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.
I first looked up porn online around that age and never had that kind of image of sex at any point. No idea if that’s due to my personality, the fact that I read a lot of people’s perspectives online which told me porn is unrealistic, or just that I had plenty of idea what sex was about at 13 because of course I had questions before then and any answer I got emphasized the part where both parties involved enjoy it and love each other.
Maybe a bit of all of them. But I really think that while trying to restrict porn access for minors a little more than an “are you 18” pop-up is probably a good thing, it needs to be without violating any adult’s privacy and the main way to prevent damage is and always will be better education.