If you’ve ever watched porn, which I’m sure a large portion of you reading have, you would have likely come across the categories of strangulation and incest/step-incest.
From the 6th of November, possession of pornographic material depicting these tropes will be illegal. Strangulation, often incorrectly called choking, is not something most young people go looking for out of genuine kink.
Over 58% of 16-21 year olds say they have come across strangulation in porn, while only 6% actively sought it out. When paired with the fact that over a third have experienced strangulation during consensual sex, it begs the question: how are algorithms and multimillion dollar porn companies shaping the way that young people have sex?
But equally, should the government really be interfering and legislating what people use for their own private sexual gratification? Especially when all the pornstars involved are consenting adults?
Depicting murder, rape and all sorts of violent crimes is a liberty rightfully afforded to film directors and other creative professions. Is this ban quietly moving the line from doing to showing?
The case against the new law rests on whether the state should intervene to prevent direct harm to another individual. The whole argument turns to one single question: does watching depictions of violent or rough sex actually cause harm?
Look at what the viewer is doing, and the hands-off view starts to wobble. Think of the last horror film you watched; imagine there was a murder committed by strangulation. As the viewer, you were not intentionally invited to enjoy the murder from the killer’s perspective by identifying with them. This is exactly the difference. Think ‘POV’ angles and the cropped out faceless male.
Obviously identification doesn’t make every viewer violent; arousal isn’t automatic endorsement. But, harm doesn’t need to take the form of direct violence. When the act of being eroticised is already a crime, a genre that’s dependent on the viewers identification with it doesn’t need to create offenders to cause harm.
It just has to shift what people regard as normal sex. A generation that comes to see strangulation as a part of sex is suffering real bodily harm. Preventing harm to others is precisely where even the most hands-off liberal principle draws the line.
So, is porn actually shifting what young people see as normal? Non-fatal strangulation is already a criminal offence under the domestic abuse act of 202; and yet it is increasingly becoming a sexual norm, especially in young people.
Over a third of 16-34 year olds, and 43% of sexually active 16-17 year olds report being strangled during consensual sex. Porn might not inherently make viewers more violent, but there is still evidence to suggest that content within porn has shifted what young people view as normal sexual relations.
This is a subtler harm, one that should make you question if your sexual preferences are a genuine pleasure or a result of your algorithm. This law is certainly justified, as it attempts to slow down the normalisation and eroticisation of already illegal acts.
It is unknown whether or not the ban will reduce violent acts happening in young people’s sex lives, but the correlation between depictions in porn and real-life occurrences make it a reasonable target for legislation.
The new law is not an infringement on free speech as eroticisation of sexual violence has real world harms and consequences, therefore justifying state intervention.
This law is harm reduction, not censorship. However, though this is a step in the right direction, porn and its algorithms will continue to corrupt young people’s attitudes and relationship towards sex. This law is the least we can do until that is the case.