The experts agree: Pornography is driving a crisis of sexual violence and sexualized violence. But most still avoid the obvious answer to this crisis: Pornography must be enormously restricted, if not banned entirely as a genuine threat to our society and certainly to the health, safety, and well-being of young people in general and young women and girls (as the recipients of this violence) in particular.
Instead, however, we’re getting stories like this April 20 report from the Daily Mail:
A council-funded sex education PowerPoint shown to teenagers referenced asking for consent before choking a partner. The material, funded by Bridgend county borough council in south Wales, was shown to pupils studying PSHE lessons at a range of secondary schools.
Provided by the council’s domestic abuse service, Assia, the PowerPoint, which was seen by The Times, taught children that ‘consent (when it comes to choking during sex) should happen every time sexual choking is an option’.
‘It is never OK to start choking someone without asking them first and giving them space to say no,’ it continued. Experts, however, have shared their deep concern at the sex education class which they say is portraying the idea that ‘choking can be done safely’.
‘This is not sex education, this is just advocacy for the porn industry,’ Michael Conroy, the founder of Men at Work, told The Times. ‘Imagine you are a 14-year-old girl and you have told your boyfriend you don’t want to be choked but then an authority figure comes into school and tells you it is OK.
‘Choking cuts off oxygen to the brain and is incredibly harmful, it can even kill. Most schools will take it on trust that something endorsed by the local authority is OK. There is a rampant myth that choking can be done safely and is simply another option for a sexual act.’
As I have noted many times in this space, pandemic porn use has created a genuine rape culture over the past two decades, and pornography has essentially normalized sexual violence—and, increasingly, sexualized violence. The rise of strangulation as a sexual behavior is a prime example of this. In 2019, a report in The Atlantic warned of a sharp rise in the practice of choking during sexual acts (with almost a quarter of adult American women reporting that they felt fear during intimacy as a result). Think about that: almost a quarter of American women felt fear during intimacy due to porn-inspired choking.
A follow-up survey, published by The Insider, painted an even grimmer picture:
In a 2021 survey conducted at a large public university in the U.S., one in three undergraduate female respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 said they were choked the last time they had sex. The study was led by Debby Herbenick, a professor and the director of Indiana University’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion. Also in the survey, 58% of female college students said they had been choked by a partner before — with nearly 65% of that group saying they experienced it during their first-ever sexual or kissing encounter.
According to Herbenick, the practice has become so common that many Gen Z-ers don’t even discuss it. A recent column in the Guardian titled “why has sexual choking become so prevalent among young people?” noted that the dangers of these practices—which the majority of young people had been exposed to via pornography—are many:
The risks associated with sexual strangulation include the obvious: death. Women have died in this way. But there are numerous other risks, including long-term changes in the brain that can occur whether or not the person being choked remains conscious, as well as miscarriage, thyroid injuries and short-term impacts including vomiting and loss of bowel control.
The New York Times also noted last year that pornography had normalized the trend, with the percentage of women who were first choked between ages 12 and 17 rising sharply, from 25% to 40%. One 16-year-old girl plaintively asked why all boys “want to choke you.” The NYT quoted experts urging “sex education” on the dangers of choking which, it must be stated, were once self-evident.
With digital porn usage now normative in every Western country—for both adults and minors—we face a simple choice. Either we decide that we do not want to have societies in which pornography is the primary factor in shaping sexual desire and that the cost of generations reaching adulthood addicted to porn is too high and take definitive action. Conversely, we decide that a society shaped by pornography is acceptable and merely attempt to deal with the fallout.
But again, we know the source of the problem. We have permitted the pornography industry to transform our society, and to shape the sexual desires of an entire generation. If we want this to stop—and I simply do not understand anybody who does not—we should cut this poison off at the source and begin strangling the porn industry. Better the industry than our girls.