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.
Jfc more conservative pearl clutching censorship laws in supposedly developed countries? What a time to be alive.
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?
Always great to see that politics are broadly similar everywhere. It’s always irritating to see Democrats cross the aisle when it comes to shitty pearl clutching laws like this. It’s somewhat comforting to know that your fake left wing party is also shitty in similar ways to our fake left wing party.
I’m a fairly progressive liberal, and I don’t think this is an entirely bad idea as it can be a dangerous practice. It’s so prevalent in porn (especially the free stuff those new to sex are likely to start with) that it makes it seem an almost routine part of sexual activity. The more aggressive young people sometimes will then pressure their partners to try it without really understanding the limits, potentially leading to deadly results.
I honestly don’t know if this happens much - if at all - so I admit I may indeed be “pearl clutching,” and am open to being proven wrong. As things stand, however, I don’t see how allowing the act to be so frequently portrayed can be seen as a net positive.
where the fuck do you source your porn from so that choking is so prevalent ?! When looking for this sort of content it’s super hard to find some…
Answered in a later comment. I’ve NEVER searched for it, but I rarely see it mentioned as a searchable item (or I’d have used that to avoid them) - it’s just automatically there. Where i can’t tell you for sure since it’s been so long since I watched due to always hitting upon that crap. Maybe redtube, xhamster, etc.
I’ve never seen any myself, though I also don’t go looking for it. Must have been some sort of algorithmic quirk.
Then don’t look it up. My partner likes to be seriously choked during sex…what you gonna arrest me for making my partner cum?
It might be the endgame at this point, who knows. We’re currently at “actors doing plays and people watching plays might become illegal”.
You would seriously give your partner permanent brain damage?
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9201570/
That is a seriously problematic study with few controls and a small sample size.
Pilots regularly train in for hypoxia in hyperbaric chambers, losing consciousness repeatedly to train.
Consent and education are important, but safely engaging in breath play is very unlikely to give your partner brain damage.
This is patently false. It cause brain death period. Perhaps you can argue it is not that big of a deal because of the brains ability to rewire itself once you have destroyed a portion of it
People do all kinds a bad activities for the brain so this is really nothing new.
One person’s breath play (so gross to minimize it this way) is another person’s sexual violence.
Edit: I would also like to point out frequency. The frequency of preferred sexual activity dwarfs the training you are talking about. Seems like a convenient and not thought out excuse.
Well, yeah, all forms of sex without consent are rape. This isn’t really saying anything.
I think you don’t get that the majority of women getting choked never gave consent. The extreme minority of people who do this consensually are just that.
What is happening is a lot of men choking women because they can and women putting up with it.
This is also similar to everyone knows a women who has been raped but no one knows a rapist.
I’ve NEVER “looked it up,” but it seems to be an almost mandatory part of most videos produced anymore - along with the usual several positions that must be assumed, and ending virtually every video in a facial. They all look the same.
Well okay, did the last time I bothered looking for porn videos regularly. It’s been quite a while since I just couldn’t seem to avoid shit like that. Text stories are my porn anymore.
I don’t GAF what you & your partner prefer to do in your private time. Conflating that with porn is both disingenuous, and possibly telling of how highly you think of yourself.
I mentioned what my partner and I do because at what point do these ridiculous laws stop? Right now, it’s just porn, but then it’s what you do in the privacy of your bedroom.
Choking has not been a big thing in porn. There’s a shit ton of porn so of course there’s a lot of choking porn, doesn’t mean it’s the main thing.
And positions now? What are you a nun? Does doggy bother you? Does Cowgirl? And highly of myself? Nah, I’ve been having a healthy sex life for 15 yrs…I’m just confident in my abilities.
You’re the one coming off highly of themselves. Like we should care that you get bothered by sex between 2 or more consenting adults.
Like, where do folks like you get this entitlement? That you can tell the rest of us what to do? Leave us alone. Leave others alone. Maybe worry about the pastors and government officials raping kids?
High horse riding.
Whatever you say. I’m done with this childishness. There are valid concerns on all sides, but the attitudes since my initial rather fair comment have been utter shit, and so I’m done here.
I’ve always wondered about people who use the word “anymore” like you do. Can I ask where you’re from?
No, sorry. I already reveal more about myself than I should through my various comments.
Well, where are all those deaths caused by choking during sex because of porn? I would bet that many more visits to er are caused by trying to emulate the sex in the bath tube while having a couple wine glasses around scenes so typical in ‘romantic’ movies/shows, than by all the kinks seen in porn together.
Parents should, and I’m aware many do, tell their children that tv, movies, porn… are meant to entertain, not teach, and they are very different from how real life things work.
Exactly what I wondered when this was brought up 6 months ago!
https://vger.to/lemmy.world/comment/16311493
This article is feeling kind of clickbaitish, as the sources are … odd.
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:
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
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.)
You can read about the deaths in the Wikipedia article on the topic. Just because there are other mishaps during sex that also lead to injuries and/or death, that doesn’t invalidate concerns over this method as it even more directly can be shown to be problematic than accidents occurring due to other causes. Never mind the other possible life-altering outcomes such as brain damage.
We all know that the success rate of parents telling their teens anything can be wildly unpredictable. Often, it can even be a motivator to try to do the exact opposite of what their parents recommend. As such, that’s not really a reliable method of addressing the issue.
That article only cites deaths due to autoerotic asphyxiation, which I haven’t seen or heard portrayed in porn, and says that are mostly men, which contradicts the stated objective of preventing harm to women. Have you even read the source you linked or the article, mate?
No, it mentions both, “mate.” Just because you like that act doesn’t mean the concerns are warrantless/unjustified, and if you were truly objectively thinking about it then you wouldn’t be denying that fact.
I’m done arguing this. We’ve both said our pieces. Just because I’m not an expert ready and armed with documented facts doesn’t mean I don’t have a valid point. You don’t like it, TFB - go argue it with the lawmakers because I’m done with this childishness.
At the same time, it seems to be overstepping a bit to be classifying it as equal in severity as CSAM and terroristic content. People presumably aren’t being choked to death in the video.
I didn’t read the details, and just went off the general concept, TBH. If that’s how they’re treating it, then there’s definitely some manipulative bullshit going on that I don’t agree with. That’s not at all what I was thinking about.