Add sexual strangulation to the list of all the things you wish you never had to talk to your teenage child about, but probably should.
Known as ‘choking’, in heterosexual encounters it is when one partner (usually a man) wraps his hands around the throat of his partner (usually a woman) and squeezes, restricting blood or air flow.
Sexual choking is no longer a practice reserved for adults deep into kink.
Indiana University Professor Debby Herbenick, a leading researcher on sexual behavior, surveyed about 5,000 students at a major Midwestern university and found that two-thirds of women had choked during sex, according to an excellent op-ed by Peggy Orenstein in the New York Times.
That this dangerous behavior – choking is never safe – has suddenly become mainstream should be a concern to anyone who has a young person in their life. Sexual norms have been shaped by the widespread accessibility of certain types of graphic porn among minors, porn that is often based on male fantasy and misogyny. Young people who have just become sexually active, whether they have seen explicit videos or not, may come to believe that this is realistic, expected, or desired.
It doesn’t help that videos on social media offer instructions on how to do this ‘safely’, despite emerging evidence that cutting off blood flow to the brain, even for a short time, can lead to permanent damage.
While some women say they enjoy being strangled, others say they did it mainly to please their sexual partner, according to another study led by Herbenick.
That leads me to think that even if consent is granted, rough sex, which favors male satisfaction at the risk of harming young women, has become so normalized that some women don’t question why they consent. The average age for first being strangled or strangling someone else is 19, with women and gender minorities significantly more likely to be on the receiving end, according to Herbenick’s findings.
I wanted to know how a trusted mentor in the field of youth health care could address this topic, so I called Haven Davis, a health educator for the city of Minneapolis who has taught sex education at Southwest High School. Her federally funded work has led her to have meaningful conversations with teens as part of school clinics over the years.
First, some context: Davis reminded me that sexual activity among teens has declined over the past decade; The 2022 Minnesota Student Survey found that only 29% of 11th graders reported ever having sex.
Still, when she reads the studies on choking among young people, she finds the trend lines “shockingly high.”
Davis said the first time she heard about young people engaging in sexual asphyxiation was about four or five years ago in an anonymous survey. A student asked Davis, “If a girl asks me to strangle her, what should I do?” she remembered. “It’s definitely something that young people are thinking about and noticing. The question for me is, how did it make the leap from an activity that is seen as more extreme to a behavior that young people normalize?”
She says that just as health educators are trying to get ahead of this disturbing trend, parents and other caring adults also have a big role to play.
Davis made some suggestions for these adults:
• First, aim for a conversation that leads to further communication and connection. How can you keep this person in your life talking to you? Let them know that you are not going to judge them for their choices. For people experiencing sexual harm, having a trusted adult in their corner is a “powerful protective factor,” Davis said.
• It’s okay to state your sexual health values and what you would expect from a healthy sexual interaction. Break the rigid gender stereotypes of male domination and women’s coercion. Talk early and often about consent and the importance of setting boundaries. You can bring up the choking trend and say, “I don’t think this is okay. What do you think?”
• Give them accurate and scientifically based information. Researchers are beginning to see links between choking and cognitive impairment and poorer mental health. Strangulation can lead to brain damage. It is not enough to tell children to refrain from certain behavior without explaining the reasons behind it.
Finally, don’t worry if you’re not sure what to say.
“A lot of adults go into these conversations thinking, ‘I need to have all the answers,’” Davis said. “But you can have really great conversations starting with, ‘What do you think about that?’ “
Many teens today may think that choking is normal. But as adults, we can help bring back the norm and keep young people safer – one conversation at a time.