The alarming rise of sexual strangulation among young Australians
Young Australians are increasingly normalizing sexual strangulation as part of their sexual encounters, despite the serious health risks associated with the practice. Health professionals and advocates are calling for change, citing the need for education and awareness about the dangers of strangulation.
Warning: this story contains details readers may find distressing.
Young Australians are increasingly normalizing sexual strangulation, commonly referred to as choking, as part of their sexual encounters. This trend has raised concerns among health professionals and advocates, who warn that the practice can have serious health consequences, including death.
A concerning trend among young people
Laura Crozier, a 25-year-old who runs the Yeah, Nah: Affirmative consent education project, said that when she was in high school, conversations about sex often included discussions of strangulation. "I would talk with my friends and be like, oh yeah, he put his hands up my neck, and it was really cool," she said. "It was just kinky."
Crozier said that strangulation had become "just a part of the playbook of a sexual encounter". "It's so normalised it's barely kinky anymore. It's just vanilla, which is terrifying because nobody understands it," she said.
The influence of popular culture
According to Maree Crabbe, a violence prevention educator and co-founder of the Breathless campaign, there has been an enormous increase in depictions of sexual strangulation in television, films, and popular culture. However, she said that research indicated that pornography was the most significant influence shaping the increase in rates of sexual strangulation.
"A study that looked at depictions of strangulation in pornography from the early 2000s through to 2024 found that it went from being in basically zero per cent of scenes to being in 15 per cent of scenes in popular pornography," she said.
The health risks of strangulation
Crabbe is concerned that the wide range of health consequences of strangulation are misunderstood. "Anybody could harm someone if they put pressure on their neck, because you only need the level of pressure of opening a can of soft drink to kill someone," she said.
"It's not just that someone can die in the moment, but the possibility of it impacting on your memory and migraines and eyesight and hearing and miscarriage and strokes and all sorts of things."
The gendered nature of sexual strangulation
Elaquare Spencer, a 21-year-old university student, said that in her own personal sexual encounters, she has had situations where a man's hand has just sort of crept up on her throat. "In my own personal sexual encounters, I have had situations quite a lot of times where a man's hand has just sort of crept up on my throat," she said.
"How damning that is, that people feel uncomfortable to ask to not be strangled," she said.
Calls for change
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said there was no safe way of strangling someone. "It can cause death immediately, it can cause death weeks down the track through blood clots, it can cause dementia years and years after the practice has been used," she said.
The minister has called for depictions of strangulation in porn to be banned.
Alternatives to strangulation
Crozier encouraged sexual partners to listen to each other. "Find pleasure in hearing each other and bonding and connecting rather than doing what society thinks is the best thing for you to do," she said.
Talon, a young man who has consensually strangled partners during sex, agreed. "There is genuinely nothing wrong with just having plain old vanilla sex," he said. "I don't even want to use that language … but honestly, look your partner in the eyes and just be with them and be present and don't rush and take your time."