Jane Austen seems an unlikely standard-bearer for those who defend the right to look at images depicting women being tortured and raped.

The novelist was quoted during a conference at Durham University this week, which debated proposed legislation that would make possession of “extreme pornography” a criminal offence carrying a three-year prison sentence.

The decision to introduce a new law followed a long campaign by a mother whose daughter was killed in 2003 by a man who was said to have been a obsessive viewer of violent porn sites.

Supporters of the new sanction, part of the Criminal Justice Bill that is due to be brought before the Commons in the next few months, see it as a logical extension of laws against child pornography.

The proposed offence covers explicit images of bestiality, necrophilia and serious violence, defined as “acts that appear to be life-threatening or are likely to result in serious, disabling injury”. Such material must have been created solely or primarily for the purpose of sexual arousal, and must show real scenes “or depictions which appear to be real acts”.

It is already illegal to publish or distribute such images in Britain. The Home Office argues that making their possession illegal will give added protection to the young and vulnerable. Opposition among politicians to the new law is likely to be muted. Brave or foolish would be the MP prepared to defend publicly the material shown on a website such as Necrobabes. The site promises users “tastefully erotic death scenes through asphyxia, shooting, knives and more”.

A sister website, Asphyxia, lures browers with the slogan: “Sexy strangled, suffocated, hanged and drowned babes. It takes your breath away.” What sane person could defend the rights of someone who gains arousal from the sight of women being humiliated, degraded and — apparently — murdered?

Step forward Austen, or rather the eponymous heroine of Emma as she remarks to her father: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” Those words went to the heart of the debate during the conference at Durham, “Positions on the Politics of Porn”, which drew together a range of groups — from law professors to bondage aficionados — with a special interest in the proposed new offence.

The argument went something like this: I may not understand your sexuality, indeed I may find the images you like to view grotesque and repugnant, but is that sufficient reason to criminalise the act of viewing? All parties agreed that possessing internet footage of, for example, a genuine strangulation should be unlawful.

Far more contentious were scenes involving actors or consensual partners, where the explicit footage appears to show a violent asphyxiation but is actually the realistic playing out of a fantasy. Under the proposals, it would be illegal to possess such images.

Rightly so, according to Jill Radford, of the University of Teesside, who views all pornography as “the eroticisation of hate” and a symbol of “male domination and exploitation of women and children”.

Porn was “a significant and pervasive factor in shaping our understanding of sexuality”, she said, and when it came to images of extreme violence the issue of consent was irrelevant because the message — that it was legitimate to use violence against women — remained the same. Gavin Phillipson, of Durham University, also backed the legislation. The actors may be consenting participants, but if the scenes simulate nonconsensual acts, and are produced solely for the purpose of arousing the viewer, the images are not a legitimate use of freedom of expression.

Professor Phillipson said that the “very narrow and specific categories” of the law would protect members of the BDSM (bondage, domination and sado-masochism) community who held true to the “sacred principles” of safety and consent.

Deborah Hyde was not convinced. A spokesperson for Backlash, a group formed to fight the legislation, she described the proposal as “a law based on prejudice rather than fact”. Backlash claims that “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people engaged in nonabusive, consenting activities” would be criminalised by a ban on extreme porn.

The suggestion that there may be a causal link between pornography and sexual violence is not supported by any authoritative research, as the Government has admitted.

For Avedon Carol, of Feminists Against Censorship, this means that “we’re going to ruin people’s lives without a shred of evidence that it [viewing extreme porn] harms anyone. We are trying to punish people who might have fantasies that we don’t like. It’s a thought crime and that’s all it is.”

So as long as no one is physically harmed, pornography is acceptable? Not so, according to Clare Phillipson, of Wearside Women in Need. “I’m not going to sit here and be an apologist for a psychopath’s right to w***,” she said. “This is about real women. You people need to get real.”

She went on to claim that hundreds of African women had been trafficked into Europe, then sold, mutilated and murdered, their deaths being filmed and photographed to cater for the market in extreme pornography.

“Anyone turned on by the glorification of extreme violence is sick. It sends a message to abohorrent individuals that it is acceptable. What [the Government] are doing is censoring evil. I will not get lost in a debate about human rights on this. There are some things that are just wrong.”

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