I was 13 years old when I saw a woman getting strangled during sex for the first time.
A classmate whipped out his phone to show a group of girls and announced that this is what sex is like. He might’ve been as misinformed and naive as I, yet his gleeful taunt haunts me. It feels like a reflection of the violent misogyny that plagues every corner of the world.
That choking video, and the many I encountered during my own explorations of porn, shaped my understanding of sex, convincing me that rough sex was the norm and that choking was perfectly safe.
So, at the age of 16, when a sexual partner wrapped his hands around my throat for the first time, I just accepted it, even as a shot of ice-cold fear ran through my body. He was twice my size and perfectly capable of squeezing until the life left my body. A vicious boy or a boy without awareness of his strength could and would have done so.
Luckily, he was equally as inexperienced as I was; he squeezed gently, and no harm was done, but he wouldn't be the last man to choke me without prior consent. Nor would it be the last time I didn’t speak up to say, "No, I don't want this,” when a partner pushed beyond my boundaries for their satisfaction.
It's time Johnny Depp finally left her alone.
Thinking back to my chequered history with choking, I am grateful that Labour is tackling this toxic porn trend. Though it’s not a magic cure-all for violence against women and girls (VAWG), it can be an essential ingredient for challenging the dehumanisation of women through extreme sex.
Don’t get me wrong, I know breathplay can be done [relatively] safely. I’ve experimented with it plenty of times throughout my years in the BDSM community, both as a giver and a receiver. I learned how best to choke without harming the trachea or risking fainting and perfected consent practices to ensure partners felt safe at all times. All the healthy approaches anyone playing with any form of sex should utilise.
But – and this is a big but – the way strangulation has invaded sex culture as a standard practice is abhorrent, particularly for young people just figuring out what sex is and how to play safely. Because even when practised with caution, strangulation during sex has its risks. There’s a reason organisations like We Can’t Consent To This Exist; too many men have used consensual choking as justification for causing serious harm or committing murder.
“Women report boys blocking doorways and even barking at female staff, as well as watching increasingly violent pornographic material in class.”
Something that was once a kink reserved for people with a deep understanding of safe practices has become ubiquitous in sex. One 2025 study showed that 54% of women aged 18-24 had been choked during sex. Another survey carried out by the government-funded charity the Institute for Addressing Strangulation found that 16% of people of all ages had been strangled once or more during sex, and 17% of them had not given consent for it to happen.
Pair this with the fact that in one survey a staggering 27% of young people had seen porn before the age of 11 – a further 10% watched it before aged 9 – the government is right, it’s time to tap out of breathplay in pornography.
I understand why some people are angry and feel it’s an overstep into people’s choices. Yes, the government is intervening into what is acceptable in porn. It is saying that breathplay is dangerous and that it has far-reaching consequences. Of course, some of us enjoy it – there’s a reason for that: it gets you high and who doesn’t like a natural high? I get it, no one likes nanny state politics dictating what we can and can’t watch to get off.
But when a third of women have experienced unwanted choking during sex and the epidemic of male violence against women and girls is showing no signs of slowing down, we have to examine our choices. And we must ask if a few personal sacrifices can make a difference for wider society, potentially reducing the number of women and girls who experience sexual violence or harassment.
The House of Lords has voted in favour of decriminalising abortion.
I don’t want young people watching kinky porn before they’ve even had a sex education class. I don’t want them to think that rough or violent sex is the standard for intimacy with women. I don’t want young girls to believe they have to shut up and take it, nor do I want young boys to think that violent sex is expected of them.
I get the frustration, too. When I first read the news about the law change, I felt a kernel of it, and then I interrogated my reaction. What does it matter? Experienced kinksters can and will continue to do breathplay; this law won’t change that. But you know what we can do? Stop kids and young people from doing it. We can prevent young girls and boys from watching choking in pornography and becoming convinced that it’s what sex is supposed to look like. Perhaps we can stop them from hurting each other. And maybe, just maybe, we can stem the tide of VAWG.
This feels like a necessary step toward reducing violence against women and girls. What we see on screen shapes how we live in the real world. Multiple men have choked me without my consent, and I know much of their motivation came from a desire to reenact what they’d seen in porn.
Gender-based violence is not inevitable.
One abusive ex used to regularly choke me to the point of passing out, no matter how many times I asked him to ease up. Another would automatically put his hands around my throat, even though he wasn’t actually kinky. It was just so ingrained in expectation that he did it on autopilot. Perhaps this law can stop the same thing from happening to other young women.
I was well into adulthood before I understood that these acts were assaults on my autonomy. If we can stop girls growing up now from slipping into the same cycle, then it's worth the tiny sacrifice of not watching people get choked in porn. If it’s that important to you, use your imagination instead.
Let’s not be naive either. This law is not going to work in isolation. One small change in porn cannot eradicate gender-based violence. Perhaps it should go further and limit more depictions of violent sex; some of the stuff I see online should be banned because of how it degrades women into nothingness. I think that this law change should be the harbinger of a complete reckoning of how we portray women in porn.
We need so much more than one law change, though. Change has to come from all directions to achieve Labour’s goal of halving VAWG in a decade and all of our goals of eradicating it forever.
We need to improve sex education for young people and figure out how to target adults who left school without any understanding of consent before we start to see real change in the number of women and girls who become victims of sexual violence. Society’s deeply ingrained misogyny and patriarchal values must be deconstructed as well. Changing the landscape of porn is a positive and infuential step, and the government's big swing here is admirable, but it's not enough, not yet anyway.
“A vital step towards recognising the role violent pornography plays in shaping attitudes to women.”
