Non fatal strangulation and choking during sex

[ArabellaScott]

Grim read.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62zwy0nex0o

I can’t understand why women are not absolutely and categorically refusing to have sex with men that do this. I absolutely appreciate the women don’t often get a choice the first time it happens, and that it should be men who stop being violent to women without being asked, but the fact is these men don’t give a shit about the women they are strangling, so women are going to have to be the ones who check before they have sex, are we using contraception and do you know you are not to strangle me? (Even though it’s illegal!)

recreational drugs, drink driving, driving without a seat belt etc etc, many women wouldn’t get into a car with a man who repeatedly did this with them in the car, yet are accepting strangulation!?!
Im absolutely furious that men do this, they don’t deserve a place in your bed.

If you reframe it from "kink shaming" to "stop normalising potentially damaging sex acts" then it becomes more useful.

You still get to have whatever it is that gets you off from having the blood flow to your brain restricted - no-one's going to police what you do in your own bedroom unless something goes wrong - and young people who are new to sex and don't have the tools to navigate the intricacies of how to calculate and minimise risk don't think that strangling someone is "normal".

Worth saying that, while the risk of death and injury is borne by the person being strangled, the risk of prosecution and life long guilt is borne by the person doing the strangling, so even if someone asks to be strangled, people should know that they can and should refuse to carry out any act on someone else if they don't like it. "My girlfriend/boyfriend said she/he liked it" isn't going to cut it if you press in the wrong place or it turns out she had a weakness in one of her blood vessels.

I’m 37. I’ve been with my husband for 14 years. Up until meeting him, I was very much socialised to believe porn sex and performative sex was good sex. My sex partners watched a huge variety of porn and it was part of their sexuality to attempt to reenact those acts. Strangulation, anal, hair pulling etc was becoming a normalised and an expected part of sex during this time 2003-20011.
When I met my husband, he was the first man who told me he didn’t watch porn.
I didn’t believe him of course but when we had sex it was a whole new experience. It was about intimacy and shared enjoyment. It was the first time sex hadn’t been about pushing boundaries and overcoming discomfort. I had my very first orgasm during sex with him.
I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have met him. I think I would have spent the rest of my life pretending I loved all the humiliation, pain and discomfort that men who watched porn thought was normal sex. All while never even having an orgasm.

Porn is ruining sex for generations of people.

What exactly is wrong with ‘vanilla sex’? Are we doing it wrong or repressed if we’re not hanging upside down from a chandelier, having a hand round our throats or throwing our keys on the table?

What's that?

Sadly, it DOES cut it. Men are getting away with murder by using this excuse.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46591150.amp

Same

@TENSsion no, I am definitely the one receiving pleasure from it - but I won't go into that detail for others' sake. I know that is absolutely shocking to some people that women can enjoy things like this, but I do.

And yes, I do feel completely safe with my husband, and other men I have had sex with prior to him. Conversations always happen beforehand and discussions take place during sex to make sure we're on the same page. I think this is going to be a largely controversial topic and people will have to end up agreeing to disagree. I am just very thankful that what my husband and I do in the bedroom is completely our choice, and I understand that just because I enjoy that doesn't mean someone else has to.

I do think that the person suggesting young women need to move away from casual sex is wrong though, goodness. It's the 21st century and women should be able to explore and enjoy their sex lives as they wish without shame attached, likewise those who only wish to do it in committed relationships/after marriage.

I'm another one in my 50s who has never experienced a partner requesting this. I would have seen it as an immediate red flag.

I also find it very sad that many women do not appreciate the dangers. My daughter has brain damage caused by a blood clot and various haemorrhages on the brain. This affects her every day. It's really not a game.

Strangulation. Fantasising about murdering their sexual partner while they orgasm.

“Breath play” is just a downplaying, twee term.

nothing! if anything it's the most sex-positive option! if someone needs bells and whistles, pain and degradation, a porn disseminated script to follow and so on, one questions if they really enjoy sex, or need all this unrelated nonsense to find some excitement.

This is not a purely gendered issue as many men - yes, straight men - prefer this being done to them. How many men have died from auto erotic asphyxiation gone wrong..?

You all act like there is no reason to do this beyond violence. It can be, factually, a pleasurable act. The same way that getting high is a pleasurable act. People also die terrible and needless deaths from getting high. Knowing that risk doesn’t stop drug use. I’m not saying there aren’t terrible risks. I’m not saying it is something I partake in myself. I am very happy in a relationship where my partner has no interest in this sort of activity. I do believe it can be a huge red flag, it can absolutely be an excuse for violence. I have no space for sexual aggression or misogyny.

If you speak to a dominatrix you will learn that men the world over prefer being at the physical mercy of their female sexual partner. What is your opinion on men who are into C&BT? Surely this can’t be a genuinely enjoyable act? And yet, the people who find it so will tell you it is.

Men and women both enjoy being asphyxiated because of the specific high it creates. Men with all their aggression will take advantage of this, yes. It is terrifying how normalised it has become, given the risks and the implications. Terrible, but you need to understand the reality.

Your husband orgasms to the fantasy of murdering you.

Think about that.

Exactly. I love jumping off rocks into the sea. But one day I will hit a rock and die. I will never know when.

why would anyone let someone put their hands round your throat. It is risky and dangerous and could end in death or worse, a vegetable state.

My DH would not be surprised to get a sharp knee to the balls if he tried this for a lark - we must stop normalising this creepy behaviour and educate our children to understand only sick men do this and only stupid women accept it.

I wonder what young men and women would make of the sex advice in the pre-Internet porn era.

It was largely about how to give your girlfriend absolutely shattering orgasms, and as many as possible.

Detailed instructions on how to find clitorises, G spots, erogenous zones, etc.

None of it involved slapping them, spitting on them, demanding anal sex or strangulation. All of which would appear to be in the service of the man, not the woman.

There is cutting off blood supply to the neck artery, and there is cutting off breath by pressure on the windpipe. Two different things, both covered by 'strangulation', but different. Hence 'breath play'.

I thought it was interesting that in the article, 'Amanda' said she did it not because she liked it, but because her boyfriend did, and that what she wanted from sex was for him to enjoy it. It was also mentioned that he wanted to do it because he'd seen it in porn.

Her pleasure wasn't mentioned at all. I'm late forties now, but when I was early 20's our conversations about boys focused on which boys were really good at oral sex. I didn't understand at the time quite how important it was that girls believed that their pleasure was important, or that we took it for granted that that was what we deserved. Now young women seem to have been groomed into believing that the most important thing is making sure the man has a good time, and in linking male pleasure to female suffering.

Where the hell did we go wrong. (yes, I know. It's internet porn).

I do not understand at all why anyone would want to do or allow this. Horrific.

Sadly, it's quite fashionable. However, I heard recently that it's likely to become illegal under the classification of sexual abuse.

There are different methods involved and different reasons and different risks for all of these things, but they are all risky and potentially very harmful, both because of the physiological effects and also because they risk providing cover for violent and abusive men.

I'd also argue that BDSM and kink can often have some problematic blind spots wrt women and misogyny, but that is a different kettle of fish.

Can only assume those people who claim they enjoy being strangled during sex and actively beg their partners for it are having sex with a lot of sadistic dim-wits. I would no more entertain the idea of breath-controlling throttling someone during sex than I would if they begged me to brand them with a hot poker.

Actually, I'd probably brand them with a poker BEFORE I'd throttle them. Being branded certainly won't be a nice feeling and it leaves a mark, but nobody was ever left in a persistent vegetative state from it or dead. As if any sane, sensible person would risk killing their sexual partner and going to jail for murder just because the victim supposedly begged for it.

If they like oxygen-free forms of sex that much, tell them to hold their own breath.

Yes. It used to be that the women's pleasure was paramount. And, in fact, women rated men on that basis.

Now, it appears, that the women get pleasure, only on the basis of his pleasure.

i'm sure there's a parallel with the self objectification of some women. Again, Internet based. Wanting men to want you sometimes appears as an end in itself. It actually just stops there.

I thought it was interesting that in the article, 'Amanda' said she did it not because she liked it, but because her boyfriend did, and that what she wanted from sex was for him to enjoy it. It was also mentioned that he wanted to do it because he'd seen it in porn.

Yes, when I see men claim online that most women ask them to do it, this is what I think of. Some women want to be seen as cool so say what they think men want to hear; or else the men are lying and just demanding stuff they've seen in porn.

Extreme BDSM has always had tensions about what one can and can't consent to. See also cannibalism, eunuchs, etc.

The problem as I see it is that this is generally understood as extreme BDSM, and it seems that choking and strangulation has become normalised as a sex act, without the awareness or information or education or research that may be usually involved, expected, or encouraged when people understand that they're entering into a risky and extreme situation.