The UK is now taking a stand against suffocation and strangulation on porn sites. The anti-porn side of the debate has won not because the establishment is embracing sexual morality, but because the fallout from the ubiquitous porn use from a young age has been so manifestly devastating that only a malevolent idiot could deny it (and there are some, of course). In country after country, governments are treating porn use as a crisis, and attempting to respond, from France to Spain.

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

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