There’s too much wanky guitar music to make it strictly educational, too much British accented voice-over to make it porn. A video clip titled “Camera Inside of the Vagina During Sex in Missionary Position” has been driving people nuts precisely because it bends expected categories. On December 29, 2015, a full eight months after it was first posted, the press picked up on the clip’s existence and made an inexplicable stink. “Could this be one of the most extreme and controversial videos ever to be uploaded onto YouTube?” demanded the British Daily Express, summarizing the clip as “an up-close and extremely graphic look at sex from inside a woman’s vagina.” Across the pond, U.S. publications Cosmopolitan and Maxim ran with the “story,” and the clip racked up close to 14 million hits. A few days later YouTube replaced the clip with a static gray image and the following message: “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy on nudity or sexual content.” But sweet confusion! YouTube’s own user guidelines permit the posting of videos that contain “nudity or other sexual content” so long as the primary purpose is “educational, documentary, scientific or artistic, and it isn’t gratuitously graphic.” So, for now, type “Camera Inside of the Vagina During Sex in Missionary Position” into YouTube’s search bar, and you’ll find other uploads of the clip, including its source—the BBC documentary series A Girl’s Guide to 21st Century Sex, which ran for eight episodes and covered a range of topics, from sexually transmitted diseases to sex positions. When the series first aired back in 2006, a scant 21 people complained to the Office of Communications (Ofcom, the UK’s version of our FCC) that it was obscene. Ofcom ruled that the series “genuinely sought to inform and educate” on sex and therefore did not violate any broadcasting regulations. That was the news ten years ago. Get it together, media of today. And BBC and YouTube? Thanks for the education.
