The UK government announced at the start of November plans to make pornography depicting strangulation or suffocation illegal. Kirsty Blake Knox looks at how it moved from porn to real lives and the dangers of strangulation
Young people with limited sexual experience have a distorted view of what sex should look like after watching extreme content online. Photo: Picture posed/Getty
On Monday 3 November, the UK government announced plans to make it illegal for pornography to depict strangulation or suffocation, which can be referred to as choking or breath play. Possessing or publishing porn featuring choking will become a criminal offence.
Violence and strangulation in porn has become more widespread in recent years and some say this has an impact in the real world where non-consensual strangulation has been normalised and become part of people’s sex lives.