Brit Government To Citizens: Stop All That Naughty Choking!

In yet another strike at XXX entertainment ‘across-the-pond’ new amendments in the UK’s Crime and Policing Bill now ban pornographic acts that depict strangulation or suffocation. This means that presently it is a criminal act in Britain to not only share this kind of content but even to be in possession of it.

Where They Got The New Law

The government’s policy takes its cue from a report it commissioned from Baroness Gabby Bertin. Bertin, a former press secretary to David Cameron who now sits in the Lords as a Conservative peer, published her Creating a Safer World – the Challenge of Regulating Online Pornography, in March. In this review, she offered just over thirty recommendations for creating her safer world through specific restrictions of online porn, with a ban concentrating on what Gabby calls “degrading, violent and misogynistic content”.

Incest and non-fatal strangulation were mentioned as falling into the above category.

Governmental Overreach?

“I've been incredibly clear throughout: this is not about going any further than what we have in the offline world in terms of restrictions and safeguards,” Bertin said in a statement at the time her report was published. “There should be no squeamishness about that. This isn't me driving a tank onto the lawn of censorship. Not a bit of it. It’s simply saying: we need parity because it's so much easier to access.”

Adding for those harboring, buying, or sharing the content she finds objectionable, “It is not your right to see abusive, harmful, degrading, misogynistic porn, much like it's not your right to go and punch someone in the face in the street.”

That Old Slippery Slope

Making no distinction between actual assault and staged and consensual acts, as much undercuts performers who might make their living from such content, as it undermines kinksters who consent and enjoy degrading or even violent play.

Veteran, multi-award-winning, BDSM model, content producer, and author of the memoir
Playing to Lose: How a Jehovah's Witness Became a Submissive BDSM Model, (and a Brit) Ariel Anderssen weighs in on her country’s latest restrictions:

“In theory, the idea of banning strangulation and suffocation in porn (as it's banned in real life) is a decent idea. In practice, I suspect that a lot of non-strangulation activities will end up being targeted, and the people who enjoy those acts may well end up victimized. I anticipate face-sitting, deep-throating, and the wearing of masks, hoods or even collars all becoming problematic acts from a legal point of view. Because if you're not prepared to believe the performers who say they were fine, you can potentially claim that strangulation or suffocation could be the result of all these activities.”

And Ariel (twitter: Ariel Anderssen ❤️MV Sub of the Year❤️ (@ArielAnderssen) / X) adds, in regard to the aforementioned performer’s agency, “Ideally, as a society, we'd stop infantilizing porn performers in this way, and treat them more like mainstream actors. After all, it seems unlikely that these activities will be banned from TV and mainstream movies. But I don't believe that society's ready for that.”

It should be noted that six years ago, the UK reversed its ban on the criminalization of depictions of BDSM.