Doe’s mom sent a New York Times article to the family group chat a few months ago, as is routine, about how choking has become increasingly common in sexual encounters. Just a warning, this is scary stuff, but important to read because you might be unwittingly participating in extremely risky behavior without being informed. Our article is just the tip of the iceberg; before exploring any kinks, all parties involved should do adequate research and continuously give enthusiastic, informed consent before and during the sexual encounter. The Times article was shocking for the older adults, especially parents, of the world. Response was so overwhelming that selections from letters to the editor were even compiled and published. But, as the data shows, you all may not be shocked by this trend because you are in the thick of it. Erotic asphyxiation, the glamorous scientific name for choking, is when a person restricts access to their partner’s airway in the name of sexual pleasure. It does not always have to be a partner restricting a person’s ability to breathe. (Autoerotic asphyxiation is also possible!) However, for the purposes of this article, we are focusing on choking a partner. Researchers have started to see solo choking trends, but there’s not enough information for us to cover that here. That being said, there are similarly dangerous consequences for this behavior.

The aforementioned article is based on research conducted by Dr. Debby Herbenick and colleagues, in which she looks at the rapid increase in “rough sex” trends among college-aged people. Two-thirds of women reported that they had been choked in a sexual context, and of those women who had been choked, one in four reported being choked for the first time between the ages of 12 and 17. This data is alarming, even for those with an understanding that choking has become more common. So, have all of us spontaneously developed a choking kink in the last couple of years? No. 

Porn is the likely culprit. Pornography has shown an increased amount of sexual strangulation in their videos. This is especially true for free sites, such as Pornhub, where many students get their sexual education. The standard sex education provided in American schools is often sub-par to say the least, in some cases only teaching abstinence, but that is an article for a different time. Another alarming fact about this trend is that, as you can imagine, men do most of the choking and women primarily get choked. This does not mean that men want to cause women pain in all cases; many men in the study reported not wanting to be “vanilla” by not choking their partners. When a sexual trend takes off, as shown in the research, it is hard to stop. However, in the sexual choking scenarios which Dr. Herbenick reported on, people reported that their partners never or only sometimes asked for consent before initiating strangulation. 

Choking is never 100% safe. First, if you are choking someone to the point they can no longer speak, you have also taken away their ability to give or reverse consent. Second, strangulation, even if you think it’s sexy, can have serious medical consequences. The small bursts of intense strangulation may have short term effects, and research is still being conducted about long term effects because the phenomenon is so new. If you do experience short term effects—headaches, lightheadedness, pain in the throat region, ear ringing, or feel as though you are going to pass out—it is always smart to seek medical attention, because restricted oxygen to the brain can be quite harmful. The study also found that women experienced decreased mental well-being when they were choked more often (5 times or more).

Before participating in choking, all parties need to ask themselves if they want to do this or if they have been told by societal expectations that they are supposed to want this. And the data shows that not a lot of women actually want to be choked because the number of orgasms women have during sexual encounters has not increased. This trend has become so deeply entrenched in our understanding of sex that women have also subscribed to desiring it, even if only because they think they should. Sex should be about mutual pleasure, and this is impossible when the participant’s specific sexual style is not being represented. After all, you want to have sex with this specific person (or people), so let them inform you about what they like. Sex should knock your socks off, not knock you out.

Conducting kink research, 

Dill & Doe