this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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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.

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[–] Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 77 points 18 hours ago (24 children)

Jfc more conservative pearl clutching censorship laws in supposedly developed countries? What a time to be alive.

[–] obinice@lemmy.world 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Don't worry, it's not the Conservatives, it's the Labour Government implementing this!

Good thing Labour will never be anything like the Tories amirite fellow chokers?

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[–] neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 46 points 17 hours ago

Search: How to do the Heimlich maneuver? YouTube: sorry this video has been deleted for depicting scenes of people choking.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 45 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

What's next? BDSM?

Only porn allowed will be missionary position?

[–] OfCourseNot@fedia.io 20 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Only porn allowed will be missionary position?

No. I think it's a step by step approach, that will go further than that. After only missionary, they'll make the actors get married before having any sex, all under the blankets and as clothed as possible, no condom or pulling out allowed either, and at the end of the scene it has to show the beautiful baby born nine months after. No gay porn, of course, or trans, interracial, more than to people (man™️ and woman™️)... sex is for procreation! How you dare enjoying it, you sinner!

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

That fetish already exists.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 6 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

I think Australia tried or did ban flat chested woman in porn. Could see that happen more.

[–] EtherTide@aussie.zone 3 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

The only thing I could find online regarding this was this stackexchange with the accepted answer claiming that there is no legislation, only a ruling from the Australian Classification Board against some media that they said "depicted [young persons] on the bordeline of 18 years old." I.e. it was a discretionary ruling by a statutory regulator that thought someone looked a bit too much like a child.

There are some more links on that stackexchange but some are dead and I only skimmed a couple of them so I encourage people to read through themsleves since I was too lazy to sort the situation out for myself; I only found enough to satisfy my curiosity and thought I should leave this comment to add context to a bizarre claim (not blaiming prev commenter, my memory is horrible too and I also found some news articles that were definitely depicting the situation the way they remembered)

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[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

Only if it's for procreation, too.

[–] hydrashok@sh.itjust.works 40 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

“We’ve found a lot of videos online, and we’re going to keep watching until you stop making them!”

[–] WhatGodIsMadeOf@feddit.org 4 points 18 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 7 hours ago

The morality police in the UK strike again. They're slowly turning into Saudi Arabia the longer they keep this up.

[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Might be a good idea to say which government when you're posting to world news?

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, I honestly think it's pretty obvious givwn how the brits banned fisiting porn

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[–] thelivefive@startrek.website 32 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Penetration itself can be viewed as an act of violence and the government should probably put everyone who has thought about it on a surveillance list.

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 6 points 9 hours ago

Surveil everyone in the country? already done ✅

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[–] JeeBaiChow@lemmy.world 28 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

So men don't get choked? Why are these things always gender specific?

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I like to get a little choked every now and then, during. Am I illegal?

[–] ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Yes I recommend you handcuff yourself immediately, maybe tie yourself up a bit, you’ve been pretty naughty

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[–] 30p87@feddit.org 28 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

It's a BBC article, so it stands to reason that this is about the UK government.

[–] absentbird@lemmy.world 9 points 9 hours ago

Wait, that's not a porn site?

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 23 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

This is in direct response to some recent studies that claimed that chocking is the second most common cause of stroke in women under 40. Other studied found that there is no safe amount of oxygen deprivation, any chocking leads to brain damage. Other risks of choking are difficulty swallowing, incontinence, seizures, memory problems, depression, anxiety and miscarriage.

What happened is that porn normalized chocking. It used to be limited to the "hard core" types of porn but now it's mainstream and kids that grew up watching it think it's just normal part of sex. Most women asked about it say that they don't enjoy it but do it "for their partner’s pleasure".

So yeah, the government treats it as a public health issue and bans it.

I'm not a scientists, I didn't review all those studies and frankly I don't care one way of the other. Just wanted to give people some context.

You can read more about it here: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/07/no-safe-way-risks-of-choking-during-sex

[–] CluckN@lemmy.world 15 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

First they came for the Chokers , And I did not speak out Because I like to breath

Then they came for the Foot fanatics , And I did not speak out Because I was not into feet

Then they came for the thigh highs , And I did not speak out Because I was not into socks

Then they came for the Brazilian cake farts , And there was no one left To speak out for me

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[–] indomara@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago

An article about this was posted 6 months ago and I looked into it: https://lemmy.world/comment/16311493

I wrote:

This article is feeling kind of clickbaitish, as the sources are ... odd.

However, restricting blood flow to the brain can also have serious health implications.

While not all pressure on the neck will be fatal, research shows even relatively low pressure can cause death by strangulation.

The first source is a medical journal describing the physiology of the arteries in the neck, and does not seem to include anything about restricting blood flow (never mind temporarily) having serious health consequences.

The second source is a book from 1991 about autoerotic asphyxiation with the quote:

autoerotic asphyxia denotes death resulting from failure of a release mechanism of the device, apparatus or prop designed to attain cerebral hypoxia for heightened arousal.

Which is ... not the same as doing this with someone, and doesn't address the risks of a partner who releases pressure immediately after a loss of consciousness.

The issues around consent are troubling indeed, consent should always be paramount.

I also found it amusing that the beginning of the article said

Although rare, strangulation is the leading cause of death in consensual BDSM play.

Which links to a study that found a total of 16 cases that included strangulation between 1982 and 2020. Rare indeed.

My husband and I dabble in breath play, so I was curious and read a few studies myself. It seems that every case study I could find included atypical circumstances. Things like accidental hanging, or asphyxiation due to bags etc being over the head.

This paper includes a 50 year review of cases for anyone interested. https://benthamopen.com/contents/pdf/TOFORSJ/TOFORSJ-1-1.pdf

It is also worth noting that loss of consciousness due to cutting off blood flow to the brain (cerebral hypoxia) is not dissimilar to the hypoxia experienced by pilots, who even train with repeated exposure to hypoxia in hyperbaric chambers.

I would be curious to know if there were any studies of the long term effects of this on pilots. (My dive into the rabbit hole is done for the day, lol.)

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[–] TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world 23 points 16 hours ago (9 children)

I can't help but feeling as though the exact same pearl clutching wieners are behind this as the growing attempts at overall porn ban, as though restriction of access to the content will somehow cut the legs out from under the already widespread (albeit uncommon) practice.

To wit, people aren't choking each other during sex or risking David Carradine'ing themselves while wanking because of some shit-production porn, they're doing it because it's enjoyable to them (choker and choke-ee). I'm not going to kinkshame except to say that there's no method of getting a head-rush that I'd personally recommend, but based on what sex-choke enjoyers that I know have said, it makes them cum extra-hard. So... there's that, the mega-cums.

collapsed inline media

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[–] supamanc@lemmy.world 20 points 12 hours ago

I think everyone is missing the point that this is effectively a shodow ban on porn. The Gov knows that sites aren't going to filter specific content for specific regions, it's cheaper and safer to simply stop serving those regions. Yes, a VPN will get around that, but VPNs are probably next on the agenda.

[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t disagree that it’s troubling how mainstream choking is in modern porn. It’s definitely been a huge shift. There’s nothing against it as a fetish, but it being a fetish with potential harmful consequences suggests that it should be in the same category as BDSM - something which can be problematic unless it’s done as an exercise in trust between partners with full informed consent.

And there have been plenty of seemingly not agenda-led studies which suggest that teen boys and girls are both picking up a lot of what they consider to be “normal” about sex from porn.

And not even talking to each other about it. IIRC, there was one such study which had both boys and girls engaging in a particular behaviour (I forget exactly which, maybe even choking), and neither party actively enjoyed the behaviour, they were just doing it because they thought that’s what you do and therefore what their partner wanted.

But is the solution to ban porn which features choking? Firstly, I don’t see how this could in any way be effective. How would you possibly enforce it? Are police really going to raid people’s homes based on suspicion that they’ve got a nowadays-vanilla porn video on their harddrive? The police literally don’t have enough resources to investigate and prosecute everybody creating and sharing child porn. And now they’re supposed to go after everybody who visits PornHub?

Secondly, we’re basically talking about a de-facto porn ban because, as the consultation itself noted, that describes pretty much all porn made in the last 10-15 years.

I’m not sure what the solution is. I mean, talking about the difference bewteen porn and sex is something that should be part of sex education at school. But I kind of assume it already is? It would be weird if it weren’t in 2025.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to engage with creators themselves? I know that several porn companies used to put disclaimers before their videos saying that there’s a difference between porn sex and real sex and talking about consent. Several BDSM porn producers also have pre and post-shoot interviews with the performers and make sure they talk on camera about safe words & gestures and consent.

But then that’s something that’s probably not going to be terribly effective in any case and which would require absolutely everybody to get on board, which would have been basically impossible back when it was only really studios producing content, and 100% impossible now that OnlyFans etc are the way that most performers make and distribute porn.

I don’t think it’s an easy question to answer, TBH, but I’m pretty sure that “ban all the porn” isn’t the correct solution.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Nice to see a measured comment.

I don't think it will lead to banning porn. Just tell actors/directors to stop chocking and cut some sequences from old videos. If a video is an hour long chocking session then geoblock it. I don't think it's an existential crisis for the industry.

Banning possession is insane though.

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[–] nosuchanon@lemmy.world 15 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I think the government should stay out of peoples pants. The issue isn’t the pornography, it’s that children are allowed on the Internet whether there is pornography. More of a parenting and society issue than it is a pornography issue.

I think the larger issue is the fact that kids are given cell phones and laptops and unrestricted access to the Internet at a young age. The problem isn’t what’s on the Internet it’s that you don’t want kids to have access to it. There are other more effective ways at dealing with the problem rather than censorship for everyone.

Maybe a better way to handle these issues is giving minors only access to online libraries and curated educational content until they are 18 or considered an adult. Then you can make your social media profiles and access adult content.

[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

I mean online porn is a problem, especially for youths. When many of us were young it didn't exist but it hit us as young adults. With 25 you might be a bit more sure about your sexuality or maybe you even have experiences. However, you are definitely more certain on who you are as a person. 13 year old being confronted with modern porn and the image it delivers breaks my heart a little bit to be honest. Young people having no idea what sex is about, watching violent and misogynistic porn is very dangerous for our society in general.

Of course I know censorship can't be the answer and UK can fuck itself with its age controls, but idk, I feel like we gotta do something about this.

Choking is for sure not the line we should draw, just to make that clear. Next thing is only missionary position, fuck your christian values.

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[–] fireweed@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

In this thread: a lot of chocking

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