David J. Ley PhD

Has the UK Government banned face sitting and fellatio in porn? I'm quoted in @WIRED about the implications of the possession and suffocation offences commencing across the UK tomorrow. “I would encourage both content creators and consumers to underscore the risks of this law,” says Myles Jackman, an obscenity lawyer in the UK.“Because to me, it genuinely seems like one of the greatest acts of suppression of free speech in global history.” Jackman, the lawyer, says that he has no issue with the provision banning strangulation, as its risks are proven and there are existing laws banning strangulation in the UK. He cautions, however, that the law is written broadly enough that relatively innocuous content could also potentially be penalized. “It would be up to a court to decide this on a case-by-case basis, but given that it would appear that face-sitting by a vagina owner is now arguably suffocation, the insertion of a penis could equally be considered suffocation because it blocks the airways,” he says. In other words, “the UK could have just banned blow jobs” in online pornography. But even though the UK is, for the time being, an outlier, Jackman warns it may not be for long. He says he has heard of lawmakers in Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain discussing similar legislation, as well as members of the evangelical lobby in the United States. “In terms of free speech,” he says, “the lights are going out across the globe.”’