https://www.vice.com/en/article/choking-during-sex/
More Than 50% Of Young Adults Have Tried Choking During Sex. Scapegoating Porn Is Not The Answer.
Strangulation is, as the survey’s researchers point out, a high-risk activity. In many cases, the damage strangulation can cause to someone may not be clear or obvious externally. Choking during sex can encompass a wide range of behaviours across what is known in bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism (BDSM) communities as “breath play”. While it is dangerous, and is considered so in the BDSM community, it has become somewhat mainstream, through media: film, television, and memes.
It’s part of a slew of “rough sex” practices commonly seen in porn – the survey found 61% of respondents said they first heard about sexual strangulation there. But, survey respondents also reported discovering sexual strangulation through other sources, like through movies (40%), friends (32%), social media (31%) and discussions with current or potential partners (29%).
The survey revealed the high proportion of young adults who have tried strangulation in the bedroom. More than half of respondents to the survey, 57 per cent, said they’d been strangled by a partner during sex at least once. A similar number, 51 per cent, reported strangling a partner at least once.
Heather Douglas, a professor at Melbourne University Law School and co-author of the study, told the ABC the cohort they were looking at were engaging in sexual strangulation and “largely saying they were consenting to the practice.”
Participants who had strangled partners reported more often that their partners played an active role in consent (79%) including asking to be strangled, agreeing to be strangled, or withdrawing previous consent. For those who were strangled, that figure was 57 per cent. For both strangling and strangled partners, consent was largely negotiated on a previous occasion where the partner had given their future consent. 10 per cent of women and 8 per cent of men said they “did not consent, but did not ask or motion for them to stop”.