Ministers will struggle to stop men strangling their partners

“I bet it was fun doing all that research on porn!” It’s the kind of light-hearted response I’ve come to expect since I started writing Pornocracy, a study in tandem with Robert Jessel about how the multi-billion-dollar pornography industry has humanity gripped in a chokehold.

The process scarred us both. I now look at male friends and wonder how many have watched videos of rape. When I see young women with bruises on their necks, I want to tell them to run. I know what those marks mean: men aroused by strangling their partners are more likely to kill them.

Jane Longhurst was one of those women. The Brighton teacher was murdered in 2003 by a man who watched strangulation pornography before, during, and after he killed her. Twenty-two years later, the act that helped to end her life has become mainstream entertainment.

Since her death, three laws have been introduced to restrict violent pornography, each promising to end depictions of sexual harm. The latest, introduced following Baroness Bertin’s report into pornography, specifically aims to stop depictions of strangulation – a tacit admission that earlier efforts have failed.

Earlier this month, Alex Davies-Jones, the minister for victims and tackling violence against women and girls, announced the change that will mean porn featuring strangulation or suffocation – often referred to as “choking” – is made illegal: “This government will not stand by while women are violated online and victimised by violent pornography, which is allowed to normalise harm… We are sending a strong message that dangerous and sexist behaviour will not be tolerated.”

But the truth is, the battle has already been lost. Extreme pornography has scripted the sexual expectations of generations raised on smartphones – and it is women and girls who are living with the consequences. A UK study of more than 2,000 women found that 38 per cent had been “choked” during sex; among 18- to 24-year-olds, the figure rose to more than half.

The practice is lethally dangerous: unconsciousness can occur within 10 seconds, a seizure in 17, and death in under three minutes. Survivors face lasting harm – from brain injury and miscarriage to thyroid damage and loss of bowel control – and they are seven times more likely to be murdered by that partner later. In roughly a quarter of domestic homicide cases, strangulation is the method of killing.

Fiona Mackenzie, founder of The Other Half research centre and the campaign We Can’t Consent to This, has spent years urging ministers to use the powers they already possess.

“It didn’t work,” she says. “For a few years, We Can’t Consent to This tried to help girls and young women get strangulation and other violent porn content out of their social media feeds. Ultimately, we failed. I despair.

“My daughters will grow up in a worse world than I did because no one in SW1 wants to use the laws we have for fear their dinner-party friends might think them prudes.”

That fear has allowed men’s violence to be rebranded as “kink”. Those who object are sneered at as unsophisticated, even bigoted. Once a niche perversion, sexual strangulation is now fashionable.

In his 2023 hit Lovin’ on Me, rapper Jack Harlow boasted: “I’m vanilla, baby, I’ll choke you, but I ain’t no killer, baby.” It reached number one around the time of a TikTok ‘blackout’ craze, in which children mimed strangulation. Earlier this year, Andrew Tate's ex-girlfriend claimed, in a lawsuit filed in California, that the controversial influencer choked her until she lost consciousness while they were having sex.

As we document in Pornocracy, men often imitate what they see online not out of cruelty, but because they believe it is what women want. Meanwhile, young women we spoke to described feeling pressured to accept acts that hurt or humiliate them, afraid they’d be seen as “vanilla” if they refused.

Jane Longhurst’s mother fought to stop other women dying for men’s entertainment. Two decades later, the pornography that fuelled her daughter’s murder is more pervasive – and profitable – than ever.

Until the government finds the will to stand up to the sex industry and protect the public, ministers will keep sending “strong messages” while men take their cues from the pornographers.

Jo Bartosch is a writer and campaigner for the rights of women & girls. Her co-authored book, ‘Pornocracy’ (Polity Books, £20), is out now