Pandora / Blake

I’m a queer porn performer, filmmaker, author, kink educator, public speaker, workshop facilitator and activist, and I’ve been working under the name Pandora Blake since 2006. My pronouns are they/them and I generally go by Blake. I founded Dreams of Spanking in 2011 as a platform for diverse, artistic spanking fantasies, starring performers who genuinely love the fetish. We’re a values-driven studio with a strong radical ethos: we center queer and trans performers and make our films as widely inclusive and body-positive as possible, with a focus on transparency and fair pay. The heart of our work is performer consent, and at every stage our projects are sex-worker-driven. We’re best known for our production values and the quality of our film-making. Our films have been screened in twelve countries and have won multiple international awards - including first prize in the 2015 Short Film Competition at the Berlin Porn Film Festival, and Best BDSM Scene 2015 and Most Tantalising Mature 2016 at the Feminist Porn Awards. Dreams of Spanking and I achieved notoriety in 2015, when the UK government introduced new laws banning the publication of spanking films showing marks beyond "transient or trifling". I was one of several high-profile critics, appearing on Newsnight and Woman's Hour to challenge these regulations and talk about how BDSM porn can be empowering and consensual. Shortly afterwards I was targeted by ATVOD and forced to take Dreams of Spanking offline - the only UK spanking site to be censored in this way. With the help of Backlash (a group providing legal support to the BDSM community, for whom I have since become Spokesperson), I appealed to Ofcom and won! Dreams of Spanking reopened the following year and is more successful than ever, with a team of eight freelancers now working alongside me. I currently sit on the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group, and I was granted the Sexual Freedom Award in 2015 for contributions to to the promotion of sex worker’s rights. I've delivered training to the British Board of Film Classification, consulted for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and contributed to Liberal Democrat party policy on porn and sex work. I spearheaded campaigning against age verification requirements in the Digital Economy Act 2017, and helped to block legislation that would have harmed everyone publishing adult content online. I was heavily involved in the campaign to update legal guidance on the Obscene Publications Act, which resulted in the removal of fisting and squirting from the definition of ‘obscene publications’ and introduced the condition that otherwise ‘obscene’ porn can be legal if performer consent is made clear. This was the first time consent has been introduced as a factor in the criminality of adult content. I crowd-fund my political activism and community work via Patreon: http://patreon.com/pandorablake. I also have a YouTube channel (http://youtube.com/pandorablakedreams) where I post educational videos about kink and BDSM, helping to spread awareness of safe practice and reduce stigma and shame.