The British Board of Film Classification recently passed the UK's first release of a film featuring female ejaculation after Anna Span, Britain's leading female director of adult films aimed at women, successfully fought the board's ban on "squirting". In 2002, the BBFC claimed the liquid expelled by some women during sex was urine, and pee porn is a no-no. The passing of Span's film, however, isn't an about-turn from the BBFC: it claims only to have granted certification since the work featured "so little focus on urolagnia" it was unlikely to breach the Obscene Publications Act. In refusing to accept the existence of female ejaculation, the BBFC positions itself as a shaper of female sexuality rather than a classifier of films.

Span's partial victory, achieved after she presented the board with a wealth of scientific evidence, is of interest to more than a handful of enthusiasts. Here, the issue (forgive the pun) is not simply about women being able to gush without blushing, an aspect of female sexuality is being defined by an argument between censors and pornographers. But are they the most appropriate stakeholders for female sexuality? The BBFC's ban colludes with the cultural default of viewing female sexuality as intangible and precious, as if the "enigma of woman" was something beyond the reach of science.

The irony is that Span has fought for the right to show authentic representations of the female experience in an industry famed for its fakery – horribly apt for a culture where female sexuality has been increasingly "pornified", and where sexualities that don't fit this model are swamped and sidelined. Authenticity is less important than acceptability, and what has become increasingly acceptable in the rise of raunch culture are exhibitionist sexualities. With the vogue for burlesque, lap-dancing and pole-dancing, not to mention the glut of memoirs from sex workers and strippers, the meaning of the word "sexuality", when applied to women, has become so corrupted it's practically a fancy way of saying "sexiness".

The adult industry needs to acknowledge female desire – the satisfaction of it, not merely demonstrations of it for the satisfaction of male desire – and Span's positioning of women as consumers rather than product is radically different. But have general understandings of female sexuality become so distorted that it's possible for censors to reject authenticity in pornography on the grounds it must be bogus? Many complain that teenage lads gain their sexual knowledge from pornography. It's troubling when the BBFC seems to learn the same way.