No, the UK Government has not made 'BBW facesitting' illegal, nor have they specified that 'plastic fetish', 'butt drops', or 'trampling play' are cause for a knock on the door from the police. Participating in or watching videos of these acts is legal, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. "But what about that list?" I hear you cry- "What about those memes I saw on bsky.app?"

🖼️: Namio Harukawa

These are referring to a widely-circulated screenshot from iWantClips^[1], a US-based porn platform specialising in "femdom, findom and fetish clips" similar to OnlyFans, listing removed categories of content for UK artists and customers. They cite the incoming piece of legislature the "Crime and Policing Act 2026" which makes possession and publication of pornographic images of strangulation and suffocation a crime, as the reasoning for their removal. This screenshot went viral and became the sole point of reference for many queer internet users as to the existence of the Act.^[2]

What this viral post didn't bring up, however, are the incoming bans on incest, ageplay and "jailbait" porn, as these themes are already banned on iWantClips.

It's mad to me that anyone would think a national legislature would refer to any of these terms in their laws, especially given the potentially racialised and sexist language implicit in them. But I don't blame anyone caught up in this panic, as "facesitting" porn laws in the UK are not without precedent (more on that later).

We need to make a clear distinction between sex acts that are illegal to do, and those that are illegal to posses a recording or image of. I will attempt to help you understand these laws to the best of my abilities.

Introduction

Prefacing all of this with I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. I am a dedicated pervert with a vested interest in understanding the draconian laws of my country. My qualifications are: I am autistic, I help out with the London Leatherdykes, and I call many 'full service' and content creator sex workers my friends.

just for those at the back...

this is not legal advice!

anyway.

From the 6th of November (my birthday, coincidentally)

"it will be a criminal offence in England and Wales to possess or publish pornographic images that explicitly and realistically depict:

• strangulation or suffocation
• penetrative sexual activity between people who a reasonable person would think are related, or pretending to be related, in a certain way. This includes depictions of close familial relatives such as father and daughter or brother and sister, and certain step and foster relationships where one person is, or is pretending to be, under 18
• sexual activity between at least 2 people where a reasonable person would think at least one person is, or is pretending to be, under 16"^[3]

Firstly- this is a new piece of legislation, which means we must look to past legal outcomes of similar pieces of legislation to get an idea of how it might be enforced. We're in brand new territory and what constitutes say, suffocation has yet to be pinned down legally. But we can make some educated guesses.

As we have just seen, facesitting does not appear anywhere in writing, but rather could be interpreted as coming under suffocation. Let's break this down, word by word, so you can better understand what your risk profile is.

What counts as an image?

It's not just JPEGs! An image in law includes videos and GIFs. It also includes "data" capable of being converted into an image, so ZIP files and encrypted formats count.

What counts as pornographic?

Something "produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal".^[4]That's pretty subjective! And will be defined by what the jury and prosecution consider to be sexually arousing. Context matters too, so even a clip from a BBFC 18 rated film can be legally considered porn if it's removed from the context of the story. An example brought up during a past parliamentary debate is the anal rape scene in 'Last Tango in Paris' which would be considered pornographic if separated from the context of the film.^[5]

Possessing a pornographic image is not in itself a crime, but when combined with certain sex acts or participants it can become so.

Personally, I'm interested in where a jury would draw the line on the more out-there fetishes that don't necessarily include penetration, like feet or cardiophillia.

What counts as extreme pornography?

To be defined as "extreme pornography" under UK law, an image must tick all three boxes:

1. Be pornographic (see above)
2. Be grossly offensive (disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character)
3. Contains a realistic depiction of one of the following:

• an act which threatens a person's life
• an act which does result in (or is likely to result in) serious injury to the anus breasts or genitals
• sexual interference with a human corpse
• intercourse or oral sex with an animal (dead or alive), and the animal is (or could be mistaken for) real
• non-consensual penetration of a vagina, anus or mouth with a penis
• non-consensual sexual penetration of a person's vagina or anus by any part of another person's body or an object.^[4:1]

None of this applies if the images in question come from something classified by the BBFC, so anything officially released on DVD with a BBFC age rating on the box is legal to possess. Still, if you were to clip only explicit scenes from BBFC certified films and string them together, they could count as extreme pornography.^[6] The assumption is the BBFC would only certify depictions of such acts if they are justified by the story, the removal of which also removes the justification. Our previous example 'Last Tango in Paris' would not meet the definition of 'extreme' as set out in the law, as the rape is fictional, not detailed, and does not show any serious or lasting damage to anus.

A person can be prosecuted for possession of "rape porn" (noncon or dubcon) if they cannot prove to the court that the person being raped actually consented. As for impact play and other BDSM practises, the defendant must prove that the act did not cause non-consensual harm to the person involved. There are separate laws concerning participating in these acts without being filmed that are outside the scope of this article, but there is a legal precedent in the UK that one cannot consent to being harmed.

The "act which threatens a person's life" part is interesting, because strangulation could definitely come under that even when practised by veteran breathplayers. Asphyxiation to the point of unconsciousness was an example of an act a person cannot ever consent to, but general strangulation didn't meet any legal bar for extremity. I think the government added this new specificity on strangulation and suffocation for avoidance of any doubt that this-or-that act of strangulation carries no risk to life. Possessing any visual recording of breathplay is now an offence even if the participants can prove that nobody was hurt.

What counts as realistic?

Not hentai, cartoons, 3D animations or anything written. It's something that a reasonable person would look at for 5 seconds and go "yeah that's real", referring to the persons involved, the acts depicted and if that furry thing is just a guy in a costume, or an actual dog.

Realistic pornography in the UK encompasses photographs and videos of people that are real or photo-realistic. 'Deepfakes' and other AI images do also count, and they can also be prosecuted under separate laws for 'revenge porn' if they resemble a real person who did not consent to having their image manipulated in this way.

'Psuedo-photographs' is the legislature's chosen term for photo-realistic AI output and realistic traced images.

What counts as possession?

In the English legal system, possession of a criminal image usually includes:

• having it saved to a folder on your computer
• having it in your browser cache
• having it stored in the cloud
• having 'access' to it (basically you have the power to delete it)

You also have to know you have the image, and have willingly held onto it. In Okoro [2018]^[7], it was ruled that willingly viewing (and thus automatically downloading) a group of pornographic whatsapp images, one of which is illegal, counts as knowingly possessing the illegal image. Having not viewed it, or downloading it accidentally as part of the set was ruled as not a valid excuse.

So, if you were to torrent a folder of adult videos, and one of those videos contained a depiction of mother-daughter penetrative sex, you could be successfully be prosecuted as possessing an illegal image. It's not 100% guaranteed, and the government guidance explicitly says there is a defence available if you really really didn't know about it. How that plays out remains to be seen.

What counts as publishing?

Sharing it in any way, whether that's uploading it to a website or just messaging it to another person eg. as an attachment to a discord message.

So, what happened?

The new law does not add strangulation to the definition of extreme pornography (although it could already be considered an act which threatens a person's life), but adds it as a second category of image that is illegal to possess. You could be prosecuted under "possessing an image of stragulation", "possessing extreme porn" or both. Probably courts will push for both.

It's confusing because it kind of already counted as extreme, but this is a way for the government to signal that they are "doing something" about strangulation porn^[8] and makes it a lot simpler for the courts to sentence (now they don't have to prove that the participant was harmed).

Now we've covered the basic terminology and the strangulation aspect, let's look at some of the other porn-related legislature introduced with the Crime and Policing Act 2026.

A brief interlude on facesitting

🖼️: Mass sit-in, 2014

This law intends to cover strangulation and suffocation although some people have interpreted it as covering facesitting. I do not share this interpretation. However, it wouldn't be the first time the UK has tried to ban it. In 2014, the Audiovisual Media Services Regulation was enacted to bring online porn in line with the regulations set out by the BBFC for DVD porn sold in shops.^[9] This entailed restricting a litany of acts, including sadomachisim, torture with instruments, bondage, fisting, scat, urination, female ejaculation (because it's hard for the censor to distinguish it from urination) and yes, facesitting.^[10]

This was very unpopular, even among politicians. There was a mass face sit-in outside parliament^[11] and even Nick Clegg stated his support for repeal.^[12] Looking at the backlash to this versus today, it seems almost quaint that politicians would stand up for sexual freedoms in the face of censorship.

The guidance was repealed in 2019, with CPS now only suggesting prosecution in instances where there is no consent, or a participant was physically harmed.

Underage roleplay porn

Let's remind ourselves of the new law:

"It is a criminal offence in England and Wales to possess or publish pornographic images that explicitly and realistically depict sexual activity between at least 2 people where a reasonable person would think at least one person is, or is pretending to be, under 16."^[13]

So, this obviously is aimed at stuff like schoolgirl porn and performers who look under 16. That's now illegal to upload or possess. If our legal Average Joe thinks "that person looks under 16" OR "that person is clearly pretending to be under 16", regardless if the performer is not exactly passing as a schoolgirl, it counts as illegal. You can see what they're trying to do with this.

But one thing that immediately sprung to my mind was "what about ageplayers?" Well, they did think of that... kind of. Under the new section of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, they've added:

"A person is not to be taken as pretending to be under 16 if it is fanciful that they are actually under 16 in the way pretended."^[13:1]

My personal interpretation of "fanciful" is that it would rule out images where the age the performer is pretending to be is, like, laughably hard to interpret as real. Basically, if the performer is pretending to be one year old and they have the body of a 30 year old man, that's fanciful and not worth the bother to pursue criminally. This argument could also apply to women who look visibly much older doing schoolgirl roleplay, and I think most people prosecuted under this new law will point to the documented ages of the performer involved as their defence.

The general thrust of the law is to make it illegal to have/make porn of teen-looking actor, and common porn archetypes like schoolgirls.

Incest roleplay porn

"It is a criminal offence in England and Wales to possess or publish pornographic images that explicitly and realistically depict penetrative sexual activity between people who a reasonable person would think are related, or pretending to be related, in a certain way. This includes depictions of close familial relatives such as father and daughter or brother and sister, and certain step and foster relationships where one person is, or is pretending to be, under 18."^[14]

Wow! that's complicated.

So, firstly the act depicted has to be penetrative to count. Secondly, it has to be realistic and pass the 'Average Joe' interpretation test: that a normal person taken off the street and shown this (terrifying idea) would think the performers involved are related, OR pretending to be related. Now, the way in which they are related (or more likely, pretending to be related) is important.

Depiction of blood related close family, like mother/father towards son/daughter, is automatically banned. Obviously to count as this the performers would have to be the same race, and look broadly like the ages make sense for being related like that (no teen mom getting screwed by her clearly 40 year old son).

Step-relations and adopted kids are actually still legal, as long as everyone is clearly over 18 and not pretending to be underage. So, stepsis stuck in dryer is still completely fine in the UK. I find this very funny.

Deepfake Porn

One good part of this new Act is the criminalisation of non-consensual "deepfake" porn. Referred to in legalise as "non-consensual purported intimate images", it's now a crime to create deepfake porn and to offer the service of image creation to others.^[15] This has been a big issue in UK schools as of late, with pornographic deepfake images of girls being created and shared around to humiliate them.^[16] Hopefully this should give schools and authorities the ability to properly act in these cases and be a deterrent to further abuse.

Revenge porn

Another welcome addition to the law is recognition of covert filming. It's now illegal to take images of people in an "intimate" state without their consent, and installing hidden cameras to record images of people in an intimate state without their consent.^[17] This covers both "pervert in the locker room" hidden cameras, and also so-called "revenge porn" recordings of a person having consensual sex without knowing they are being filmed. The sharing of these images has also been criminalised, as has the saving of an intimate image that was sent as a disappearing message.

Cum tributes

Finally, semen defaced images (aka cum tributes) have been recognised as a form of sexual harassment.^[18] I personally experienced some of these as teen online and it was Not Fun. Me and Rainbow Dash will see you in court.

In conclusion

So overall, the Crime and Policing Bill 2026 is bad. The few good additions to the law do not detract from the regressive and ill-advised the criminalisation of BDSM and online sex workers. This naive attempt to curb the rise of misogyny (perpetuated by men) will ultimately harm women most of all. We've seen this before in the criminaliastion of sex workers running brothels to keep themselves safe, and in past bans of porn featuring women ejaculating.

None of this will stop boys watching choking porn and harming or killing their girlfriends. It won't stop them turning to misogyny and violence, against their sisters, mothers and classmates. They'll just use a VPN or go to a dodgier, less regulated site.

Breathplay always carries an element of risk, yes– but it came as a package deal in the queer community with safer sex education and harm reduction practices. I personally knew of safer strangulation techniques from tumblr BSDM & kink posters before I ever saw it depicted in porn. The conversation needs to move away from these heavy-handed laws and into the outdated and substandard sex education curriculum in British schools. Parents can still remove their kids from sex education classes as teenagers.^[19] The system is not fit for purpose.

It's also not lost on me that this law comes at a time of many high profile cases of men sexually exploiting teenage girls, a puritanical crackdown on the public's right to fantasy while those with knighthoods and the endorsement of broadcasters have carte blanche to hurt real people.

I'm really mad about this, if you can't tell lmao. I'm planning to do some more explainers like this soon, focusing on things like The Online Safety Act and laws around lolisho in the UK. This took a while to write, because I effectively had to achieve total comprehension of all the the different pieces of legislation for obscenity before starting lol. I think my next few blogposts will be quicker.

Follow my RSS feed if that's something you'd like to know about when it comes out!