Maybe…

“How do you know when it’s over?”
“Maybe when you feel more in love with your memories than with the person standing in front of you.” ~ Gunnar Ardelius

This week I had to block all UK traffic to my blog. If you are reading this it is because either you are not in the UK, you are using a VPN to make it look like you are not in the UK or possibly your ISP has cached my site and so for now you can still see it. Sadly that won’t last for long.

The reason for doing this is a piece of legislation called the Online Safety Act. There are lots of parts of this act but that bit that applies to me is that anyone posting pornography online must have age verification on their website and a tick box does not cut it. It must verify their age using one of the online age verification services. They are not free and it is the site owner, in this case me, who has to pay for every age verification check that the software does. Which brings in another issue, which is that you are giving you data and identity to whichever age verification software company the site uses.

Is my site porn? You tell me? Because Ofcom, that is who is in charge of enforcing this law, definitely won’t tell me. Basically there vague answer to that is, if the images were produced with an aim to arose, but it would be up to a court of law in the UK to decide if that is the case.

So why not wait and see? I am a tiny fish in a big porn pond, surely they are not going to be bothered with me. Maybe, but also maybe not and if they are bothered with me, what I discovered recently is there is no warnings. If they decide you are in breach of the act the first thing they do is issue a fine. An 18 million pound one!

Then you could, if you had the money, time and mental health for it, take that to court and fight in court that this is not porn it is art. Would I win? Maybe, possibly, probably? Who knows.

But I get anxious when the dog doesn’t eat it’s dinner. In fact I get anxious in the middle of the night for no discernable reason and when I say anxious I mean, heart racing, feeling sick, tight chest type anxious. The idea of fighting my way through the British court system against the government. Nope, it is not for me. Just writing that sentence I could feel the fear and some tears prickle at my eyes.

So here we are. My blog can no longer legally be viewed in the UK and whilst the UK only forms a part of my traffic it still feels sad and weird.

I very nearly didn’t post a Sinful Sunday this week because I have been so knocked by this. That would be the first time since 2011, when Sinful Sunday started, that I would not have joined in with my own meme. But this morning I woke up and realised that was not how I wanted things to end, here or on Sinful Sunday. So for now, I am going to plod and see how it effects my desire to keep creating content here and how it effects how many people join in with Sinful Sunday.

I will admit that I feel a bit like I am battling against the current and more and more losing my strength to keep going. The quote at the start of this piece really resonates with me and if I am honest I think it is how I feel. I used to love this blog and I still do, I am hugely proud of what I have created here. 15 years of my work, of my life, my soul, my body, my love. For now I am still here, just, but I think the truth is that I am far more in love with the memories, than with the thought of making more of them here in this space. I just don’t think I have fully accepted that yet. If and when I do, I shall definitely let you know.

Forever Molly x