The Government will clamp down on pornography which shows women being choked after a review found the content can have “devastating” real-world consequences.
Videos showing the practice are rife on pornography sites and have helped established it as a sexual norm, a review of the industry led by Conservative peer Baroness Gabby Bertin said.
Non-fatal strangulation is already an offence in its own right, but it is not illegal to show it online.
Downing Street suggested it would “act swiftly” to address gaps in the law around choking pornography, but stopped short of saying it would be banned.
Writing in the report, which was commissioned under Rishi Sunak’s government, Baroness Bertin said there had been a “total absence of government scrutiny” of the pornography industry.
The Tory peer referred to worrying anecdotal evidence from teachers about students asking how to choke girls during sex.
People acting out choking in their sex lives “may face devastating consequences”, she said in the review.
“Evidence shows that even a small amount of pressure to the neck can harm the brain, and there is no safe way to strangle a person,” she added.
“I do not think Government should take the risk of allowing this content to be legal, given what we know about how much pornography exposure can influence sexual behaviour,” she said.
Responding to the concerns in a written statement, technology minister Feryal Clark said the Government would take “urgent action to ensure pornography platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors are taking all necessary steps to tackle this increasingly prevalent harm”.
Baroness Bertin’s review also recommended that videos considered too harmful for certification in the offline world should not be available online, ending the “disparity” between the two.
Welcoming the report’s recommendations, Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, said: “For too long, the porn industry has been free to profit from sexual violence against women and children, shaping collective behaviours and expectations about sex in a deeply harmful way.
“We know these companies are profiting enormously from sexual violence, and until they are forced to clean up their act, they won’t.
“We know that tech company algorithms are serving harmful content to boys and young men when they aren’t necessarily seeking it, because extreme content drives engagement and therefore revenue.
“(The Government) cannot continue to ignore the immense harms arising from the current state of the porn industry which puts business over women and girls’ safety.”
A Government spokesperson said: “To deliver our mission to halve violence against women and girls, we must interrogate the link between violent pornography online and dangerous behaviours offline which this important review highlights.
“We have already announced we will ban the creation of intimate deepfakes without consent and, from next month, under the Online Safety Act, platforms will have to proactively tackle illegal content including extreme pornography and sexual abuse material.
“But further action is needed to address the review’s shocking finding that graphic strangulation is increasingly appearing in pornography, despite being illegal, and is becoming normalised in real life.
“We will urgently ensure that platforms, law enforcement and prosecutors take all necessary steps to tackle this disturbing harm.”