cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/36086049
Research that has analysed thousands of randomly chosen videos from popular pornographic websites found that physical aggression like strangulation, slapping and hair-pulling was present in 35-45% of scenes, depending on the website.
It’s important to be wary of clutching our pearls about porn here – there is no evidence to suggest that watching ethical porn results in an upswing in violent behaviour, but research released last year by the Australian Institute of Criminology does indeed show that more frequent intentional viewing of violent pornography is associated with a “small but statistically significant” increase in violence against women by men after they watched violent porn.
Couple this with the knowledge that one in three Australian children have seen online porn and that the average age of initial consumption of porn is 13 – and we can all feel a desperate kind of sorrow for adolescents navigating this world. Girls thinking this is what boys want, boys thinking that this is what girls want. The confusion, the painful wanting to be wanted, that perennial need to be thought of as cool that comes with teenagehood, all of it is now shadowed by the normalisation of something that is clearly dangerous – as any medical expert will tell you, there is no safe way to lose oxygen to the brain.
…I know from personal experience how hard it is to have the conversation about porn with young children. You look at your sweet prepubescent boy child and think he is definitely the only child on the planet not being exposed too early to things he definitely shouldn’t see. He is. They are. Not talking about it is no longer an option.
Seems like the answer should be more sexual education
@arbilp3 no safe way, but htf do you get enjoyment out of choking someone during sex? I’m sure the women/girl isn’t enjoying it.
Asphyxiation, when done correctly, can be pleasurable for the receiving party. You get a kind of “high” from it. But there’s a technique to it to make sure it’s as safe as possible.
Self-asphyxiation was a trend among schoolkids for a while as one of those “challenges”. Got a few kids killed sadly.
I feel like the sub-linked article answers the question and also covers this sensitive issue in more detail.
The Domestic Abuse Act of 2021 clarified that a person cannot consent to being harmed for the purpose of sexual gratification and also made non-fatal strangulation a specific criminal offence. Before that, it fell under general offences such as battery, the mildest assault possible.
It’s always a tragedy when someone dies like that, but that article is full of some really dumb stuff and a lot of moralizing. The Lucy mentioned had frequent hookups where nothing was negotiated beforehand. It’s not her fault she was subject to violence and people should talk about sex, boundaries, kink, etc, before participation.
“No safe way to do it”: quite possibly. There is risk in many activities. This is why frameworks like RACK (risk aware consensual kink) exist alongside SSC (safe, sane, and consensual). To use a metaphor, driving a car is risky, but we do it anyway while adding safety features to roads and vehicles to reduce that risk. It’s impossible to make it completely safe.
“I think it’s a really troubling sign that 50 years ago most people would probably know strangulation was an offence – just like we all know that stealing is illegal,” she says.
Stealing can’t be done with consent because then it’s just taking.
consequences can be delayed by weeks. It can cause a change in voice, difficulty swallowing, incontinence, seizures, problems with memory, decision-making and concentration, depression, anxiety, miscarriage.
Pregnancy also carries risk for everything on this list except trouble swallowing which is more of a cause. Voice changes from hormone level changes, incontinence from the pelvic changes required to get a baby through there, seizures from eclampsia, “pregnancy brain”, postpartum depression and anxiety both exist, and unfortunately miscarriages happen in over 10% of pregnancies. But taking risks for this is considered good while doing so for pleasure is deemed not so.
this is happening overwhelmingly to women by men. If you accept what people will argue – that this is an activity that’s enjoyed because it’s ‘sensual’ – then why aren’t men the recipients more often?
There is a significant difference in the preferences between men and women. This paper suggests ~75% of women prefer to be submissive as opposed to dominant. The sensual framing used is a straw man that requires willful ignorance of kink.
There is a heavy emphasis that porn causes more violent sexual behavior but then has this:
I’ve been with my current boyfriend for over a year and at some point, we had a conversation where I asked, ‘Why don’t you choke me?’ He said he had no desire to.
Some people just aren’t into it. It’s also mentioned he’s not into kinky porn. Also, maybe have conversations about sex and what everybody’s into before your one year anniversary.
“When [choking] was presented, you could feel the tension, the internal conflict, in the room, with professionals being unable to reconcile the gap between what they were hearing and their usual sex-positivity.”
This is the most interesting part of the article but they don’t go beyond the feeling to get any actual statements from anybody that would be at a sexual health conference. Going from risk to guaranteed harm (if that’s the case as opposed to user error) and how that shifts opinions or if there’s a divide in spite of that would be fascinating.
As somebody in the kink scene that doesn’t really consume BDSM pornographs and knows way too many women that have been subject to sexual violence and domestic violence, I think this is a pretty bad article that conflates kink with those violences.
Your arguments are based on adult-related contexts.
it seems to me you’ve missed the point of the opinion piece which is more about the effects of pornography (and violence within pornography) and its effect on children and adolescents.
My comments were in regards to the no safe way one in the comment I was responding to, which does talk about college students and adults including a Lucy whose age is given as 24, as opposed to the one about the 16 year old girl that died.
Thank you for that. I did no see it. Here it is for anyone interested: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/27/sydney-16yo-girl-death-suspected-sexual-choking-asphyxiation-ntwnfb
