it since 1999 and included the UK since 2022. They aren’t newbies to this game or industry.
It’s one of the rare online platforms utilised for sex and kink that (verifiably) takes real care of its users and provides luxe and educated content. It’s also just a really fun, all encompassing, sexual platform. You get the best of many worlds: community, sex, kink, and EDUCATION.
I’m becoming increasingly tired of puritanical bullshit, and it’s only getting worse. If you ever read my column, you’ll understand my thoughts regarding censorship. Ever since the digital interference on social media of Trump and Brexit in 2016 (and yes, it’s all linked — I can write about that another time), the adult industry has seen a huge influx in censorship, payment gateways being withdrawn, promotional accounts being banned, limited access to advertising tools (unless you’re a pop or reality star talking about sex, of course), and a general all-round effort to dim sex-positive voices and limit consenting adults’ access to ethical porn, sex education, and adult products.
There’s a calculated effort to silence sexuality online, which is not going to lead us anywhere safe or good, for multiple reasons. Again, I can write about that another time. So, back to the event. Picture it — it’s a sunny evening in August in Liverpool Street, and JOYclub had invited 25 influential sex positive voices from the UK and around the world to the event, myself included. This was an invite-only, 18+ screening of sex education films that was approved by Everyman — sent on 8th August, and technically tested just three days before.
Not only had they invited us, but they’d also produced the films, had them dubbed into English, invested in PR for the event, paid for the private screening area and refreshments, and flown their team over from Germany to the UK. Or, to put it simply, a fuck-load of financial and manpower investment.
I arrived at the event 15 minutes before it was due to begin and was greeted by Katharina, from JOYclub, who looked understandably exasperated and immediately informed me that Everyman Cinemas had emailed to decline to show the films, which was then confirmed by the on-duty manager. This happened at 3:17pm, with the event due to start at 5pm. I don’t need to elaborate on how outrageously unprofessional and unethical the timing of Everyman Cinema’s cancellation. They even refused a partial screening.
We live in a culture endlessly comfortable with brutal violence on screen. As I write this, a quick search shows Everyman Broadgate is screening the horror film WEAPONS today. That film (SPOILER ALERT) features a woman dismembered and a face grated with a potato peeler. And while I genuinely love horror, the hypocrisy couldn’t be clearer.
Everyman Cinema’s cancellation of JOYclub’s private screening is outdated and proves exactly why projects like this matter. If a modern cinema cannot handle a consenting 18+ audience watching adult content, then it’s a glaringly obvious example of sex education, and sex in general, being censored into the shadows.
The irony is, we still had our event. The wonderful restaurant next door, Baraka, welcomed all of us with open arms. We collectively bonded over this experience – most likely because we are all, unfortunately, accustomed to being silenced and punished by platforms. We just didn’t expect the obscene hypocrisy from Everyman Cinemas. In a world where Everyman isn’t for every man, at least JOYclub is
Give Topher a follow @tophertaylor.
