Online pornography showing strangulation or suffocation is to be made illegal, as part of government plans to tackle violence against women and girls.
It follows a review which found depictions of choking were “rife” on mainstream porn sites and had helped normalise the act among young people.
Both the possession and publication of such material will be a criminal offence, under amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill currently going through Parliament.
Porn is acting. Play. Or maybe you think everyone that gets shot in a movie is actually killed during recording?
There’s no point arguing that “choking is bad”. I’m pretty sure any sane person would agree.
Porn may be considered fantasy, but it is very real to the people involved. I would not minimize this myself.
People have definitely died from choking even when it is consensual. Although most deaths are from auto-asphyxiation.
When I lived in Idaho one of my girl’s classmates died from choking himself with a belt while masturbating. It was primarily a Mormon community.
After that they had “experts” come in and tell the children that porn makes people serial killers. It was pretty ridiculous.
My primary concerns in all this is safety. It is not safe to choke your partner even if it is agreed upon. It causes permanent damage, although how much damage I suppose is debatable.
I know the brain fog from getting choked out is real and can affect someone for weeks afterwards. The fact that so many young people engage in this behavior is worrisome.
Even when perfectly healthy consenting partners engage in this it is dangerous and that is rarely the situation.
What is much more common is men choking out women because they have seen it in porn. Does this make all porn bad? I don’t think so personally.
tbh I don’t care if people engage in dangerous actions as long as it’s done with informed consent.
There are major issues with people being pressured into putting up with stuff they wouldn’t otberwise but that’s a far bigger issue you don’t solve by banning media.
Hey, if you are cool with damaging your own brain sure, I draw the line when you choose to do it to someone else.
If it was SO consensual why are guys not getting choked equally? The answer is it isn’t. It is about dominance and power not a consensual act.
Furthermore, the majority of choking acts are not consensual and they also cause brain damage.
I really fail to see where you are coming from.
Edit: I reread your statement. You think banning choking depictions in porn is wrong. I see it as perpetuating abuse.
Okay this comment makes me think you don’t understand consent.
My partner has fetishes I’m not into, but I engage in them because I want to give him the pleasure he gets from them. Is that not consentual because I’m not into the fetish?
Consent doesn’t mean only doing things you’re into, it means you’re agreeing to it free from any pressure or influence on your decision and you know everything you need to know to make your decision.
I won’t be choked and I wouldn’t choke someone because it is dangerous and I’m uncomfortable with it regardless of if the other person wants it. But as long as people consent and know the risks I don’t care what others do.
Dominance and power can absolutely be consentually engaged in. The bdsm community takes consent incredibly seriously.
There are larger cultural elements behind what people are into that are worth examining. Cultural influence doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t consentual though.
You seem to think because “consent” it is okay. That is your failing and that is okay. You are very wrong about this particular topic and we will have to disagree here.
This isn’t about a kink, this is about misogyny, brain damage, and perpetuating abuse. I swear kink culture is a cancer if it produces the kind of callousness and willful ignorance you display.
Your meme ignores reality, but go ahead and pat yourself on the back.
Consent required all parties to know the consequences to be fully informed. When you coerce you partner into choking without the knowledge it is causing lasting permanent brain damage you are not getting consent.
Kuhli says, “Hey baby can I give you brain death because it is my kink”
There is no after care for brain damage. This is where the kink community needs to come together to put their foot down.
Yes, that’s what I said earlier:
“Consent doesn’t mean only doing things you’re into, it means you’re agreeing to it free from any pressure or influence on your decision and you know everything you need to know to make your decision.”
When I say I don’t care what people do as long as there’s consent, that’s a requirement built into that statement. The vast vast majority of choking isn’t consentual, that’s the issue we need to address.
This isn’t a kink issue, it’s a mainstream issue.the kink community takes consent and safety incredibly seriously. In this case that’s stuff like roleplay choking or breathplay.
Are all the women who want to be choked during sex misogynistic?
Nope, not at all but misogyny is a driving factor in men choking women just like a lot of partner related abuse.
I agree on that point. My point is that this is what should be discussed, and not banning acting.
Oh okay, I get that. I would agree with you, but the problem here is the coercive nature of paid acting. We have to have safeguards in place to protect actors.
Choking, as I mentioned, causes permanent brain cell death every single time it is done. Not to mention issues like PTSD as well. In this scenario the government has the overwhelming burden to protect actors from being paid to harm themselves.
I think there is another argument about protecting the welfare of the public as well. This is where you could argue it becomes about a questionable moral decision. I tend to agree with people who have concerns about the state exceeding it’s authority and the possible slippery slop of censorship.
This is why it is important to weigh these things carefully. You may disagree, but I fall back to the the concept of specific and narrowly defined speech that poses the direct risk of harm. I think filming actual or even simulated choking can meet this definition.
The burden of proof must be on the government and it must prove its case empirically . With the large amount of non-consensual choking, along with the reality that a lot of men abuse women it can be seen as an extremely negative societal trend. Statistics point to the reality that only a small fraction of these instances could be considered truly consensual.
Monkey see and monkey do is a very real phenomenon. Our brains literally work by mirroring actions. I know this harkens back to a lot of truly negative censorship though. We can see all kinds of censorship that could be justified with this logic.
I suppose depicting sexual violence in normal sexual encounters is where I draw the line. When it is no longer fantasy and people see what they think is normal behavior without any pushback.
This is why so many young men that watch pornography with male dominated choking go on to repeat these actions as if they are normal, safe, or acceptable.
You talk like actors are actually choked. I’m pretty sure there are already regulations against that.
You talk about protecting actors; sure. That’s not what’s discussed though.
You think people that are actually willing to choke someone, sometimes even against their will, need a porn flick to think about it? Or that they would not do it without someone having filmed it somewhere? Some people are lower than beasts, and they’ll do what they want. Trying to chase after every possible outside justification will not change them, and will not protect anyone. If a couple is getting it on and the man won’t listen to a “no, don’t do that”, there’s no amount of censorship, regulation, and ban, that will make them abide. The only thing it will do is increase censorship, regulation, and bans.
The sane approach for that is, surprise surprise, education, and maybe properly labeling stuff. It’s not putting in place another framework to ban things on a whim, which will subsequently be abused for much more than the arguably “fair” initial point.
This discussion is repeated ad nauseam everytime there’s plan for banning something. The argument that choking is bad is true, there’s no point repeating it. The argument that “monkey do what monkey see”? Sure, go for that. Let’s ban every media then, because boy oh boy I have a bad news about the movie industry of the past 50 years.
Actors do actually get choked so that takes care of the first part of your premise. Here is a story of it happening. There is no safe way to restrict breathing period.
https://laist.com/news/holly-deen-accusations
To the last part. It should be illegal to actually harm people on camera which is what is happening. If you think this is a over reaction you are wrong. We should not be allowing this to happen.
There is direct correlation between people watching people get choked out in porn and doing it in real life. This is not violent video games.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/sep/02/i-think-its-natural-why-has-sexual-choking-become-so-prevalent-among-young-people
Please save your moral panic nonsense for cases were it is applicable. It is not here. This is simply a public health issue and the UK is doing the right thing.
Then, campaign and propose laws to prevent actors from getting choked or mistreated for real. Not a free ban on content. Put in place a framework for safe recourse for these actors, especially in an industry that’s usually shut off, instead of turning them down for being in the “adult movie business”. Provide protection for people coming out denouncing unlawful activites instead of putting them on the spot. Have strong incentive for directors to not do it that way, where even a single report gets seriously looked at and would cost them more money than it brings back.
In summary, actually protect people instead of just setting up yet another strawman.
Fiction is fiction. If your call is protecting actor, then I wholeheartedly agree. But your position in this discussion is not that; it’s ban this or that content from existing. That’s a very different, very slippery slopey topic.
Censoring media is never the right thing. You’ll never make me change my mind on that. I’m dead set on not having censorship while protecting people; you’re dead set on encouraging censorship blindly.