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; according to one study, Gen Zers don’t even discuss it. Pornography has normalized and mainstreamed sexual violence, with women and girls forced to live with it.
“Strangulation during sex is considered the second most common cause of strokes in women under 40,” Conservative MP Alicia Kearns posted on X. “Violent pornography has normalized it, and that’s why I laid amendments to ban non-fatal strangulation in porn. The Government voted against it twice. Now they have accepted it must be banned. It shouldn’t have taken months of delay and political pressure to get here, but I’m relieved the ban is coming.”
“We must ban when there is a threat to the safety of members of our society,” Kearns added. “Too many young girls tell me this is normal and expected of them.”
For a generation weaned on Pornhub content, the normalization of sexual violence should have been grimly predicable. As Laila Mickelwait, the anti-Pornhub activist wrote:
On Pornhub I witnessed many homemade videos of naked young women being suffocated in plastic bags that were called “vacuum bag torture” and “mummification.” In the videos, (where age and consent were never verified), the girls would be jerking their bodies in protest, screaming and struggling. Often the video would end in the midst of the torture and it was not clear if she lived or died. 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.
But the UK porn ban is the first legislation that specifically criminalizes a popular form of pornography on the basis that, even if it is ‘consensual,’ it harms society. That precedent can clearly be applied to many other forms of pornography and, as I have often argued, to hardcore pornography itself. Indeed, some are already indicating that more bans might be coming.
“It’s only the beginning as there’s still so much violent pornography that is completely legal in the online world and completely illegal in the offline world,” Baroness Bertin told BBC Radio 4. “The government has to use this as a first step to try to address that balance.” I couldn’t agree more. We can have a culture that protects children, women, and girls—or we can have widely available pornography. We cannot have both.
UK Becomes First Western Country To Ban (Some) Porn
Amy from Pixabay
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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; according to one study, Gen Zers don’t even discuss it. Pornography has normalized and mainstreamed sexual violence, with women and girls forced to live with it.
“Strangulation during sex is considered the second most common cause of strokes in women under 40,” Conservative MP Alicia Kearns posted on X. “Violent pornography has normalized it, and that’s why I laid amendments to ban non-fatal strangulation in porn. The Government voted against it twice. Now they have accepted it must be banned. It shouldn’t have taken months of delay and political pressure to get here, but I’m relieved the ban is coming.”
“We must ban when there is a threat to the safety of members of our society,” Kearns added. “Too many young girls tell me this is normal and expected of them.”
For a generation weaned on Pornhub content, the normalization of sexual violence should have been grimly predicable. As Laila Mickelwait, the anti-Pornhub activist wrote:
On Pornhub I witnessed many homemade videos of naked young women being suffocated in plastic bags that were called “vacuum bag torture” and “mummification.” In the videos, (where age and consent were never verified), the girls would be jerking their bodies in protest, screaming and struggling. Often the video would end in the midst of the torture and it was not clear if she lived or died. 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.
But the UK porn ban is the first legislation that specifically criminalizes a popular form of pornography on the basis that, even if it is ‘consensual,’ it harms society. That precedent can clearly be applied to many other forms of pornography and, as I have often argued, to hardcore pornography itself. Indeed, some are already indicating that more bans might be coming.
“It’s only the beginning as there’s still so much violent pornography that is completely legal in the online world and completely illegal in the offline world,” Baroness Bertin told BBC Radio 4. “The government has to use this as a first step to try to address that balance.” I couldn’t agree more. We can have a culture that protects children, women, and girls—or we can have widely available pornography. We cannot have both.
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