Usha Uthup’s husband dies

Highlights:

• Government to criminalise porn that shows strangulation or suffocation during sex.
• Part of wider plan to fight violence against women and online harm.
• Tech firms will be forced to block such content or face heavy Ofcom fines.
• Experts say the ban responds to medical evidence and years of campaigning.

You see it everywhere now. In mainstream pornography, a man’s hands around a woman’s neck. It has become so common that for many, especially the young, it just seems like part of sex, a normal step. The UK government has decided it should not be, and soon, it will be a crime.

The plan is to make possessing or distributing pornographic material that shows sexual strangulation, often called ‘choking’, illegal. This is a specific amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill. Ministers are acting on the back of a stark, independent review. That report found this kind of violence is not just available online, but it is rampant. It has quietly, steadily, become normalised.