The government’s ban on ‘choking porn’ is nothing but a publicity stunt

I was probably 14 when I first became aware of choking as a sex act. It was probably on Tumblr, where, before its 2018 blanket ban on pornographic content, black-and-white GIFs of men strangling naked women and images of bruised necks circulated alongside the site’s standard fare of ‘aesthetic’ photos of iced coffees and American Apparel tennis skirts. By the time I got to university in 2016, “never have I ever been choked during sex” was a relatively tame statement to come out with during the popular drinking game. More often than not, the majority of young women in the room – aged roughly between 18 and 19 – would drink up.

Choking, if you’re unfamiliar, is a form of sexual asphyxiation. It’s performed by pressing or squeezing the neck; the pressure around the neck cuts off the flow of blood to the brain, resulting in lightheadedness due to the drop in oxygen levels. For some, this physical sensation – as well as the psychological thrill of totally ‘surrendering’ to a partner – can intensify sexual pleasure. When done correctly and sensitively between consenting, informed adults, choking can be a mutually enjoyable experience.

But it would be ridiculously naïve to assume that all sexual choking is like this. In recent years, sexual choking – which, let’s be clear, is a kink – has become normalised, a change often (rightly) attributed to the new accessibility of porn on the internet. This is why the government announced on Thursday (June 19) that it intends to ban strangulation in pornography, following a review conducted by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin which concluded that depictions of choking in porn have effectively established the act as a “sexual norm”. While it is already a criminal offence to possess porn depicting life-threatening acts – such as graphic strangulation – the government is seeking to tighten up these existing laws to help them achieve their pledge to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

Choking isn’t a new thing: it’s depicted in the 1791 novel Justine, penned by infamous libertine the Marquis de Sade (the term ‘sadism’, which describes the experience of sexual arousal in response inflicting pain or humiliation on others, derives from his name). In the same year, a London sex worker was accused – and eventually acquitted – of murder, after one of her clients died following his request to be asphyxiated during sex. What is new, as Baroness Bertin’s report has concluded, is that choking has now been established as a “sexual norm”. 

There’s ample research which affirms this: a 2019 survey found only around a third of participants considered choking to be “rough” sexual behaviour. A more recent study conducted by Australian researchers in 2024 found that more than half of 18- to 35-year-olds reported they had been strangled during sex at least once, with women more likely to be choked, and men more likely to do the choking. Participants most commonly reported first becoming aware of strangulation during sex when they were 16 to 18 years old, with 61 per cent of all participants first becoming aware of sexual choking via pornography. Disturbingly, a separate survey for the BBC in 2019 found that in a study of 2,000 young women aged 18 to 39, 38 per cent had experienced unwanted slapping, choking, gagging or spitting during otherwise consensual sex. 

Evidently, something needs to change. We shouldn’t throw our hands up in defeat and just accept that it’s impossible to control the kind of content that circulates, disembodied from any context and in full view of children and teenagers, on the internet. On the one hand, it’s cheering that the government wants to do something – but will a choking ban in pornography really do anything to tackle the issue of violence against women and girls?

We live in a society where women aren’t adequately insulated by the state against violent men, and violent men feel emboldened to act with total impunity

It’s unlikely. A large part of the reason why violence against women and girls remains such a prevalent issue is because survivors of sexual violence are continually failed by the criminal justice system – in the UK, only 1 per cent of reported rapes end in conviction. Domestic abuse services remain critically underfunded. We live in a society where women aren’t adequately insulated by the state against violent men, and violent men feel emboldened to act with total impunity.

Moreover, it’s unclear how the government intends to enforce this choking ban – to some extent, the horse has already bolted; videos and images of women being choked are already out there and easy to find (or even just stumble across, without actively seeking this kind of content out). 

With this in mind, it would make more sense to invest in proper sex education. And, no, that shouldn’t mean giving 15-year-olds demonstrations on ‘how to choke partners safely’ – it should mean less shimmying condoms down bananas, and more emphasis on porn literacy and, most importantly, respect, trust and consent. If we are going to accept that young, impressionable people are going to see porn at some point, we need to teach them that it seldom resembles ‘real’ sex, and that real sex involves candid conversations about what both parties feel comfortable doing, and that consent can be withdrawn at any time.

There also needs to be space in all of these discussions to accept that some women do still enjoy choking. Contrary to popular belief, female masochism is not a de facto male fantasy, and being degraded in bed is not the same as being actually degraded. Perhaps that’s an uncomfortable reality for people to accept, but pretending otherwise and stigmatising sexual submission will only result in more women being put in harm’s way. It’s worth stressing again that it would be wilfully ignorant to pretend that choking only ever occurs between two mutually consenting partners, especially in our current climate where misogyny – both overt and insidious – continues to run rampant. But if sex education surrounding consent were better, perhaps it would be more likely for this to be the case.