Hardcore porn, choking and rape: UK universities left to tackle rising tide of sexual assaults

[DerekFaker]

In The Observer today. Shocking stuff. After all the gains from feminism, we seem to be going backwards. What can we do?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/17/hardcore-porn-choking-and-universities-left-to-tackle-rising-tide-of-sexual-assaults

I was just reading this. On one hand, glad that it seems to be an issue that is being picked up on. On the other, the bit about the perpetrators bringing in lawyers and the victims being completely blindsided just highlight the power differential in this.

I don't know about mandatory consent workshops for students - in theory sounds good but it's hardly going to be a quick fix, and a poor or misguided trainer (as we have seen, these things aren't regulated and anyone can set up as an "expert") could make things worse.

Absolutely horrifying but depressingly not surprising. I've been following Ellie Wilson's case (who is mentioned in the article) - it's shocking how poorly the University of Edinburgh dealt with her rapist transferring to their University.

Yes, hardcore violent porn is a problem (and I just wished the industry would stop it), but are these the same universities that promote "sex work is real work" and tell girls to start selling sex (either OnlyFans, stripping or prostitution) to fund their education?

I suspect as a society we are reaching the confluence of several different streams (and outcomes) of recent social trends and assumptions about men, women, sex, sexuality, equality and so on.

The Grauniad trying to be all non judgemental and not link this to porn or BDSM

I'm adding a Trigger Warning even if they won't

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/sep/02/i-think-its-natural-why-has-sexual-choking-become-so-prevalent-among-young-people

It really isn’t that long ago that men who found strangling women sexually arousing were described as “disturbed” “terrifying” and similar. We knew that men who did this are extremely dangerous all women, especially their partners, and that they belonged in jail- even when they said “she liked it” and pulled the bemused schtick we read in that article.

Just because they think they’re great, doesn’t mean we have to accept it. Those men are a hazard to all near them and we should not be minimizing or getting matey with them. Grotesque.

The graun lists "death and brain damage" as risks in the sub header and then decides to end this piece with

"People should be able to engage in whatever they want to do, if it’s consensual and talked-through and everybody wants to do it and it’s feeling good for people,” Douglas says. We should stay out of people’s private lives, she says. “But I think strangulation is a rather particular thing." "

Also trying to separate it out from "nice" kink stuff by calling that "breath play"

I read “But I think strangulation is a rather particular thing." as meaning it should be an exception to the general policy of letting people do whatever they want in private.

From the Guardian report:
“The vast majority of young men I’ve worked with in this group start to question their actions by the end,” he says. “You see them realise that their whole life could be derailed because they are making bad decisions.”

So, only selfishness gets them to rethink.
I guess that's better than nothing. 😒

It's unbelievably sad that we've got to this point. All the women and girls who've been killed and will be killed because it's been decided—by moneymaking male pornographers— that abusive strangulation and emulating murder (that's what it is, after all) is super edgy and the height of sexiness.

And I don't think "kink" is remotely cool. I think it's pretty pathetic.

Yes

Lives destroyed to make some men rich. The story of capitalism really.

I've never understood how kink is seen as cool either. I mean, I couldn't care less what consenting adults do as long as it doesn't perpetuate abusive power imbalances re sex, race, age etc. but how is it considered cool to need so many extras in order to get off? How is it considered cool to find objects more sexually arousing than the body of the person you're fucking? I'm not saying it's inherently bad or wrong (abusive shit notwithstanding). But I can't fathom it as cool.

Death play, more like.

Trigger Warning
I followed the link in the article to the "choke me daddy" meme.
That is the most disturbing research paper I have ever read. It says that a recent national survey in the UK found that 54% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said they had been choked during sex. In a US survey 1 in 3 women said their most recent sexual experience included choking. Did I read that right?
My first question is: are these surveys representing a small section of the population?
The phrase "don't have the sense they were born with" springs to mind.
The idea that asking to be choked is "sexually liberated" reflects what I see as a growing / cultivated stigma around ideas of modesty, restraint, decency. For instance, girls tell me they have to hike their skirt hems up to their buttocks so as not to look like nuns. Except in the case of choking it's as if they would rather risk death than be regarded as prudish.
I just feel like there's a calculated effort to spread a belief that it's normal for young women to ask to be choked, so that gullible/ vulnerable women can be coerced into it.

This. ⬆️.

I think that's why some people now started to identify as "aromantic" or "demi sexual" as it's the only way you are accepted and not called out for having "vanilla" sex lives

The Guardian article (the one by Jane Hone) is horrific. There are two things that need to be made clear: one is that choking is extremely dangerous. The other is that the practice is almost always an exercise in male dominance. It’s hard to believe that the Guardian is so out of touch with basic sense and decency that they would run an article like this.

They are careful to find a woman who does it to her male partners because She Empowered

Except in the case of choking it's as if they would rather risk death than be regarded as prudish. I just feel like there's a calculated effort to spread a belief that it's normal for young women to ask to be choked, so that gullible/ vulnerable women can be coerced into it.

Yes there’s definitely a calculated effort to normalise unacceptable behaviour but let’s not stray into the territory of victim blaming. And it’s not just gullible or vulnerable women. It’s all women and men who are being told ‘this is normal’.

This is a concerted effort by a particular cohort of men in positions of power to constantly push norms and boundaries into increasingly dangerous areas. This rapid expansion of extreme pornography into everyone’s daily life is thanks to the internet, tech bros, and slow, weak legislation. This is the profit motive in action. There’s also a leaking of pornography and fetish into films and tv by mercenary studios and misogynistic young screen writers. Look at the likes of Euphoria. Or the constant rape themes. I’m so sick of ‘cutting edge’ indoctrination of young people into an host of unhealthy and unacceptable boundary transgressions. Also due to the profit motive.

Moreover these concerted efforts, by some men, harm young men as well as harming women. God we really need a (modified) modern day Mary Whitehouse.

This "Dear Jane" column a couple of weeks ago infuriated me.
Just another planted "problem" trying to indoctrinate the masses that strangulation in sex is normal and fun if you don't agree you are a horrid mean judgemental prude.
Truly sickening.

archive.ph/2024.08.21-113531/www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13758787/DEAR-JANE-secret-kink-women.html

It ends:

" A lack of information is likely what's causing your friends to think that your kink is not just dangerous, but a sign of abuse.
Given this, look to educate yourself, and then consider ways you can help educate your friends, if only to reassure them you are in safe hands.
After that, I would think twice about who you share such intimate sexual information with in the future – and I would avoid raising the topic with your friends again until they demonstrate that they're capable of genuine curiosity without judgment."

What ignorant judgemental meanies we are.

I think hard-core porn available everywhere and acceptable everywhere is to blame. I won't be happy until its illegal.In nearly every hardcore porn offering the women are shown as victims. As in its ok to choke and double penetrate their every orifice. Women think its normal to go about with puffer fish lips and inflated boobs and bums.
It's destroying whole generations.

I don't engage in any 'kinks', but I do think from having friends who do that there is a stark difference between consenting adults in a long term relationship educating themselves on the risks and dangers and making informed decisions about whether to include this in their sex life, and the mainstream normalisation of it. Of course for some women its a form of abuse, so I have no issue with it being condemned and don't think people should be called out for criticising this violent act just because a small minority are sensible.

Young men watching porn, thinking it's normal and carrying it out with no thought to the risks (and how to mitigate them). Especially on say a one night stand where there's no connection to the other as a person. Because the risk is from men isn't it, even if the women 'consent' (I don't believe many know the full risks because it's become so mainstream that many think it's par for the course) they aren't the ones in control when being strangled. The power imbalance means many will probably struggle to say no and/or physically move the man off.

That is the most disturbing research paper I have ever read. It says that a recent national survey in the UK found that 54% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said they had been choked during sex. In a US survey 1 in 3 women said their most recent sexual experience included choking. Did I read that right?
My first question is: are these surveys representing a small section of the population?

Haven't read that research paper nor OP's link (yet), but I read this Australian article in July: https://www.smh.com.au/national/sexual-strangulation-can-mean-minutes-to-death-yet-half-of-young-people-do-it-20240620-p5jni9.html

There they have this stat: Known as sexual “choking”, the practice has taken off because it is mainstreamed in contemporary pornography, researchers say, but new national data shows it is so widespread that 57 per cent of those aged 18 to 35 have been strangled during sex at least once.

More than half (51 per cent) had strangled a partner during sex, according to a study of 4702 young people around Australia by the University of Melbourne Law School and the University of Queensland.

Close to one-third of those who had been strangled by a sexual partner were aged between 19 and 21 when it first happened. Respondents who had been strangled had it done an average of five times, by three partners, the research, published on Tuesday in Archives of Sexual Behavior, found.

I think the Guardian is of the sort of feminist mind-set whereby 'equality' really means 'no difference', and whereby women are encouraged to merge into a male model of behaviour, attitude, tendency, preference etc.

Sheila Jeffreys said that most 'innovations' in heterosexual porn stem from gay, male porn.

It’s fucking enraging because this shitty, dangerous act that denigrates and damages women has been forced onto mainstream consciousness by a small coterie of women-hating men conveniently making money out of their hatred. It serves them and absolutely no one else. Any ‘consenting’ woman does not understand the risks and this practice is, IMO, one short step away from snuff films. It is appalling.

@Toothrush wrote: consenting adults in a long term relationship educating themselves on the risks and dangers and making informed decisions about whether to include this in their sex life
There. Right there is normalisation. It's not okay. Ever. Not in long-term relationship or one night stands or sex work or ever.
Sex is for making love. Danger isnt love.