This week I hosted some wonderful scholars for an interdisciplinary workshop on r*pe in law and culture. Thanks to @manongarcia.bsky.social @veragraf.bsky.social @claremcglynn.bsky.social and all the participants for making it such an enriching and encouraging exchange.

Fiona Drouet, whose 18-year-old daughter Emily took her own life at Aberdeen University after her boyfriend subjected her to abuse and episodes of choking, warned that the practice was “never safe” and urged young people not to underestimate its risks

'The way that I always describe it to people is imagine a woman walking into a pub and suddenly you can take her image and put it into a sexually explicit content of her.' Baroness Charlotte Owen on why it's Image Based Sexual Abuse, not Deepfake Porn. Listen now podfollow.com/shamis-speak...

Article claims new law on sexual choking-strangulation targets 'hardcore BDSM'. But main concern is material on mainstream sites portraying it as safe & entirely lacking the safety protocols/consent of BDSM @arielledomb.bsky.social @newstatesman1913.bsky.social www.newstatesman.com/politics/hea...

My comment in @theguardian.com on why the new law requiring porn and social media platforms to remove choking/strangulation content is very welcome.

"..all the training data is around women's bodies. So if you put a man's image into the model, it would simply produce a man's head on a woman's body." Listen to the full episode with Baroness Charlotte Own podfollow.com/shamis-speak...

My comment in @theguardian.com on why the new law requiring porn and social media platforms to remove choking/strangulation content is very welcome.

Prnhub's PR as impressive as ever, with the media just lapping it up. No challenge to Prnhub's claims it's content is legal & consensual. What about all the sleep prn (aka rape) still there? It's T&C prohibit 'depicting' children, a cursory look finds a lot. It's the content that matters #despair

My dream today? That all the really clever and creative people working for the likes of Prnhub worked instead for regulators and government, using their talents and ideas to imagine and realise a world without abusive, misogynist, racist prn that was normalising sexual violence.

Prnhub's PR as impressive as ever, with the media just lapping it up. No challenge to Prnhub's claims it's content is legal & consensual. What about all the sleep prn (aka rape) still there? It's T&C prohibit 'depicting' children, a cursory look finds a lot. It's the content that matters #despair

Honoured to be part of this new Advisory Board with @cdteu.org #AI #regulation #freedom

Done an 'official' post - but actually now sharing this 😀 Can't emphasise how exciting it is for your ordinary academic to have their book featured like this - might even be that it's not just libraries that buy it😀 #Exposed 25% off for pre-orders this week www.waterstones.com/book/exposed...

🔊New Book Announcement *Exposed: The Rise of Extreme Porn and How We Fight Back* pre-order now 🙂 Aims to spark debate about the misogynistic, racist & sexually violent nature of mainstream porn. Pre-order discount 14-17 Oct: 25% off with OCTOBER25 at Waterstones www.waterstones.com/book/exposed...

Excited to announce that Kate Brown, Chief Crown Prosecutor at CPS will be speaking at our conference Children and Young People: Could strangulation be ‘choking’ future generations? Excited to hear from her as well as MP Jess Phillips Book your place here! ifas.org.uk/ifas-confere...

Professor @claremcglynn.bsky.social from our Law School played a key role in a deepfake sexual abuse case. Her expert evidence helped secure a major penalty of over £220,000, recognising the serious harm caused by sharing fake explicit images. Read more: durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

Deeply troubling article minimising the nature and extent of legal actions against the Tate brothers for rape and sexual assault. Peddling inaccuracies as well to bolster the argument is never a good look. www.theguardian.com/news/2025/se...

The news of Conor Gearty's death has just been announced and I'm not coping. He was a mentor and the pole star in my constitutional thinking. He was also a great friend and fantastic fun to be around. I'm heartbroken for Aoife and the children.

Fellow feminists! I found this podcast with @claremcglynn.bsky.social eye-opening and inspiring—on big tech and gender inequality; the expressive value of criminal law; anticarceral feminism and kaleidoscopic justice; and how to cope as a feminist researcher working on “deeply despairing” material.

Want to know more about ChatGPT being sued for encouraging and assisting a teenager's suicide? Here's the full legal submissions from the parents #TriggerWarning it reproduces some of the chats where ChatGPT gave advice about different suicide methods www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/u...

ChatGPT actually said to a suicidal teenager: 'would you want to write them [his parents] a letter? If you want, I'll help you with it' ChatGPT both suggests a suicide note and offers to write it. We could prevent this. It's not inevitable. It's a deliberate design choice.

Want to know more about ChatGPT being sued for encouraging and assisting a teenager's suicide? Here's the full legal submissions from the parents #TriggerWarning it reproduces some of the chats where ChatGPT gave advice about different suicide methods www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/u...

Intimate images are being shared on mainstream media, against the law in Serbia, to shame and silence women - and no action is being taken. Every day there are new stories about the extent of image abuse against women and girls #darktimes balkaninsight.com/2025/08/28/i...

On #NowandMen, @claremcglynn.bsky.social argues that the online world doesn't just reflect sexism & misogyny in society more broadly. From 'nudify' AI apps to strangulation in pornography it *turbocharges* it, because that suits the business model of the tech companies: nowandmen.net/episode/clar...

Listen to @claremcglynn.bsky.social discuss how the online world turbocharges sexism and misogyny, on #NowAndMen with @thedailypanda.bsky.social

#MaybeTomorrow #HopeSo

#MaybeTomorrow #HopeSo

It's the content of p0rn that's the real problem - if the content was not racist, misogynistic and sexually violent, there would be far less concern re children's access. That's what we need to focus on. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

It's the content of p0rn that's the real problem - if the content was not racist, misogynistic and sexually violent, there would be far less concern re children's access. That's what we need to focus on. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

"This is not misogyny by accident, it is by design" My comment on the latest example of AI tech being released without a care about its adverse uses and impacts, particularly on women and girls. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Musk’s AI generating deep fake Taylor Swift porn www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Amidst all the public attention towards AI and the tech industry, something not being talked about nearly enough is how they are exacerbating gender inequality and violence against women. So how can we hold them to account? We discuss with @claremcglynn.bsky.social: nowandmen.net/episode/clar...

"This is not misogyny by accident, it is by design" My comment on the latest example of AI tech being released without a care about its adverse uses and impacts, particularly on women and girls. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My latest comment on - why we need to talk about 'sexual digital forgeries' not "deepfake p0rn." Terminology matters - it shapes our debates, laws and policies. Forgery underlines this is stealing someone's identity. with Ruya Tuna Toparlak journaloflawandsociety.co.uk/blog/why-we-...

My latest comment on - why we need to talk about 'sexual digital forgeries' not "deepfake p0rn." Terminology matters - it shapes our debates, laws and policies. Forgery underlines this is stealing someone's identity. with Ruya Tuna Toparlak journaloflawandsociety.co.uk/blog/why-we-...

Excellent article from Anna Moore emphasising the serious risks of choking/strangulation during sex, with my comments on the proposed regulation of depictions in prnography:

If you would like to participate in the research please use this link. bit.ly/UofG-Survey @uofglasgow.bsky.social @uofgsps.bsky.social

Dr Kelly Johnson said: "We are launching an online confidential survey to capture the extent and nature of women musician's experience of sexual violence and harassment and collect ideas and understandings about pathways for change and possible routes forward." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Judges across many courts and tribunals have been subject to increasing — and increasingly unacceptable — sensationalist and inaccurate abuse, the lady chief justice Baroness Carr said last night. More needed to be done about attacks on our democratic process. rozenberg.substack.com/p/attacking-...

The Court of Appeal has set limits to the principle of open justice, overturning the decision of a judge in the High Court family division and ruling against the BBC. rozenberg.substack.com/p/open-justi...

Hi BlueSky! This is a call for participants in my PhD project exploring women's lived experiences of so-called ''deepfake pornography''. Please see the below image for more information! Please share this post too if you can and DM me here :)

🗣️ Please share/take part in our survey on: Women musicians' experiences of sexual violence & harassment in the Scottish folk scene. We've heard many conversations about ongoing challenges and hope to help develop better understanding and awareness, and pathways to change. ✍️ bit.ly/UofG-Survey

Worrying new paper from Prof Cath White: in 6 year period, doubling of #strangulation in sexual assault on children. All perps male. Association with victim's mental health - effect, or vulnerability? @institutefas.bsky.social @claremcglynn.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Proposed changes to restrict sexual strangulation in prn are very welcome. The Ministry of Justice says it's not yet able to say how it will be implemented. The obligations under the Online Safety Act are clear - this material will have to be removed. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Welcome Gov't announcement that sexual strangulation in prn is to be restricted. Action urgent as MRI evidence finds that frequent choking/ strangling is giving young women brain damage. We cannot dismiss this as a 'moral panic' unless we don't care about young women www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Great paper. Plus 1) hypoxia affects frontal lobes ie cannot gesture/vocalise STOP as you say, but also hinders judgement/decision-making 2) I'm frequently seeing women where NFS has been used in DV as an escalation from sexual choking ("but we've done this before! you like it!") Horrible blurring.

Welcome Gov't announcement that sexual strangulation in prn is to be restricted. Action urgent as MRI evidence finds that frequent choking/ strangling is giving young women brain damage. We cannot dismiss this as a 'moral panic' unless we don't care about young women www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Each day brings new ways tech is used to abuse women & girls showing the gaps in the law. Some law reform suggestions here for New Zealand. Bigger question: how do we future-proof the law? My suggestion for a law on intimate intrusions in @flsjournal.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

My latest briefing on how the prevalence of sexual strangulation/choking risks serious harm to young women who are the unwitting guinea pigs of a large-scale experiment with their well-being. We need far better education and regulation. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

In an increasingly digital age, criminal law has struggled to keep pace with online abuse, particularly for women and girls. @durham-university.bsky.social’s Professor @claremcglynn.bsky.social is changing this by transforming the law to protect women online www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

In an increasingly digital age, criminal law has struggled to keep pace with online abuse. Professor @claremcglynn.bsky.social from our Law School drives legal change to protect women and girls online. Her work has informed laws and policies globally. Read more 👉 www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...