To think women who enjoy choking during sex should know the risks?

[ImTheGoat]

In a different thread the topic of choking during sex has come up repeatedly. Some women say they enjoy it and it's none of anyone else's business. Others have said it gives abusive men an excuse to hide behind if and when they murder their partners- see here for some tragic stories but bear in mind they're upsetting https://wecantconsenttothis.uk/

My own point of view is that choking during sex is dangerous. Study after study have pointed out that it can cause death or lead to brain damage. It's easy to find this information online but here's an article about it https://www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-sexual-asphyxiation I do think people should be able to do what they want sexually if it isn't hurting anyone. But I also think people should be aware of the risks. In the other thread people who raised any objection to choking during sex were called "pearl clutchers" or "sex police." AIBU to think no, knock yourself out if that's what you want to do but at least acknowledge it isn't a safe sexual activity?

It was your choice to say ‘once more for the slow readers’ which in a reply to me was obviously aimed at me.

As for refusing to understand, what possible reason could you have to suppose that I don’t understand your call for the abolition of evidence in murder cases?

Yet again, the number of men who succeed in acquittal after a case of this sort must be either none or next to none (and if there are any there must have been extraordinary facts) and the number who manage to get a manslaughter conviction must be tiny (and will also have unusual facts).

If none should ever get off a charge of murder and are guilty by reason of the mode of death, that’s simply a return to the Middle Ages.

Yet again, the number of men who succeed in acquittal after a case of this sort must be either none or next to none (and if there are any there must have been extraordinary facts) and the number who manage to get a manslaughter conviction must be tiny (and will also have unusual facts).

You have a touching faith in the legal system.

Sorry this is just not true.

I think we need to separate the experienced bdsm world from porn/general public.

In the bdsm world, from my experience the desire for choking is primarily driven by women. They actively seek out partners who are willing to do it, and who they trust to do it well. A common frustration for these women is that their make partner is not turned on by it or not willing to go as far as they want. Not always, but this is often the case. The assumption that it is driven by men and women are just trying to please is wrong. Within this world there are very careful rules, boundary setting, and extremely careful vetting of partners, safe words, generally very low alcohol or drug consumption etc..... anybody doing aggressive stuff to women in this world from a misogynistic vantage point or without extreme attentiveness to what the woman is truly wanting is very quickly identified and ostracised.

The challenge of it becoming normalised within porn and adopted by idiots who think they'll just 'give it a go', or becoming the normal expectation for sex for teenagers and women and girls feeling pressured into it is real and terrible. In this world, there is no such female empowerment, no careful vetting of partners for their competence, no educating or boundaries around safety, and yes seems primarily male-led. I think there needs to be major action to solve the problems of this second situation.... but it doesn't help to mix it with ill-informed judgements of the experienced bdsm world.

It really is very similar to dangerous sports. Take bungee jumping. Might not be everybody's cup of tea to do, but when done within professional level boundaries by experienced people with a trusted team, everybody will normally end up happy. But when folk decide to get the elastic from their mum's sewing kit and head out to a bridge at night after a few pints, that is a nightmare waiting to happen.

The problem I see with this type of thread IF IT IS REAL is it invites pervs who either eat up the responses with glee or post with why the love it or worse get a kick out of why others would hate it.

Anyone involved needs to know the risks. Obviously.

Yes, men need to know the risks as mostly chokers, but of course there are some men who may be chokees. It's unlikely they're going to be strangled to death by a woman with her bare hands though and I'd hope people would understand the danger of ligatures.

Disclaimer, have only read half the thread and want to jump in now as don't have time to read further.

As a doctor, academic researcher, and someone involved in this area, just a few rather important things to clear up.

1. Choking is when there is an internal obstruction of the airway, like with food. This thread is about strangulation. It's important to use the right words. I worry that 'choking' as used in this context minimises the act.
2. There is no safe way to strangle. There is a lot of potentially fatal misinformation on the internet, including in BDSM communities, which advises avoiding the windpipe and pressing down either side. This is where the carotid arteries are, and also the jugular. Obstruction of these vital bits of plumbing can cause brain damage in seconds, and with minimal pressure (less than opening a ringpull can). Tears to the carotid arteries due to that pressure can also lead to delayed stroke when clots become dislodged. This can happen days/weeks after the event, so often the dots are not joined. There is growing evidence that strangulation may actually be the second most common cause of stroke in women under 40.
3. Similarly, use of safe words and gestures is unreliable. In the notorious Red Wing studies in the 1940s, prisoners and psychiatric inpatients were fitted with mechanical strangulation cuffs, all of which had a release button. Not a single one pressed the button before losing consciousness. They talked about forgetting they could do it, or wanting to but not being able to do it. This is due to hypoxia (lack of oxygenated blood to the brain) resulting in loss of function in the hippocampus (memory area) and frontal lobes, leading to dyspraxia (difficulty with voluntary movement).
4. Non-fatal strangulation (which is what this is) is now illegal, following the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act, carrying with it a custodial sentence. Consent to rough sex is not a defence, and this is now written into statute. This change happened because the inherent danger of the act, regardless of context, has been recognised.
5. Whilst, in general, I completely agree that each to their own, privacy of the bedroom etc etc...I don't think people are fully informed who are partaking in this (see above). I also worry, as other posters have said, about the growing normalisation of the act. The majority of women under 24 will now have been strangled during sex. So 'normal' is it that it is happening in people's first sexual encounter, as young as 12, and sometimes even before sex as part of heavy petting. Although most people do it with a regular partner, 1/5 in a recent study reported doing it with someone they had met that day, ie casual sex. There have been recent brain imaging studies looking at students who are regularly strangled vs those who aren't, which showed brain changes, including in the frontal lobes, which don't mature until our mid 20s. This has the potential to alter brain development. Another study showed a significant association between being regularly strangled during sex and mental health, with those who had done it >5 times twice as likely to have depression and anxiety.

Non-fatal strangulation (which is what this is) is now illegal, following the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act, carrying with it a custodial sentence. Consent to rough sex is not a defence, and this is now written into statute. This change happened because the inherent danger of the act, regardless of context, has been recognised.

Non-fatal non-consensual strangulation is now a statutory offence (it was always an offence; it’s been codified). Consent to rough sex has never been a defence and isn’t now. Nothing has changed in that respect.

Whilst I am thrilled that women are able to express their preferences and feel powerful during sex, instead of the centuries of shame, it is worrying that the rise of this type of sex has become more prevalent at exactly the same time as the rise in very prolific and dangerous pornography. The more men feel able to do this to women “because they like it” the more women will be hurt and killed. The more women who do not have boundaries will be coerced into violent sexual acts that could injure them and potentially kill them. So please enjoy your consensual sex with partners you say you love and trust but please try to see that normalising it might be very dangerous to other women at the mercy of violent men. They get off the rapes and DV easy enough let’s not go back to the “she was asking for it” defence of not too long ago.

i find the idea of jumping into bed with a stranger horrifying. Total Ick, and anyone trying to get me into bed in that fashion gets immediately given very short shrift.

Why would i sleep with a stranger who doesn't know how to make sex fun?

The conversations around sex are a huge part of my partner vetting process, they're sexy conversations, usually done over the phone or messenger, its a slow ramping up of conversation, turning each other on, so by the time you get there in person, you're so in-to the idea of actually having sex with them its a thrill to get to do some of the stuff you've spent weeks talking about.

I remember my friends pulling guys in club and going home with them and being absolutely revolted by the idea. No-one is getting so much as a hand on me without taking the time to get to know how i tick first.

Non-fatal non-consensual strangulation is now a statutory offence

It's worth reading the wording in the Act. Consent is irrelevant if harm has occurred, or the person doing the strangling is deemed reckless as to whether harm would occur. As per my points above, there is no way of guaranteeing harm will not occur.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/17/section/70

Also, yes it always was an offence, but was being (wrongly) tried as common assault, sent to Magistrates, or people were having to prove serious harm. The recent Court of Appeal case makes clear now that harm doesn't have to be evidenced - there is enough inherent in the act itself.

Consent to rough sex has never been a defence and isn’t now.

You are again being pedantic about the wording. In the press and in Parliament "the rough sex defence" is characterised as being a situation where a man kills a woman through a violent act, usually strangulation, and claims it was consensual. You are completely missing the point. I get that you don't agree that courts don't always make the best decision. The offence was added to the Domestic Abuse bill based on the campaigning and lobbying of feminists, like the Centre for Women's Justice and We Can't Consent to This, a campaign group that started out here on Mumsnet.

It's worth reading the wording in the Act. Consent is irrelevant if harm has occurred, or the person doing the strangling is deemed reckless as to whether harm would occur. As per my points above, there is no way of guaranteeing harm will not occur.

YY. It is always a reckless act.

Thank you for that, @stinkingbishop. I am absolutely horrified to learn that this practice is reliably believed to be causing strokes in young women. Add this to the big increase in serious injuries caused by anal sex and I am just incredulous that this is all so normalised. Porn has a lot to answer for.

Thank you @stinkingbishop at 17.42. Fascinating stuff. The dangers of choking/strangulation sex are many, and are devastating, and the normalising of it from some posters on here makes me sick to my stomach, and frankly, fucking furious!

The 'I love being choked and I love anal' posters won't admit that any of what you have said is true though. They are too busy carping on about how cool and edgy they are with their oh-so-exciting 'rough sex!'

Whilst the rest of us boring frigid dames just do our vanilla sex - with the lights out, with our bra still on, and with our eyes closed, just lying there, always missionary position, and with it over in 27 seconds.

.

And this person went on to say in a later post that her partner pressed a little too hard and she ended up seeing stars. What that means is that she was on the brink of blacking out and could have experienced brain damage as a result. Strangling outside consensual sex is considered incredibly dangerous and a sign that the perpetrator may have murderous impulses. Why is it different during sex just because a woman says she agreed to it.

This. It's a story as old as time - women participating in their own destruction.

At an individual level I would assume some kind of trauma history (and I'm familiar with the BDSM scene through friends) and while I might wish they would explore it all in therapy, I have no say so.

But the problem is that it's no longer niche but mainstream in a half-assed, uneducated way. The expectations of women have fallen so low that it seems...

• 'normal' to be choked or asked to do anal or be deep throated till gagging point
• 'normal' to be shamed for saying no (called vanilla which is the new frigid)
• 'normal' to be told not to 'kink shame' absolute freaks who 100% need to be shamed

THIS NORMALISATION PUTS ALL WOMEN AT RISK, ESPECIALLY YOUNG AND VULNERABLE WOMEN.

And yes I'm shouting it because I'm so tired of the individual posts about how there's no harm in it. I sometimes can't believe how completely blind people are beyond their own individual experience.

Are you still going? I'm one of the posters you mention... I understand that what I like to do in the privacy of my own bedroom may have increased risks, but they are risks to me and ones I'm willing to take, not risks to you or not anybody else. I have never once tried to make out that I am cool or edgy or that anybody else needs to also participate in what I enjoy. Believe it or not I probably exact my preference a couple of times a year only, I quite like 'vanilla' sex as well

There are certain specific modes of killing where the motive is already irrelevant in the eyes of the law. Causing death by dangerous driving is one of them.

I would welcome specific offences of causing death or injury through strangulation that disregard whether the strangler's intent was to kill or maim. He might not have meant to kill her, but he meant to put his hands around her neck, and that's all the intent there needs to be to prove that he recklessly and purposely put her life at risk for no justifiable reason.

Fabulous post and I'm as guilty as others of saying choked not strangled. Strangulation just doesn't sound as sexy.

I just remembered that earlier this year I saw a group of young people playing around in the street. One of the boys had a girl in a headlock. I was horrified but they all thought it was just a bit of fun. It’s bloody horrendous. I want the teen girls I am close with to find loving partners in the future not this aggressive misogyny.

Following on from this I don’t want to sidetrack but as a survivor of DV I have always thought that DV should be viewed as attempted murder.

Brilliant post. Thank you! 👏

The Act (using the DAA section numbering) allows for consent (s.75A(2)) but consent does not apply where serious harm has been caused (s.75A(3)). Intent or recklessness must be shown, but both depend on a finding of serious harm - see “and” at the end of s.75A(3)).

Non-consensual, non-fatal strangulation is an offence (always was). Consensual non-fatal strangulation requires serious harm and intent or recklessness as to serious harm - also always an offence, but (very sensibly codified and clarified).

What is the Court of Appeal case?

OMG that's awful.