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When Sophie* woke up on the floor after having a seizure, it took a while before she could comprehend that it had been caused by a man strangling her during sex.
“I blacked out, my legs were kicking, I broke a glass,” she says. At 19, it was the first and only time anything like that had happened to her. “When I came to, I couldn’t work out who he was, where I was, what was going on. And it was utterly terrifying.”
She had not asked to be strangled, or “choked” as it is often called, but the encounter had been consensual and she says she had accepted being strangled as “a normal part” of sex.
“You create a narrative in your head where you wanted it or it’s a good thing or it’s OK, because you don’t want to face the fact that somebody could have hurt you in that way,” she says.
She realises now she should have seen a doctor after the seizure, but the man “persuaded me not to because he didn’t want to get into trouble and I was worried about being shamed in some way”.
The first major study on strangulation during sex found that more than half of people under the age of 35 had experienced it and it was common among teenagers as young as 16 who had seen it in porn and on social media.
Despite being a profoundly unsafe practice that carries the risk of brain injury – even when there are no physical signs – and death, many people still believed it could be done safely, the study found.
Sophie, now 21, says the proliferation of violent porn among her generation means they have grown up with “such a warped perception of intimacy”, and she feels the problem is only getting worse. “I can only imagine the anxiety I’d have in the future if I have girls,” she says.
Other women described similar encounters, some that happened repeatedly during long relationships.
Carrie*, who lives in the US, where the government is considerably slower to act on the multibillion-dollar violent pornography industry, says she first experienced strangulation at a “vulnerable” time in her early 20s, with a much older partner who had a powerful job.
“He had said ‘Do you agree to submit to me?’ and I said yes, but I didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. And then he was very violent with me, more than I expected. And I was really afraid. I was panicked,” she says.
“I remember, frequently he would be strangling me, and I would be fighting to stay awake. And I felt like I was fighting to keep my eyes open. And sometimes that was something that I could not do. And then afterwards I would feel very dazed and sometimes, like, off balance. I would almost struggle to walk. And then it would be like I was, like, mentally slow for a couple days afterwards.”
She looked online and discovered she had probably suffered injuries to her brain, and she says that was what gave her the courage to end the relationship. “[I thought] if only I had known this sooner, maybe I would have left sooner,” she says.
Later on, she dated other men who put their hands on her throat, but when she said she didn’t like it they backed off. “I would guess they got the idea from porn.”
Porn featuring strangulation and suffocation is due to be banned in the UK by the end of the year, meaning tech platforms will have a legal obligation to stop UK users seeing that content.
Laura* says she knew her partner of more than a decade enjoyed watching violent pornography. “It was, I think, the only thing that could excite him – which is really worrying – and that’s what he got used to.”
She would often feel dizzy while it was happening and was strangled unconscious multiple times during sex. “I realised he had no idea about the fact that any of those times he could have killed me,” she says.
“I kept going back because of course I just was in such a huge amount of denial around it all. I think because it’s so traumatic and it’s so frightening, you almost get amnesia around it.”
The last time they had sex he used a ligature to strangle her – something common in porn. “I knew instantly that I was starting to have a seizure and then I woke up on the floor,” she says.
It was after that escalation that she found the courage to leave. Like Sophie and Carrie, Laura did not see a doctor. She says: “I would urge anyone that happened to, to go and get medical attention because it can cause strokes in the following days and weeks.”
Laura, who is now in her 30s, suffers from memory issues and fatigue, problems that are common among women who have experienced “choking”. “I get a lot of headaches. I get weakness. I have a lot of tinnitus, light headedness, all sorts of things like that.”
She gets support from the Brain Injury Association, which helps people who have suffered anoxic and hypoxic brain injury.
The women who spoke to the Guardian all said they felt it was about power and control for the men who strangled them, and that these men got sexual gratification from hurting or frightening them. However, research shows some men also feel pressed into strangling a sexual partner. And while there is a gender divide – it is most commonly men strangling women – women are the perpetrators in a sizeable minority of cases.
Sophie says that after the experience with the man who gave her a seizure, it was “refreshing” to meet her current partner.
She says: “When we first started going out, I would have been like ‘Oh, you can choke me if you want to’, and he would say: ‘Why would I do that? I don’t want to do that. I care about you.’”
*All names have been changed
