U.K. Bans Possession of Porn Depicting Choking, Suffocation, or Pretend Incest
Violators could face years in prison.
Americans should really be grateful to the U.K. for so frequently reminding us to value the First Amendment. The latest British contribution comes courtesy of the Crime and Policing Act of 2026, which makes it a crime to publish or possess certain genres of pornographic content.
Violators of the new rules could face two to three years imprisonment. That's a pretty steep punishment for merely possessing porn that features consenting adults engaging in sexual activities or fantasies of which the government disapproves.
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'Face Sitting' Porn Banned?
Specifically, the new law bans imagery that depicts strangulation or suffocation. It also bans porn featuring sexual roleplay involving people pretending to be closely related or "where a reasonable person would think at least one person is, or is pretending to be, under 16."
Some have suggested that the law explicitly bans "BBW face sitting," "breast smother[ing]," and other specific acts, but they appear to be circulating a list of categories that the porn platform iWantClips has said it will suppress to comply with the law.
The law itself does not explicitly define either strangulation or suffocation.
Strangulation "generally means one person applying pressure to another person's neck," stated the Ministry of Justice. "Suffocation will generally mean depriving a person of air in a way that affects their ability to breathe."
Whether a particular act falls under the parameters of the law will be determined in court on a case-by-case basis, the Ministry of Justice said.
That may be worse than if the government had directly defined illegal acts—and not just because it deprives us of Parliamentary debates around "feet smothering" and "ass smothering." Unsure exactly what counts as illegal content, adult creators and platforms will interpret the mandate broadly in order to stay safe, as the iWantClips list highlights.
The Law Takes Effect This Week, Applies Retroactively
Starting November 6, 2026, it's a crime not only to publish videos or images featuring these newly banned categories of porn but also to possess them.
"Possession is a continuing act," the Ministry of Justice states. "If you already possess an image covered by these offences, you will need to permanently delete it or otherwise get rid of it before 6 November 2026 to avoid committing an offence once the offences come into force."
Having published such an image at any time in the past would also leave one liable now. That leaves an array of professional porn producers and peddlers in potential trouble.
The law stops short of cracking down on amateurs who have filmed or photographed themselves and a partner engaging in banned activities, so long as they keep it private and everything was consensual.
Still, this seems like it could open people up to investigations over private sexual activity in which they partook, especially if it's not immediately clear who is in a video or photo, or if the other party isn't readily available to avow consent.
It is absurd to throw people into prison for such content, whatever you think of such content yourself. No one is harmed by two adults agreeing to engage in gentle choking during sex. No one is harmed by two adults pretending having sex while pretending to be brother and sister. I mean, ew on the latter, but whatever. Some people are turned on by taboo. And I'm highly skeptical of the idea that watching "incest porn" will somehow induce people to go out and try to sleep with their family members in real life.
First they came for bbw facesitting and I did speak out but it was muffled by the bbw facesitting
— ailís malaru 🍥 🇮🇪 (@themalaru) October 30, 2026
If At First You Don't Succeed…
This isn't the U.K.'s first attempt at something like this.
Back in 2014, it banned a whole array of specific fetish acts in porn (prompting protests with slogans like "Sit on Santa's Face").
Those earlier regulations were reversed in 2019, with authorities saying such acts could be depicted so long as everyone involved was consenting, no one was harmed, and the content wasn't likely to viewed by anyone underage.
But the British censors never gave up the dream of ensuring that people don't this Monty Python classic to heart.
In the News
Another fake 'trafficking' sting. Florida's Polk County Sheriff's Office is at it again, announcing "281 arrests during human trafficking and child predator enforcement operation 'Polk Around and Find Out II' when the vast majority of the arrests were adults arrested for trying to do consensual sex work or to pay an adult sex worker for services. "There were 117 suspects arrested for soliciting a prostitute," says a Polk County press release, and 122 suspects arrested on suspicion of prostitution.
"Seventeen police agencies, some prosecutors, and a non profit" participated in this operation, points out Tara Burns.
Among the 31 arrests "related to child sexual predators," there were no actual victims, just undercover police. The cops posed online as 13- or 14-year-olds or their guardians.
The fact that those arrested on child-related charges were really talking with undercover cops doesn't make their (alleged) willingness to engage in sexual activity here any better. But it does mean that none of these cases involved actual children being harmed. (It also leaves open the possibility that not everything went down exactly as police are claiming here.)
That's relevant because people are always pointing to stings like these as evidence that sex trafficking of minors is at epidemic proportions. But nothing in this sting (or the many similar stings conducted in Polk County, Florida) suggests that.
More Sex & Tech
• Noticing more and more—on the internet and in in-person conversations—that younger people are accusing older adults of being the ones who really have problems with their phones. In New York magazine, Jessica Lucas looks at what happens when boomer-and-up screen time collides with the beginnings of cognitive decline.
• "Sexually explicit footage appeared on digital LED billboards in Egypt, Malaysia, Brazil, and reportedly Iraq and China on Thursday," reports Gizmodo. "Following these incidents, a group on Telegram claimed responsibility for an operation it described as simple enough that 'anyone with two brain cells' could have pulled it off."
• Manosphere types often argue "that men are primarily attracted to much younger women (often including girls under the age of consent) and lose attraction somewhere around thirty, certainly by forty," by way of suggesting that women should "settle down as quickly as possible (presumably to someone much older, who is not very impressive physically) so they don't miss their supposedly brief window of desirability," notes Cartoons Hate Her. "But taking this belief literally—as some women actually do—will yield very different results."
• Trump 1.0 conspiracy theory deep cut here, but remember Pizzagate? Anna Merlan suggests that "until the Trump administration—or the larger political establishment—holds Jeffrey Epstein and his associates to account, Pizzagate can never really die."
• An interesting podcast conversation about AI between the political scientist Yascha Mounk and the philosophy professor Dan Williams. "In many ways you should think of large language models as the anti-social-media," Williams says. "Whereas social media, because it has this engagement-maximizing character, tends to amplify this sensationalist, conflict-oriented style of communication, at least at the moment, Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, even Grok, which is Elon Musk's large language model, tends toward a pretty dry, respectful, accuracy-oriented style of communication."