LONDON — British lawmaker Jessica Asato stated in an interview aired on Sunday that she plans to ask Parliament to outlaw online adult content featuring the act of choking.
The Labour Party MP told right-wing U.K. news outlet GB News that she is calling for the ban in order to stop what she described as a “huge avalanche of violence towards women and girls.”
Asato called choking content “insidious” and claimed that it has led to “a huge increase” in the practice in “everyday relationships.”
“About 40% of men say that they have choked a woman during sex and similar numbers of women say that they have as well,” Asato said in the interview. “Also, this is leading to things like spitting, slapping — all things that actually many women say they don’t want, they don’t consent to — so technically, that’s criminal.”
Asato explained that, should she be successful in passing the proposed law, the British media regulator Ofcom would be empowered to levy “really big fines” or initiate criminal proceedings against sites or platforms that make choking content available online.
Asked whether she opposes nonviolent consensual pornography, Asato responded, “I don’t have any problem with that at all, and I’m certainly not here to be a moralist. What I’m really concerned about is the damaging impact it has in the real lives of women and girls in relationships.”
Earlier this year, a “pornography review” initiated under the conservative government of former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recommended banning any adult content deemed “degrading, violent and misogynistic” — including material showing choking, aka “non-fatal strangulation.”
Responding to that report, the U.K.’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology stated, “There is increasing evidence that ‘choking’ is becoming a common part of real-life sexual encounters despite the significant medical dangers associated with it. The government will take urgent action to ensure pornography platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors are taking all necessary steps to tackle this increasingly prevalent harm.”
Recommendations such as banning adult content that features choking reflect media porn panics fueled by the talking points of anti-porn crusaders. In October 2024, one of Europe’s leading right-wing publications, the European Conservative, published an editorial calling for a total ban on all pornography, which the author justified by attributing a supposed epidemic of sexual choking to men imitating the pornography they watch.
In February, responding to the recommendations of the U.K. pornography review, Free Speech Coalition Director of Public Policy Mike Stabile told XBIZ, “This isn’t about protecting women, it’s about policing desire. Consent should be the central factor in determining what is legal, not what offends a government official.”
European director, performer and sex work activist Paulita Pappel told XBIZ at the time that such measures “will disproportionately harm smaller, independent productions, making it even harder to create and distribute diverse content — ultimately depriving the public of authentic representation and cultural diversity in adult media.”
