Euan McColm: There is good reason for politicians to get involved in people’s sex lives this time

During First Minister’s Question Time, SNP MSP Michelle Thomson raised the issue of non-fatal strangulation, a deeply dangerous practice that’s becoming increasingly common during consensual sex.

Thomson wanted to know whether John Swinney would consider making non-fatal strangulation a standalone offence?

The First Minister was open to the idea though pointed out that existing assault laws opened anyone performing the act to prosecution and severe punishment.

The case for going further, as Thomson and others urge, is strong. Non-fatal strangulation is so dangerous that it should be completely taboo.

Professor Cath White, medical director of the Home Office-funded Institute for Addressing Strangulation (IFAS) recently laid out quite how risky the practice is. Within just six to eight seconds, a person being strangled can lose consciousness, while they will become incontinent at just 15 seconds. Within four minutes, brain death will occur.

According to the Office for National Statistics, strangulation was the second most common method of murder of women in England and Wales in 2023 and the third most common method in Scotland.

Yet, thanks to the influence of violent pornography, this dangerous and frightening act is now routinely practised by some couples. A recent survey of 16-34 year olds by the IFAS found more than a third had been strangled or choked at least once during consensual sex.

Non-fatal strangulation has already been made an offence elsewhere in the UK. Why shouldn’t Scotland follow suit?

Simon Brown, president of the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association, has made the argument that, while non-fatal strangulation is serious and should be criminalised, there is no need for there to be a separate offence for it.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime, Brown said that, in practice, non-fatal strangulation would be viewed “almost identically” to how assault is now viewed.

“The standard of proof,” Brown told the programme, “would probably be much the same. I can’t see how you would word a statute to make it easier to prove a crime, the difficulties would be the same.”

I’ve much sympathy for Brown’s position. There doesn't seem much point in replicating existing legislation. Wouldn’t doing so be nothing more than an exercise in virtue-signalling?

Perhaps so but I can’t help feeling that sending a message on this particular issue would be no bad thing.

There is no way of closing down the stream of explicit and violent pornography free available to all – including children – on the internet. Careful parents can install all the security measures they like at home but the moment your kid hits the playground, they’re among others with phones and things to show. And among the things they’re likely to show are pornographic films during which women are slapped, choked and spat on.

A particularly excruciating aspect of modern parenting is addressing with ones children the sort of pornographic material they might see. The days of awkward birds and bees chats have long passed. Now, we have no choice but to talk about the most explicit stuff and about how viewing it might impact on ones expectations.

As freely available pornography becomes ever more violent, is there anything wrong in using the law to make clear just how unacceptable some of the practices it shows actually are? What harm is there in making non-fatal strangulation a standalone crime?

For a long time politicians have ignored the issue of pornography and its impact, regarding its widespread distribution as nothing more than a fact of modern life.

This is understandable, enough. The obscenity laws which once outlawed “blue movies” are as quaint as a country cottage, these days. How can politicians even begin to consider how online content, beyond the clearly illegal, might be regulated?

But the sheer scale of the issue is not the only factor in a lack of political action. For a number of politicians and activists, pornography is to be thought of as an industry like any other.

The ideological position that “sex work is work” allows its adherents – usually of the left – to absolve themselves of any responsibility for thinking about the victims of pornography. Indeed, how can there even be victims if those taking part are willing participants in a legitimate industry?

The “sex work is work” mantra isn’t an example of solidarity. Rather, the ideologues who espouse it have taken the easy path, a scenic route where sex workers are independent and powerful rather than, by and large, the victims of abusive men.

Last week, 23-year-old Lily Phillips made headlines after the release of a documentary made while she had sex on camera with 101 men. Phillips did not look or sound like an empowered young woman. Rather, she looked and sounded – as she fought back tears – deeply damaged. No number of people insisting “sex work is work” could ever convince me that Phillips’s next plan – to have sex with 1,000 men in a 24-hour period – is anything but a sad and terrible one.

The degradation endured by Philips is part and parcel of the same pornographic culture that has seen the choking of young women during sex become commonplace.

When it comes to equal rights, we live in incoherent times. We pride ourselves on progress made in terms of employment and talk of glass ceilings smashed.

But at the same time, the influence of violent, dehumanising pornography seeps into society, inspiring new ways for men to display their hatred of women.