LONDON—Baroness Gabby Bertin, a Conservative Party peer in the House of Lords, is reportedly preparing legislation to ban online pornography falling in the “barely legal” realm, suggests a report by The Guardian.
According to the report, Lady Bertin is fielding legislation with input from the independent pornography review commission she leads, targeting content that fetishizes age gaps or younger performers. The term “barely legal” often refers to categories that feature performers aged 18 to 20 years of age and/or performers who are young presenting.
It is a common search term and tag across search engines, tube sites, camming sites and other platforms. According to The Guardian, the effort to ban such material in the United Kingdom stems from the reaction to a recently-aired Channel 4 documentary following the stunt content of OnlyFans performer Bonnie Blue.
Blue went viral months prior for purportedly having sex with 1,057 men in 12 hours. The documentary, “1,000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story,” follows Blue for six months in the lead-up to her stunt that got banned on OnlyFans for violating the platform’s terms and conditions related to extreme content.
Lady Bertin said she plans to lodge amendments to the national Crime and Policing Bill to make it illegal for online platforms to host any content that she says could encourage child sexual abuse, including content that features adults acting younger than they are.
In the documentary, Blue is seen preparing to shoot an orgy scene on a classroom set alongside models dressed in school uniforms. The performers acknowledged that they were featured in that scene because they appear to be young.
“This content is pushing at the boundaries. We will be trying to address the ‘barely legal’ aspect legislatively,” Bertin said in The Guardian report. Channel 4 defended the documentary, saying it tackles “changing attitudes to sex, success, porn and feminism in an ever-evolving online world.”
Bertin is the same noble and member of the House of Lords responsible for successfully prohibiting the depiction of consensual choking in pornography in the U.K.
The report also suggests that Ofcom, the country’s communications regulator, is investigating whether the Bonnie Blue documentary broke any laws.
