If you have been scrolling through Instagram this week, you have probably seen that viral post about the UK banning online porn that shows choking or strangulation. It sounds intense, and honestly, it is. But it is also one of those cultural moments where society finally looks at the mess on the floor and goes, okay, this is getting out of hand. So let us break down what happened, why it matters, and why everyone is talking about it.
The UK government confirmed that they are updating the Online Safety Act to criminalise porn that includes non consensual choking and sexually violent acts. This means platforms will not be allowed to host content that portrays force, strangulation or abuse that is framed as pleasure without consent or context. 
This change did not randomly pop up one morning. It is the result of years of research by Professor Clare McGlynn and countless women’s rights advocates who have been shouting from rooftops that violent porn is quietly reshaping how young people understand intimacy.
Here is the darkest part. Studies show that one in three young men believe women enjoy being choked during sex. Not asked. Not checked in. Not consensual. Just assumed. And almost seventy percent of women under forty report that they have actually been choked by a partner, often without being asked if they even wanted that in the first place.
When something harmful gets repeated enough times in porn, it becomes normal. And when it becomes normal, it becomes expected. People start performing instead of communicating. They start crossing boundaries without realising they are crossing anything at all. That is how a kink becomes a risk. And that is how a fantasy becomes a danger.
Choking is not a tiny thing. It is not a cute spicy move. It risks long term brain injury and in abusive relationships it increases the chance of homicide sevenfold. Seven. That number alone explains why activists have been pushing for this rule for years. The new change tries to close a loophole that allowed platforms to keep hosting violent content by arguing that it was fantasy and therefore acceptable. Now the law is treating violent porn as something that does translate into the real world.
A lot of people online are worried that this means kink is being banned, but that is not what is happening. Consensual choking between adults is not illegal in the UK. What the government is banning is the depiction of non consensual sexual violence being marketed as a normal or desirable part of sex. The goal is to stop major platforms from training a whole generation to think intimacy means force. Consent is not optional. And porn that teaches people otherwise ends up shaping actual relationships.
There is something important happening underneath the headlines. This is not just a law change. It is a conversation shift. For the first time in a long time, a government is acknowledging that porn is not just entertainment. It is sex education for millions of people who never got proper sex education anywhere else. And when the education is violent, confusing or unrealistic, the real world becomes violent, confusing and unrealistic too.
You can already feel the internet reacting. Some people are celebrating. Some are arguing. Some are spiralling into full panic that the government wants to censor everything. But what people are slowly realising is that the line between fantasy and harm is not as clean as everyone pretends. When huge platforms profit from content that makes violence look sexy, it affects the expectations we carry into our bedrooms. It affects the safety of women. It affects the boundaries of men who genuinely do not know where the line is anymore.
So yes. The UK did just make sexual violence in porn illegal. And honestly, the conversation that is coming next might be even more important. Because now everyone is being pushed to rethink what healthy intimacy looks like, what consent actually means and what we are absorbing from the media we watch in secret. The world is not becoming more prudish. It is becoming more aware that pleasure without care is not pleasure at all.
