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

[WomanDaresTo]

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.”

It's also possible to resist.

Any woman standing up publicly saying "I like it", knows she is offering up a defence for sadistic men who murdered the partners by strangling them.

Where is the solidarity with those murdered women?

It's not a good equivalence anyway.

Someone saying i like a bit of choking in my consensual trusted relationship in response to the news stories of dead women

Is a bit like saying i like sex in response to a rape story

How hard is it to actually strangle someone to death? They'd struggle wouldn't they, start to go blue. I mean, there would be clues, I'd have thought.

This is a great piece, and I think it's so important that these issues are being highlighted in mainstream media.

As a woman in my late twenties, I do think choking has become scarily mainstream- I have had sexual partners who've wanted to choke me or who've discussed the idea of choking who aren't interested in other (IMO) much safer aspects of BDSM, such as restraint and spanking (which are activities I, personally, genuinely enjoy). But it seems like nearly all men these days think choking and anal are fairly "normal" activities.

I think part of the problem with this is because it's seen as part of "normal" sex, people/men don't bother to research/think about how to do it safely as they would with other types of extreme sexual activity. I'm not sure there is a 100% safe way to choke someone, but there are probably ways to make it safer- e.g. having a system for the person being choked to instantly let the other person know they want the choking to stop. But a lot of people are just experimenting with something incredibly dangerous, and of course it's going to go wrong sometimes.

The same goes for anal too, actually, I think. I do have anal sex with partners, and I do enjoy it- but I am very clear on how I want things done to ensure it doesn't cause me pain/injury, including being "opened up" first and using lots of lube. Sometimes, when I explain this to partners, they become a lot less interested in the idea! The reality doesn't match up to the fantasy, I guess!

I do think there are probably two types of choker out there- people who've bought into the idea it "makes orgasms more intense", and people who get off on some level around the idea that they could kill their partner and are in complete control. In some ways, the first group are perhaps more dangerous because they often haven't acknowledged the risk of what they are doing!

I do wonder if there's a place for some kind of public information campaign around the risks of choking and very violent sex. I also wonder if there's a place for legislating around the content of porn- to perhaps ban the showing of acts that have a high likelyhood of resulting in harm or death.

There, I just judged and kink-shamed them. It's what I like.

Me too. Is there a rotten tomato emoji for throwing?

@Fraggling I think in most cases it must be done deliberately, but I can see how it's not impossible that "accidental" deaths could occur- I've heard a few stories from people about choking going wrong and I do think there are men doing this who haven't quite connected the dots between choking as a "sex act" and choking someone to death.

This isn't me excusing anyone- I just think the mainstreamness of choking now means people don't acknowledge how risky it can be.

“If blindfolds and role play have veered into vanilla territory, there are still plenty of sex moves … like choking,” suggests Women’s Healthh. “Breath play, the risque new sex practice gripping millennials,” offers Flaree. On elitedaily.com, one sex educator was quoted as saying anyone stuck in a sex rut could read up on “how to choke your partner safely””*.

I rarely buy women's magazines and had no idea they were recommending this sort of thing. This really needs calling out.

"people/men don't bother to research/think about how to do it safely"

There isn't a safe way to do it. It's incredibly dangerous. Not only does it cut off the air supply but it can cut off the blood supply through the carotid artery to the brain. Death is much quicker with the latter.

" I do think there are men doing this who haven't quite connected the dots between choking as a "sex act" and choking someone to death."

The old "they don't mean it defence". They do mean it and they know what they are doing. It's why it's so exciting for them.

The descriptions of people's sex lives on a thread about women who have been sadistically sexually murdered are sickening. What is wrong with you?

Yes throttling during sex isn’t new abdcits been practiced for years.

The weird thing is it used to be that the lack of oxygen enhanced the orgasm for the person being throttled - think autoerotic asphyxiation, Michael Hutchence Etc sbdcit ended badly sometimes for the person doing it to themself - almost always a man.

It’s somehow flipped so that the man doing it to someone else is what enhances the orgasm and it’s women dying. So the physiological aspects of the lack of oxygen are not what these men are getting off on.

Do it to yourself abd take the risk if you must but don’t risk my friend/daughter/colleague.

I once read a completely shocking and to me, horrible article in the Guardian, where one of their collumists described where he went to Africa to hunt and shoot a wild ape, because that is the closest you could get to killing a person without being charged with murder.
Sick isn't it?
I would compare that to the depraved thrill which some psychotic person gets, from nearly choking to death someone they "love", simply to satisfy their sexual desires.

I find the claim that men don't know strangling can kill, a bit odd, tbh.

Men, as a class, get a fuckton of leeway / benefit of the doubt, don't they.

Women are trained to say they like the stuff that men like to do to them. Nowadays it involves women being hurt and women have to say they like it. Do we really believe that women are naturally masochistic, to act as a foil to men's sadism?

Oh, I think that is totally true. And personally I have found that it's not always easy to draw lines, even in a good relationship, because you are inclined to understand that you and your partner won't always enjoy quite the same things, or with younger women often they don't really know what they like, they are trying to figure it out.

I think that is actually a good reason to be cautious around sexual fads, but I think for many people that is just a bridge too far, and it's also not easy to figure out where to draw the line there. People have a hard time understanding even that the risks involved could be a reason to impinge on what people do freely.

But I think there really are some people who enjoy it. Not "being chocked near to death" because I think that's not generally what they are thinking of. And if you tell them they don't like it when they know they do, they stop listening.

Especially for a lot of young people, they have been taught two things that they use to decide is a sexual act is ok. One is that you don't worry about what other people do in the bedroom, it is NOYB. The other is it must be conventual. And that is about it. When you try and talk about this you have to introduce new ideas, and that makes it really difficult, people are resistant to adding new first principles.

So IMO we might as well make it simple, not argue with people's perceptions of enjoyment, and not worry too much about the bits that are not as easy to agree about.

@Erythronium

I think that's a completely unfair thing to say- I'm absolutely not the jury member who would let a man get away with this.

And I fully accept there's not a safe way to choke someone, I agree that was probably a poor way to phrase it.

But equally, there are so many people (men and women) who see choking as part of mainstream sex these days, and really don't consider the risks at all- and will do it, for example, when drunk, which to me seems like they're compounding the risks. There are so many people who see this as part of normal sex, in a way that they actually don't see other activities as a part of normal sex.

I absolutely think that men who kill this way should always be charged with murder and "she consented to it" is not a defence. I just also think that it's important to make people really aware of the risks and try to "de-normalise it".

Of course men know that strangling can kill, but I think porn has persuaded a lot of men in their 20s that choking during sex isn't the same as strangling and doesn't carry risks and makes sex more pleasurable.

I think maybe actually some people on this thread just have no idea how mainstream this idea is.

I bet these men strangling women (let's not call it choking) have no idea where the clitoris is. It's not sex, it's physical abuse.

"And if you tell them they don't like it when they know they do, they stop listening.'

And other people start listening because they're hearing something that they might not have heard anywhere else. So who do we cater to?

Or perhaps we don't cater to anyone. Perhaps we speak our truths and let other people be responsible for their own reactions. I'm not tailoring my opinions to suit anyone apart from myself. That's the honest way to conduct a discussion.

I think maybe actually some people on this thread just have no idea how mainstream this idea is.

You'd be wrong about that.

I think you have no idea how much some men hate women and how they like to express it sexually. That's the bit you're missing.

Goosefoot "It's a fad because of increased exposure. You could ask the same thing about a lot of sex practices, they become popularised somehow, in the public eye, so a certain number of people enjoy them. It probably appeals to the same people who like other rough sex, hair pulling or that sort of thing."

I can't say anything about exposure, but it's something I have always liked- but not been able to engage in unless I completely trust my partner- not something that I've tried because of hearing about it. Exactly the opposite in fact. I have only very recently come to know that what I enjoy classes as choking- in my mind, it's not comparable.

Wanting my partner to do it is a sign to me of how much I trust them. Yes, hair pulling and rough sex are also things that I enjoy- but I also enjoy soft, slow, tender etc as well. But it's not about breath play- I couldn't do that- it does not restrict me at all- and I now have the confidence to say that if I ever felt even the tiniest bit uncomfortable during sex, that there would not only be no more of that type of sex, but no more of any kind of sex.

Believe me, this is nothing like the coerced sex I have had in the past even though that was never rough by any standard. I know my body and I know my partner and he would never do anything even vaguely rough unless it was entirely led by me.

I completely get that it can be dangerous, but all sex can.

Stop fucking talking about your sex lives on a thread about how women have been killed by men who claimed they liked this, bolstered by women like you publicly declaiming you like it too.

This is the feminism board, where is your solidarity with these women who died? You are literally giving murderers a defense. Is your orgasm really that important?

It's performative. It has to be spoken about publicly so other people know. It's an act.

I completely get the severity of those cases, but I can't see how what I do is comparable, and why it should be outlawed. In my head it's the same as saying all sex should be banned because rapes happen- it just doesn't feel proportionate.

I'm not defending those who do it with violence as the motivating force, I just don't feel that it's the same thing. I only want to understand the position better- not in any way belittle it.

'I completely get that it can be dangerous, but all sex can.'

???

What are you counting as dangerous here?

Your average het man is not in much danger in a sexual encounter with a woman, surely?

Would be interested in understanding your point better, as 'all sex can be dangerous' feels like a dismissal of a lot of the real life population level differences between men and women, girls and boys in terms of strength, power dynamics, expectations etc.

I only responded because of comments implying that it shouldn't be allowed to happen at all, under any circumstances- not those sort of cases. Please don't try to put words in my mouth to suggest otherwise. Like I say, that response is not proportionate. As I said before, it is of course wrong in every case where violence is a motivator.

'why it should be outlawed'

??

No one has said that choking should be illegal between consenting couples in private?

Is this a derail.