In what may be a watershed moment in the political debate over pornography, the United Kingdom has become the first Western country in decades to table a significant porn ban.
On November 3rd, the government tabled the Crime and Policing Bill in Parliament. It includes an amendment criminalizing pornography featuring strangulation or suffocation—usually referred to as ‘choking’—with legal requirements for tech platforms to block this content from UK users.
Both possession and publication of ‘choking’ porn will be a criminal offence, and the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology stated that eliminating this sadistic material will be a “priority offence” under the Online Safety Act, putting it on the same level as child abuse material and terrorism content.
For decades, the debate has been about whether pornography should be banned, with the public consensus firmly on the libertarian side of the question. Now, as I noted recently in First Things, the debate has shifted to what to do about porn, and now, what genres should be banned. No serious person still questions the fact that pornography is harming society.
A government review into pornography published in February revealed that strangulation during sex had become a normal experience for young women, with at least four in ten women between the ages of 18 and 39 having experienced it. Following the study, Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin advocated for a ban on some forms of porn.
“The evidence is overwhelming that allowing people to view legal but harmful pornography like choking sex, violent and degrading acts, and even content that could encourage child sexual abuse, is having a damaging impact on children and society,” Bertin said. “The law needs to be tightened with more proactive regulation of online platforms.”
As I detailed in a report for europeanconservative.com last year titled “Porn Culture Has Our Girls By the Throat,” young women have simply come to expect strangulation—and worse—as part of a sexual relationship; according to one study, Gen Zers don’t even discuss it. Pornography has normalized and mainstreamed sexual violence, with women and girls forced to live with it.
“Strangulation during sex is considered the second most common cause of strokes in women under 40,” Conservative MP Alicia Kearns posted on X. “Violent pornography has normalized it, and that’s why I laid amendments to ban non-fatal strangulation in porn. The Government voted against it twice. Now they have accepted it must be banned. It shouldn’t have taken months of delay and political pressure to get here, but I’m relieved the ban is coming.”
“We must ban when there is a threat to the safety of members of our society,” Kearns added. “Too many young girls tell me this is normal and expected of them.”
