Strangulation during sex is not kinky - it's dangerous and misogynistic
For feminist campaigners against domestic and sexual violence, it is no surprise that a recent Government review has found that online pornography that features choking is affecting the sexual practices of young people.
The report by Baroness Bertin, entitled 'Creating a Safer World – the Challenge of Regulating Online Pornography', states that: 'Non-fatal strangulation (NFS) or 'choking' sex is perhaps the starkest example of where online violent pornography has changed 'offline' behaviour.'
When I first started looking at pornography, as a young feminist determined to understand what I was campaigning against, it ranged from 'soft' Page 3 images to the infamous cover image of Hustler Magazine where a woman is being put head first through a meat grinder.
Those images seem quaint today. Gone are the days of the ripped plumber coming to fix the washing machine who is greeted by the housewife in a negligée. The world of contemporary online pornography is more violent and extreme. And it is not just passively consumed; it also drives sexual fantasies and practices. Its ready accessibility to young boys and girls, moreover, means that it also passes for sex education.
This month the Institute for Addressing Strangulation (IFAS) received Home Office funding to conduct a survey of 2,344 UK-based adults. It found that half of those who had experienced strangulation said they had consented. 17 per cent said they had not. A whopping 38 per cent of the women respondents aged 18-39 had been choked during sex.
Strangulation as a sex kink has even entered popular culture. Just look at the lyrics of Jack Harlow's 2023 number one hit 'Lovin On Me': 'I'm vanilla, baby/ I'll choke you, but I ain't no killa, baby'.
Perpetrators who choke their partners are seven times more likely to kill them. Strangulation is more than a precursor to homicide – it is also a predictor. But whether he stops in time or not, permanent damage has often been done.
Some women have died weeks later due to internal injuries. Others suffer from traumatic brain injury, significant memory loss, miscarriage, seizures and changes in mood or personality that lead to agitation and hypervigilance.
There have long been calls to decriminalise serious acts of violence on the basis of 'consent'. In 1990, 16 gay men were convicted following the 'Operation Spanner' police investigation. Police uncovered a group of sado-masochistic gay men who were inflicting actual bodily harm on each other. These men (and their supporters) campaigned against this criminalisation on the grounds that it was all consensual.
Feminists, including myself, had argued that this argument was very dangerous because one defence commonly used by domestic abusers is that their victims had consented to 'rough sex'.
Feminist campaign group We Can't Consent To This found that between 1996 and 2016 there was a tenfold increase in 'rough sex' claims used by men to defend themselves after killing a female partner in bed. Between November 2019 and March 2020, UK courts heard of 15 female victims where 'rough sex' claims were made.
The latest Femicide Census shows that 550 (27 per cent) of the 2,000 women killed in the UK since 2014 were victims of strangulation.
The invocation of 'consent' is nonsense. Strangulation kills. The pornography that pedals the message that women enjoy being choked during sex is insidious. It is a dangerous and misogynistic practice. This issue is not about 'freedom' or 'choice'. It is about the safety of women.
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