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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:
Benjispruce · 27/07/2019 11:16

Says it all!

FannyCann · 27/07/2019 11:44

Boundaries work both ways. I see no reason to choke a woman because she asks for it. How about a discussion of the dangers and pointing out that one doesn't want to take the risk of causing physical harm and in any case it's not something one want me to do?
Seems quite straightforward to me. Wanting to give mutual pleasure also means being allowed not to do things that make one uncomfortable surely?

AnneElliott · 27/07/2019 11:49

I do have difficulty with the concept of consent here. It's been a while since I did law, but I'd understood that the case of Brown determined that no one could consent to assault?

I really don't see therefore how choking can be acceptable even if there are women claiming to like it?

FannyCann · 27/07/2019 12:02

Sorry, edit fail "not something one wants to do"

Agree AnneElliott. I think this has been raised quite a few times on various threads, not sure anyone has a satisfactory answer.

Lamahaha maybe we should don our slippers and slink off to oldies corner? Grin

ArranUpsideDown · 27/07/2019 13:50

I really don't see therefore how choking can be acceptable

I posted some clinical papers upthread that indicate the likelihood of injury relating to strangulation seems to be high - even if it's not manifestly apparent.

There may be a nuanced argument around what is meant by recreational choking v. strangulation but...tbh, it's notable that any short term compression on the carotid can result in severe consequences.

ThePurported · 27/07/2019 14:44

You're right Anne, of course consent to choking isn't recognised in law, but in that article there are at least two cases where the CPS determined that 'rough sex' and the woman's past behaviour could be used as a defence and went for manslaughter rather than murder. When men can murder their partners and get away with just manslaughter and four years by committing the murder during sex and arguing that their partner enjoyed being choked, consent is accepted as a defence in practice.

As for women who rock up on a thread about murdered women and the sex game gone wrong defence and go 'I love dangerous sex, me', I don't know whether it's a special level of thick or some warped form of reverse prudishness, but fgs think about what you're saying and where. This isn't about your enjoyment. You can experience pleasure hanging from a belt off a door, but you wouldn't advocate that practice on a public website, would you. (Because if your contribution to the topic is 'well I like it', you are advocating it.)

And men who are uncomfortable with choking but do it anyway: just don't fucking do it. Presumably you wouldn't stub a cigarette out on a woman's flesh if she asked for it, so why would you choke her? Because it's so common in porn?

Thank you Fiona Mackenzie and everyone else shining a light on this Flowers

YesQueen · 27/07/2019 14:55

Probably should NC but never mind
As someone who has taken part in it, choking someone to death "by accident" is bullshit. There is exactly one person I trust to put her hand on my neck and that's a female
I mean even if you decided you had read about it and wanted to try it mutually, you would bloody know if the other person is dying Angry
In my head I suspect it's men thinking they want to try it/the woman will "love it"/or just that they want to do it, no discussion takes place and they don't give a fuck what happens to the woman
It's crazy

Trexical · 27/07/2019 14:57

Not sure if this has already been shared but another article highlighting the dangers
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/06/how-porn-affecting-choking-during-sex/592375/

I feel we need a national educational campaign in schools as this could literally save lives

womaninthedark · 27/07/2019 16:07

My thoughts often spill out as doggerel.

Say No
.
No, you don’t have to take it up the bum
No, you don’t have to swallow everyman’s cum
No, it’s not ok for his hands to tighten round your neck
And you don’t need a few slaps so you can enjoy it
He’s not joking? What the heck?
His dungeon in his camper van, tell him it’s not for you
And he can leave his phone outside, you’re no-one’s pay-per-view
The con of the ‘cool girlfriend’ is nothing but abuse
If he thinks he can insist, cut the bastard loose
His friend cannot join in nor can he stand and watch
You don’t do it just to help him sleep, you’re not his wank-sock
His other girlfriends do it, and all his friends’ girls too?
Fine, that’s their choice but listen, love, it’s not a choice for you
You came into this world beloved, every cell more precious than gold
Your being and your beauty are wondrous to behold
It’s an honour for those bastards just to see you walking by
Don’t ever let them hurt you just because you’re socialised
To accept any crap men give you, any cruelty, any lie
Keep your dignity, your boundaries, your honour true to you
And never think you must do something you didn’t choose
No, he doesn’t get last word
No, you don’t have to please him
No, you’re not his sex toy
No, you didn’t tease him
If he’s a decent person and
Accepts that you are, too
Negotiate mutual pleasure
Do what you want to do
But don’t ignore the little voice or doubt or discontent
The instinct for survival that tells you this isn’t how it’s meant
To be, and so learn this word and practise it
No. No. No. No. No.

WITD 27/7/19

Goosefoot · 27/07/2019 16:09

But none of the women on this thread who have shared the details of the sexual predelictions have shown the slightest desire to ask that question. They have instead been at pains to simply say that what they 'consent' to isn't the bad kind of strangulation. Cursory acknowledgement that it might be bad in some cases if the woman 'doesn't consent' is not the same thing as subjecting your submission to open abuse to serious analysis.

No, they didn't, but I don't think every individual post has to. They were specific responses to certain people claiming again and again that no women really like such things. And I think at least one of the posters seemed interested in considering the wider implications, was reading for that reason, but didn't have anything to contribute about that herself.

And yet there are still some posters taking that approach, that it is impossible, that they are fooling themselves, or whatever. Personally I suspect while more extreme stuff probably relates in part to trauma, not all of the lesser stuff does does, it has more to do with physical sensations which are perceived differently when people are sexually aroused.

Goosefoot · 27/07/2019 16:22

Not once was oral sex suggested or alluded to. I had never heard of it.

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.

And TBH I would say most women my age would still say that, including ones who are critical of anal and all the rest of it, it seems to be accepted as vanilla without a thought because they have always accepted it.

Goosefoot · 27/07/2019 16:28

but I'd understood that the case of Brown determined that no one could consent to assault? I really don't see therefore how choking can be acceptable even if there are women claiming to like it?

I also understood that to be the case and I think the OP article said so as well.

I wonder if it comes down to drawing a line as to what is going on? Hair pulling could be assault, but then it might not be if it's not really meant to hurt the person and not meant to be done very hard, and they say it is ok. What counts as pretending and what is the real thing?

I would have thought though barring very weird circumstances if someone is killed or actually beaten it's clearly no longer "pretend".

ChiaraRimini · 27/07/2019 18:49

I think 50 Shades of Grey has done immense amounts of harm TBH. It has normalised "BDSM" behaviour and brought it into popular discourse in a way which has propagates the belief that a woman can have a happy ever after with a man who stalks her and is violent towards her.
I am well aware that the "BDSM community" has disowned the book but that does not change the fact that it has affected peoples attitudes. The "rough sex" defence has only emerged in very recent years since that book came out.

youkiddingme · 28/07/2019 01:10

I don't know if this is here already and I missed it but I'm gobsmacked and so so sad about this.

fightthenewdrug.org/21-year-old-webcammer-dies-while-performing-dangerous-sex-act-for-client/

Finally, attempting to fulfill her client’s requests, Hope asphyxiated herself and did not recover. And the worst part? As she struggled to breathe and slowly died, Dangar watched his screen like it was a movie, making no move to call for help.

Livpool · 28/07/2019 01:25

This is genuinely awful.

I've never wanted to choke or be chocked (or known friends who are into it). Even if this is what you like - should we accept the word of your killer?! "Oh she loved it"

Extremes like this should not be acceptable as 'kink'

ElizabethMainwaring · 28/07/2019 03:35

Anyoldlabour, the journalist who shot a baboon was AA Gill.

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.

ISaySteadyOn · 28/07/2019 07:35

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

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!

Benjispruce · 28/07/2019 09:19

womaninthedark tweet that.

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:
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 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:
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!