Should Sex Educators Talk About Choking During Sex?

“How can I incorporate asphyxiation safely during sex?” In my early days, I got a question as a safer sex guest speaker on a college campus back in 2002. It’s a question that will make even the best and most seasoned sexuality educator pause.

Asphyxiation, including autoerotic asphyxiation, has always been an area of great concern for educators, given what could go wrong. Such strangulation is dangerous, as in life-threatening sex play.

Twenty years later, debate on whether or not to discuss this topic with young people continues, this time in my home country of Iceland.

Anti-porn feminists and gender studies teachers, Hanna Björg Vilhjálmsdóttir and María Hjálmtýsdóttir have caused quite a stir in going after popular sexuality educator Sigríður Dögg Arnardóttir, better known as Sigga Dögg, for supposedly teaching “breath play” to teens as young as the tenth grade. Their concern: teaching students the “how to’s” of strangulation normalizes risky, violent behavior in a problematic culture of violence.

Sigga, a trained sexologist who has been teaching sex ed in schools all over Iceland for the past dozen years, denies the accusations. She admits, however, that she takes a “nothing is taboo” approach to her speaking engagements, inviting questions on choking during sex, given it’s a curiosity youth have. She sees it as an opportunity to discuss consent, boundaries, and an area of interest sans shame.

With or without a sex educator in the room, it’s a topic youth want to process. It’s a kink requiring guidance globally.

Thanks to porn, sex involving strangulation has become trendier with younger adults in countries like New Zealand, ⁱ and more popular in places like the U.S.ⁱⁱ A 2020 U.S. survey of university students reported that 26.5 percent of women, 6.6 percent of men, and 22.3 percent of transgender and gender non-binary participants had been choked during their most recent sexual event.ⁱⁱⁱ

Typically classified under “extreme porn,” eroticized sexual violence includes choking and slapping. Of concern is the fact that youth who are frequent porn users are more likely to try some of the dangerous, potentially lethal, moves that they’re viewing, like strangling a partner during sex.^iv

According to investigators at Indiana University, sex involving choking usually isn’t discussed ahead of time, does not involve a safe word, offers no sense of partnership, and results in no emotional connection or transcendence.^v

Other recent data from Indiana University, involving 4,352 undergraduates, found that having been choked during sex was significantly associated with participants feeling depressed, sad, lonely, and anxious (except for overwhelming anxiety among males).^vi

Naturally, young people have questions and concerns about choking and other kinks. In recent years, students in my human sexuality courses have been concerned about expectations around choking and partner pressure to engage in such.

They are confused about the pleasure derived. Hetero-focused erotica has some young men thinking that this is what girls like in bed. Some young women wonder if they’re supposed to be into it, given it’s so prevalent in porn.

Such reflects findings from a Dutch study reporting that adolescents who frequently use porn are likelier than others to believe its images are realistic.^vii Another study from the U.S. found that youth who consume porn are likelier to hold more erroneous sex beliefs than teens who do not look at porn.^viii

No matter how anxiety-provoking or how troubling the sex topic is, schools need to address sexual illiteracy, including porn literacy, and an examination of cultural standards and perceived normalcy from all sources of information. However, this does not mean that formal sex education in schools involves the delivery of “how-to” or “better sex” instruction.

Destigmatizing interest in a taboo behavior should also not be confused with making it okay. For a good reason, certain sexual behaviors, e.g., rape, are taboo. That said, kinks, including those that youth see in porn, need to be acknowledged and discussed in the classroom, given social media and popular press permeation. Older adolescents need a safe space in which to discuss matters like:

• How is something deemed sexually “normal” versus “deviant”?
• Why is it that porn almost always shows a male dominating a female?
• What is the pleasure of dominating a lover in a potentially harmful way?
• How is it that the gratification that’s derived in certain sex acts is more mental than physical in being symbolic?
• Why are so many humans turned on to a woman’s storyline becoming more and more ecstatic when subjected to more and more sexual aggression?

Such age-appropriate conversations help youth deconstruct sexual media while cultivating self-knowledge and empowering them to make better choices. They are guided in identifying and questioning the messages and imagery bombarding them daily. They are encouraged to tune into their values, ultimately feeling like they have more agency over their experiences and more confidence in expressing boundaries and giving and getting consent.

Part of a person knowing what they are willing to do with whom – or not – involves understanding the positives and negatives of the behaviors and scenarios they are fielding in light of cultural and societal messaging.

In feeling more informed about the risks involved in certain sexual behaviors, people can better assess whether some kinks and potential pleasures should even be navigated given risk or consider them better left unexplored.