As of November 6th 2026, the UK’s Crime and Policing act brings in new restrictions on pornography. They limit any pornographic imagery depicting: strangulation or suffocation; penetrative sex acts between people who are pretending to be related; and sexual activity between at least 2 people where a reasonable person would think at least one person is, or is pretending to be, under 16.
These offenses will be up to interpretation and it will take time to see how strictly they are enforced and what meets the threshold for an offense. Is face-sitting a form of suffocation? IWantClips seems concerned enough that it may be viewed as such that they’re taking the precaution of removing videos with these tags from UK creators’ profiles and blocking them from view for UK viewers. These precautions strike me as overly extreme, especially because these laws will be challenged on the basis that they cannot criminalize the recording of acts which are not otherwise illegal to engage in.
Unfortunately, even the MP who introduced these amendments doesn’t know how they’ll be used and has made alarming statements that go as far as suggesting that any porn involving gagging during oral sex could be included. The lack of good communication with the public about these laws and the risks of non-compliance is intentional. These new restrictions carry heavy prison sentences of multiple years for possession and publication of such imagery, yet possible interpretations are being flippantly discussed on social media. Creating a chilling effect on sexual expression is the entire point.
Rather than harp on the edge cases which will already strike the average person as ridiculous to restrict, like deepthroating or face-sitting videos, I want to defend the primary types of porn being named as the target regardless of how unpopular that position may be. I know that these acts being used as the wedge issue is designed to make it hard to talk about and refuse to capitulate in the hope of seeming respectable.
Strangling and suffocation in porn has gotten some of the most focus with regards to this legislation because of the argument that it causes young people to engage in the behaviour more. There is no strong evidence for this, only weak arguments that cannot account for the simple possibility of correlation rather than causation. Young people who consume a lot of porn with choking in it seem to engage in sexual choking more often, but people who sexually enjoy choking are of course more likely to watch videos of it. Sexual choking is popular and many of the people who engage in it enjoy the act, so they go looking for porn, thus more creators make porn that features it. Banning the depiction won’t decrease instances of sexual choking if causation in fact flows in that direction.
Most people aligned with banning sexual depictions of choking can easily be convinced to also ban faux incest and ageplay in porn. They already agree with the idea that porn encourages people to imitate the risky practices they see, or to do things they consider unethical, and the automatic disgust reaction most of us have when thinking about incest or underage roleplay takes care of the rest. Despite those instincts, we have to ask where the actual harm is before jumping to legislation.
If I record a porn video where I pretend a woman is my sister and gag and restrict my airflow sucking her strap-on, or engage in breath play with her while we roleplay a contrived plot about how we can’t let the rest of the family find out, who is hurt? If I publish it online and people see it, is it reasonable to imagine this video will convince potential perpetrators of incestuous abuse that their actions would be acceptable? Does my video become a danger to the minds of the viewing public if my visibly 28-year-old self pretends I’m 15 and my older sister has come home to visit as part of the scenario?
I’m not suggesting these concepts shouldn’t upset you. All of us will have a line where the subject matter becomes too uncomfortable, makes us think too directly of the harm if the scenario were real, and we want to look away. With genres like horror which regularly depict gore and murder and even sexual violence for the (non-sexual, yet still present) enjoyment of fans, people show themselves to be capable of saying “that’s not for me” far more often. Part of why people want to watch these kinds of roleplays are because they know it would be wrong in real life, causing strong emotional reactions and release, in the same way horror fans like to jumpscare themselves with assault and killings.
People aren’t non-sexually violent because of what they see in films and they aren’t sexually violent because of what they see in porn. Gaps in education are the only reason that people might mistake exaggerated or risky or unethical fake scenarios in the media they consume for truth or as behavioural guidelines. This is why the very studies being used by MPs like Jess Asato in favour of the ban on these types of porn actually give recommendations of education rather than prohibition.
So many of the sex workers I know are currently scrambling to scrub videos of themselves off of the internet, either accepting the loss or with the plan to re-edit them to remove seconds of content that might be classified as running afoul of these criteria. They will lose out on income, their freedom of expression, and depending on how videos are stored and how many sites and methods they have used it becomes a massive undertaking to find and remove all of these videos in the first place.
We can work on soothing fears with the knowledge that enforcement will not primarily target individual sex workers and that challenges should make their way through the legal system with time. What we cannot do so easily is repair the damage done to the public’s positions on freedom of sexual expression and pornography by allowing a wedge to be placed in their minds about which kinds of porn are acceptable.
Sexual arousal is no more of a moral concern than the enjoyable adrenaline rush that comes with being scared in an otherwise controlled setting. Once you accept this, banning fake incest suffocation porn sounds as ludicrous as the idea of banning Game of Thrones.
Our only real concern about the sometimes risky sex acts performed in porn, or scenarios roleplaying sensitive topics, should be whether the performers are making educated decisions about the sex they’re having without being coerced. Sex workers deserve the dignity of risk. We also deserve to be considered first, as the ones actually performing these sex acts, before our customers or free viewers. What makes us safer is not limiting our income and threatening us with prison if we don’t carefully follow more guidelines which will differ wildly across platforms. We need complex sex education, free STI testing for everyone with priority testing for sex workers, and public information campaigns about the risks associated with breath restriction to different levels.
The line for what should be allowed to be depicted on screen should not be based on our comfort. Fake sister deepthroat strap-on choking roleplay isn’t something anyone is forcing me to click on.
