Please or to access all these features

Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

The fatal, hateful rise of choking during sex - Guardian piece

167 replies

WomanDaresTo · 25/07/2019 11:56

Please read this extraordinary piece by Anna Moore in the Guardian www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jul/25/fatal-hateful-rise-of-choking-during-sex on women killed in claimed sex games "gone wrong" and the normalisation of choking of women in sex.

When a direct threat to life is slowly normalised, “it means that a woman whose partner chokes her might not report it – and if she does, it might go nowhere,” says Edwards. “It means that if a woman dies this way, judges and juries feel ‘this is how people have sex now’ and questions aren’t always asked.”

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page
BeardedVulture · 08/11/2019 10:23

We need more kink shaming IMO.

TheProdigalKittensReturn · 08/11/2019 09:40

All kinks are not equal and anyone who thinks they are is thick. If your kink involves hurting other people then you should be shamed for that.

FannyCann · 08/11/2019 09:04

I'm also never going to use the term "vanilla" again.
I am also going to call out b** play wherever I see it. I'm not going to say the word, there is nothing playful about strangulation.
I'm being accused of kink shaming on twitter right now. Guess what. I'm going to kink shame.
We need more kink shame to re-establish boundaries and let young women (and men) see that boundaries are normal and to be respected.

And to the kinksters and apologists that come on these threads to tell us what fun it is - I'm going to report all such posts in the interests of safety for our young women, daughters, sisters and respect for those who have died, and then been blamed for their own deaths.

WomanDaresTo · 08/11/2019 08:37

Thanks Fanny. It is an incredible piece.

Also just to say, We Can't Consent To This are looking to hear from women who have experienced this, so we can understand the scale of this and try to change it.

Details here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3738176-We-Cant-Consent-to-this-choking-research

OP posts:
FannyCann · 08/11/2019 08:33

Bumping for those that missed it first time around.

womaninthedark · 05/08/2019 20:14

We have to speak out about it. Tell people it isn't compulsory. The world is such a mad place now that the few of us who are not buying in to the insanity have to run an underground movement against it.

After reading this thread, I'm going to make sure I don't use the term 'vanilla' again, and that I challenge it when I hear it. People can set their own boundaries. 'Vanilla' suggests that some people's boundaries are less worthy than others.

bobstersmum · 05/08/2019 20:10

It's really worrying the way things like this are being normalised, what can be done about it though? I don't want my dc growing up thinking this is ok!

MsSafina · 05/08/2019 19:50

Unfortunately, 50 Shades made this behaviour look glamorous and women bought into it.

MsSafina · 05/08/2019 19:43

Nothing that men do surprises me. That is all I have to say.

MsSafina · 05/08/2019 19:41

Personally, I don't know how women consent to this, anymore than anal sex or other perversions.

WomanDaresTo · 05/08/2019 18:28

And Flowers to all of you who have experienced this

OP posts:
WomanDaresTo · 05/08/2019 18:24

Just to answer:

I bet there aren’t many women into auto erotic asphyxiation.
It looks like no women in the UK. Every person we can find who has died this way is male.

Despite this it's not unheard of for women's deaths to be treated as non-crimes:

We know of four women killed by men (all later convicted of murder) whose deaths were not initially presumed to be a crime: Jessica McGraa, Lesley Potter, Sally White, Kerry Goddard

The men who killed them were convicted after: pathologist review confirmed murder, her husband confessed, he murdered two other women, and pathologist review, respectively.

There is one case of a woman who died and the coroner rrecorded an open verdict - the police decided not to pursue it as a crime. Her family were extremely concerned that police didn't properly treat the place she died as a crime scene - although they did arrest her partner before releasing him without charge. She had a “strange” and “unnatural” relationship with him.

OP posts:
OccasionalKite · 04/08/2019 23:23

womaninthedark Sat 27-Jul-19 16:07:43

That's an excellent piece! Thanks for posting it. Respect.

theunrivalledjoysofparenting · 04/08/2019 22:31

@womaninthedark - love that. Will show my kids.

Kilbranan · 04/08/2019 22:10

Btw mnhq adverts for festival of the dead on a thread about women who have been murdered....really??!Angry

Kilbranan · 04/08/2019 22:09

It’s a great article and I’ve shared on a fb group I’m on where lots of women were talking about porn being normal and natural
There such a lack of critical thought about the effects of porn and it looks like it will be up to us to make people more aware of the many harms it causes

womaninthedark · 04/08/2019 21:19

Benjispruce Sun 28-Jul-19 09:19:26 womaninthedark tweet that.

Not on twitter, sorry. But anyone can share if they credit me!

womaninthedark · 04/08/2019 21:13

womaninthedark, that's wonderful. I am saving it for my DDs when they are older
Thank you for saying that!

WomanDaresTo · 28/07/2019 20:20

Bumping for the Sunday evening crowd - and please do share. So many young women say this is now their dating experience.

OP posts:
WomanDaresTo · 28/07/2019 10:11

Worth saying that the man who was to be charged with Hope Barden's manslaughter had earlier been jailed for possession of extreme pornography - described as the worst possible images of violence and possibly death.

That extreme pornography law was brought in after campaigning by the mum and sister of Jane Longhurst, who was killed by a man obsessed with strangulation "porn" and necrophilia sites, and who claimed that Jane had died in a consensual strangulation sex, gone wrong.

But, since that extreme porn law was introduced: the cases that have come to court have been ones involving bestiality or child abuse. “It’s not used for scenes of violence, strangulation and rape, which is what was intended,” says Edwards.

And here's Jane Fae, advocate for users of extreme images, on why it's actually the fault of Jane Longhurst's successful campaign that we're seeing widespread choking of women: You also need to factor in the pernicious effect of the extreme porn law, passed a decade or so back specifically as means to stop this practice getting promoted online...and is one reason I do not wholly believe the article you cite..

twitter.com/JaneFae/status/1154705672816275458?s=19

OP posts:
WomanDaresTo · 28/07/2019 09:55

youkiddingme yes, Hope's death is so upsetting. A woman who webcams spoke up recently to say that this was her experience, and although she now stands her ground:

within weeks of starting the job clients had made depraved and dangerous requests, including asking her to choke herself.

"I have had men ask me to asphyxiate myself, hit myself and do other degrading things", she said

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/webcam-girls-share-dark-side-17266604

OP posts:
Benjispruce · 28/07/2019 09:19

womaninthedark tweet that.

Lamahaha · 28/07/2019 08:16

re oral sex:
That's interesting, I'm not old enough o remember that far, but I do know when I was a young women and would read things like Cosmo, it talked about oral sex as something that had at one time been seen as icky, but that research revealed it had actually been common. The sense in my generation was that oral sex was normal and vanilla and not being interested was very odd and prudish.

Goosefoot: It might depend on where you lived? I was in the UK in the late 60s. I lost my virginity in London (Notting Hill Gate, with a shy Spaniard called Miguel, if you want to know! Wink ) and I wasn't at all sexual experimental. But my closest friend, whom I was visiting (she was 19, it was 1967-8) lived in London and was quite promiscuous and fun-loving and she talked about EVERYTHING -- loved boys, picked them up at clubs, brought them home for one-night stands, etc. She never once mentioned os, and she would have, because she liked embarrassing me and being outrageous. She'd have been up for it immediately.

Later, I lived in a slightly backward country, but after that I lived in hippie communes with Americans who were certainly not prudish and nobody ever mentioned it. Not once. Or tried it with me.

But it certainly seems as if the barriers fall one after the other; the barriers of ickiness and thrill-seeking; as if once one barrier falls, the last taboo becomes vanilla and people seek the next barrier to break.

I remember a time when girls "waited" for marriage. I was going to, before the Sixties came in full swing. Boys knew, back then, that they probably couldn't get sex not even from their steady girlfriend.
Here's proof: a very popular song in my culture at the time had the lyrics: "Ring ting ting, everybody hear this thing, my girlfriend promise to give me some ting, and the bells gon' ring, and the birds gon' sing, cause she promise to give me some ting ting ting".
It's a lovely little song, so innocent!

ISaySteadyOn · 28/07/2019 07:35

womaninthedark, that's wonderful. I am saving it for my DDs when they are older.

Cosentyx · 28/07/2019 04:12

AA Gill was a nasty piece of work and I thought that about him before he died, his death doesn't change my opinion of him.

Swipe left for the next trending thread