(Juno Baisla/EyeEm)
I don’t remember when I first became aware of the choking craze: I’m pushing 70, am barely online and generally not paying much attention to other people’s sex stuff. But I dimly recall maybe five years ago seeing an online essay about dating sites which mentioned the prevalence of the act; the essay quoted some guy confidently broadcasting to the feminine universe the rhetorical question: “If you don’t like being choked, are you even alive?”
Since then, I have (without actively looking) casually come across a scattering of articles that mention it and/or worry about it, including a piece on this site by Kat Rosenfield, titled “The Death of Intimacy”. In the piece, Rosenfield declared that, in a dramatic shift of mores, women have “cast off the mantle of the sexual gatekeeper only to find themselves in a world where your boyfriend’s idea of first-date intimacy was to engage in a little light choking before ejaculating all over your face… oh, but consensually of course.”
“The Death of Intimacy” is of a piece with a number of articles on UnHerd, apparently written to call out the crisis state of our current erotic (or rather anti-erotic) landscape, for example: “Porn Will Destroy You” (Sarah Ditum), “How to Save Sex” (Blake Smith), and the mutually respectful conversation between Aella (OnlyFans advocate and Substack star) and Louise Perry, author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. In this context, sexual choking appears to be another aspect of the dehumanising, porn-influenced bad direction we are headed in, and/or a dangerous rebound reaction to a neurotic obsession with sexual safety and feminist overkill. Indeed, it’s easy for me to see it that way.
I came of age during the Seventies, a time of great permissiveness that segued into the even greater permissiveness of the Eighties. It was a very male-dominated time, but playfully so, in my circles anyway; feminism could be pretty playful too. Almost anything you could think of was okay. BDSM in particular came out to party in full regalia, and all flavours of queerness — including trans-ness — were celebrated at least in some communities; the word polyamory wasn’t in use, but people lived it, albeit more quietly. Of course, much of this depended on where you lived and who you spent time with; it was great to be young and queer in San Francisco or New York but not so much in small-town Texas or Michigan. I have the impression that this is still the case.
During this period I had many friends and acquaintances who spoke frankly about their preferences and experiences and in all that time I can only recall hearing a girlfriend mention choking once: in a mild, bemused tone she remarked: “So George strangled me a little bit last night.” (Oddly I don’t remember anything more of the conversation, just the matter-of-fact quality of her statement.) Of course, just because I didn’t hear of it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; there must’ve been some couples who played with choking under the general heading of kink. And there were the occasional media stories about “strangubation” — that is, masturbation combined with self-choking, something young men seemed to do alone, and only made the news when it went fatally wrong. So: not exactly a popular pastime.
And now… it is? The aforementioned Rosenfield essay was not, despite the provocative mention, about choking but rather the datafication and commodification of sex. To illustrate her points, she featured a spreadsheet created by the (also aforementioned) Aella: this document featured “every sexual encounter” that Aella had experienced along with a myriad of details about those encounters. I had a look and found myself more interested in another of Aella’s charts: a sex guide purporting to help frustrated men achieve greater sexual success via a “data-based theory of vagina-kind”. This meant, basically, a flow chart revealing what a sample of 600 women like and don’t like in terms of positions, attitudes and acts. Or, as Aella put it: “A) how much they like the thing and B) how much they’ve encountered men doing the thing.”
The idea of such a chart made me roll my eyes (more on that later) but I perused it anyway. And, with my vague knowledge of the subject, I was surprised to learn that, along with the classics (oral, doggy style and general masculine dominance), “most women” love choking — love it! In fact, it was in the category of what Aella called the “land of the unfulfilled feminine”, meaning women want it more than men are doing it. Insert wide-eyed emoji here!
To be honest, “choking during sex” as a concept first brought to mind the singer from INXS who died in his hotel room and the Tory MP who also died auto-erotic-asphyxiating. Kids today, eh? Just won’t do things for themselves.
If my memory serves me it also featured a lot in a Japanese film (empire of the senses?) with fatal results (for the man). A cautionary tale if ever there was one. I can’t say I emerged from the cinema wanting to try it out.
In the Realm of the Senses, 1976
Actually, the word is strangle not choke. People choke on a piece of meat. Women have died in England from strangulation during sex, and the men got off scot free by using the “rough sex” defense. I think they are missing the difference between kinky sex and a death wish.
Yes – the first time I heard of this I thought it referred to an act that could be described as « choking on a piece of meat ». Strangulation is more accurate, though both women and vicious dogs wear chokers, and neither is really a choking hazard.
I wouldn’t have thought dying was kinky.
Hasn’t it just become “a position”, as you cycle through the list of positions before climax, so you (or your partner/client) feel(s) assured you/they’ve made the most of it? That’s probably how it looks to street walkers in Thailand, the Philippines and similar places.
/
Oh I see. If you comment, even without any kind of explicit language, or even heavily veiled euphemism, your comment won’t be accepted. Good one UnHerd.
Presumably they’ve got some kind of automatic hold on some posts. I’ve had some seemingly inoffensive posts delayed too, but they eventually appear. Yours are there now.
And is if to prove the point, my reply above didn’t appear for a few hours
And then that reply didn’t appear for over a day
The article is ultimately more nuanced and enlightened than suggested by the UnHerd editors’ tiresome predilection for such clickbait titles.
You could be right. One can resist porn and then fall for a clickbait title.
It predates the internet age, at least in my experience.
Of course it does. The internet has opened multiple cans of worms.
Certainly has a ‘predatory’ feel to it.
Why do men want to kill women so much?
Because they ask annoying questions? (just bants!)
What makes you think they do?
Also you seem to be assuming this is a male driven fantasy. But is it?
Of course it is.
Any evidence for that? It seems to be entirely focussed on enhancing the woman’s pleasure through intensified orgasm.
What an absurd thing to say.
Maybe some of them are just AWFL.
Some? lol
Which men are these?
They are insecure, jealous and threatened but also man is barbaric, ‘you can’t polish a t**d’ (This is a generalism of course), not all women are unpleasant behind their smiles, but we are a good compliment to each other, just not a pleasant species. Check out some David Attenborough, watch how the predators behave, we are worse than them they kill for food, we kill for power…
Come on – humans are a mixed bag. The genuinely dangerous are relatively few. The ordinarily selfish common enough. And nice people aplenty if you look for them.
Puppy dogs are cute.
There you go UnHerd, censor that too.
I’m sorry, but I have to push back at this. I am so tired of this diatribe. Adults talking to youth and adolescents about desire through their own lens. I think sometimes there is ‘rose coloured glasses’ on many when they reflect on sex and quite often are not always honest with themselves or anyone else.
Do you honestly think 12 year old girls desire being choked? Really? I am going to say something here that will be highly controversial and say I think grown, career women are one of the biggest ‘problems’ here. I believe this is another one of those elite luxury beliefs. Pre-adolescent girls look to other women first – in their mother, in their families, in culture, and what they see and hear in the media, to assess what it actually means to be a ‘woman’. They then take that onboard to be played out in real time. Along with peer group pressure, the girls and the boys, to work out what ‘the game’ is. What is expected.
Whilst I couldn’t give a rats toss what other adults get up to between the sheets – I do care what is transmitted to young people and increasingly, young children. Whilst sex has always writ large in our society – the market has always, and increasingly so, caters to humankind’s basest impulse and desire – sex sells. With the advent of the internet, it has blown the market to mammoth proportions together with the expediential corresponding growth of ever more graphic and violent images to match. Culture and media is also churning out ever more graphic imagery in tandem. Think movies, etc.
So if they see, hear, view, and find everywhere, (with the age getting younger and younger), including magazines aimed at them, promoting and explaining, how to have an@*l s8x, how to choke, BDSM, kink and every other form of adult play (IF you are into that stuff), then you are going to think that’s the ‘norm’. And be damned if that’s not your thing. There has been many articles about the harassment and derision of any girls who are ‘vanilla’. The bullying and exclusion. This stuff was once the pleasure source of a minority group of people. But then again, we are in the moment of the minority taking over the narrative of the majority.
With our latest cultural ‘moment’ espousing ever more liberal motives for almost the entire removal of any personal boundaries whatsoever – and celebration of total personal ‘freedom’ in any and every form – you would be either very naive or totally ignorant to think that is going to be all rainbows and butterflies. The 60s was a time of total ignorance and naivety. It is the incumbrance of adolescence itself to be ideological. We seem to be having a similar moment right now, however one notices that its just not adolescence.
If you survived your adolescence relatively peacefully and with few ‘regrets’ – your one of the luckier ones.
Where are the ‘gate-keepers’ of children?
Where has age – appropriateness gone? Around sexuality – the slow-burn of age-appropriate flowering of sexuality and its beauty has given way to increasingly edgy, darker adult play – hey choking anyone…..lets go straight to it. The darker, the better.
Perhaps people espousing these things to children should go to a talk with say a DM survivor, a child abuse survivor, perhaps one of the Hamas survivors…………..to hear the Other side. Yes, believe it or not – there IS a darker side to sexuality. There are those that prey on the insecure, unconfident and the vulnerable. And who the heck was not one of those as an adolescent.
There is also a beautiful side to this too.
Us as women, cannot have it ‘both ways’. On the one hand, feminists of the 60s and 70s espoused male sexual violence – we are still in the final arc of that now – asking and demanding men to ‘control’ their ‘rampant’ unwanted sexuality – to almost total annihilation of masculinity generally. To be equal?
To f*%c like men also?
It is destroying women and girls generally. The commodification and to market of all sexuality is destruction for us all. The sooner some women wake up to this, the better for us all.
I am tired of the lack of adult responsibility in public space for the sake of our children. This is all nothing but adult desire taking total precedence over and above everything else.
Great post.
The reduction of concern for children by society, which has happened gradually over time since the 60s, but especially in the last quarter of a century or so, so that adults can express themselves freely, or not have their rights curtailed, is really quite shocking when you stop to think about it. There’s a lot more to it than p0rn and sex, but it’s all part of a bigger picture. And we wonder why younger people are struggling – sometimes I’m astonished they’re managing at all.
I agree.
I hear so many well intentioned people saying “people should have the freedom to do what they want as long as it doesn’t hurt any body” – but they have absolutely no clue what that means when taken to it’s conclusion on many issues.
As Rob Henderson points out in his book and luxury beliefs concept – they say these things but when it comes to their children they act entirely differently (ok for everyone else but not for my children).
Yes, of course – won’t somebody please think of the children.
The interplay of power and submissiveness in sexual relations between men and women has existed for, I don’t know, let’s say – 90 years at least, much of that time predating the internet age, a bit chunk of it prior to the first issue of Playboy.
Parents were thinking of their children then, as their parents were, and their parents before them, and so on and so forth until you hit that point back in time were the prospects of women not being subject to sexual violence was, I don’t know, let’s say less than 10%.
It is hard to imagine a time in history that has placed a greater emphasis on protecting and coddling our children, that has given more agency and empowerment to women.
There has always and will forever be nothing but adult desire in the drivers’ seat. The alternative is lugubrious Scandinavian children bleating about nobody thinking about the children. We’ve got enough paternalistic adults doing that already.
You raise a good point. We overprotect our children yet allow them to view extremely graphic violence and imagery. However, you seem to be suggesting that this is part and parcel of female freedom. Am I wrong?
Thanks for that, I agree with you. However at this very moment in time, we have 2 extreme ends of a curve dominating the cultural space. What I’m trying to point out is you cannot have it both ways.
The hypocrisy and paradox of of both. In my opinion what is actually happening is the end of the arc of the release of sexual mores’ which in recent times was the 60’s. They rightly called out rampant (meaning not just a very few) suppression and subjugation of a significant enough amount of women – actually mostly in the home behind closed doors. This unfortunately also included, to the horror at the time women’s groups, of child sexual abuse. Whilst religion, and Christianity in general, held society in a moral obligation of sexual proprietary, the societal ‘face’ of the familial unit was not always the ‘truth’ of reality within the home.
I believe that an element of the feminist cause has lost its way and forgotten what its core agenda was in the first place. The calling out of sexual violence and for more harmonious sexual relations between the sexes themselves. Due to the above, there was a call for men to dampen down their sexual proclivities and the calling out of a select group of male predatory behaviour.
This reality is Fact. Everyone knew it at the time. So much could be said about this however I digress.
Now what we have is a back-firing in some sense of, what the 60s started. However much we hear about the Myth of the 60s – that everything and everyone was into free love and beauty and peace – this myth did not happen for a-lot of people, if not most. Whilst we have all benefited in many ways from it, there is also a ‘dark’ side that must also be acknowledged. The ensuing decades saw the fall out from that. I believe again, from back then, that the narrative was once again held by an elite ‘few’ who could ‘afford’ to chase the perennial dream. This was not the case for many of the masses.
What we have again is the same thing, a narrative dominated by a minority speaking to and for the majority. Clearly this is NOT what all women think or do, nor are able, nor want to. I am calling this out.
If we want men to respect women and call out the ‘feral’ behaviour of men, then I expect no less from women calling out other women.
These select groups of women, are calling for safe spaces, calling certain words,violent, the coddling of children, the asking for ‘consent’ but also in the same space, promoting and advocating graphic boundary=less sexuality.
In reality, the very real, total subjugation of male sexuality, has greatly dimmed the light of what, I truly hold dear and crave in men. Yes, please dampen down and call out what is truly horrendous for the women who do love them. But not the total eradication of the masculine, to feel safe enough to exploit their own and others sexuality, and promote and behave in ways that render any sexual relations in the cultural sphere as exploitative.
We have all become commodities. Sex is promoted as nothing but a casual gratification with someone else’s body.
Reading your responses is the first time I’ve ever felt glad that I ventured into the comments.
Why are we all still acting like Victorian
Maiden aunts. Weren’t we all by now in this era meant to have educated our kids into being able to asssert their boundaries and communicate their sexuality? And to tell someone who won’t listen & respect them to go the hell away?
My comment was cens*red. Shows ya…
Wow. Well said.
I can’t imagine why men would do it.
Sure you can. Same reason men (and women, too) do pretty much any exceedingly stupid, shallow, silly (and sometimes dangerous) thing: they think it’s cool; they think it demonstrates how ‘with it’ they are (or whatever newest phrase means ‘with it’). They think the Other will like it…and/or like them because Cool.
90 years ? Have you read nothing of Greco- Roman or Viking history? Not saying that’s all OK but basically since it took 2 people to
make more humans, sexuality has always been examined.
.
Allowing a man to choke you is stupid. Regrettably, some women are stupid.
Equally if you are a man, there are some things that must be refused!
Especially since it’s easy for the woman to regret it later and punish the man.
Yes. Or worse still if she doesn’t live to regret it.
Accepting a woman’s invitation to choke her is similarly stupid.
To the person who down-clicked me: do you disagree with either of my propositions and if so, why?
‘People’ are stupid, women are uncomfortable saying ‘no’ for various reasons, men are emotionally and physically ‘clumsy’ in the main,we were just supposed to reproduce not pretend or be expected to pretend we are sex actors…
Ps have you noticed how moronic ‘porn stars’ are?
None quite as stupid as your comment.
Would you point out where Malcolm has got it wrong? Just for those of us in the cheap seats.
Yup!! you’ve got that right
In BDSM circles we call it breath play, and it requires care and experience to do correctly and safely. What I hear described as “choking” is not the same thing at all, it can be very dangerous. Unless a woman is sexually submissive, it is unlikely she actually has a desire to be “choked”. Its rather like the explosion in a**l sex, basically women do it to seem adventurous, ie not “vanilla”, more than actual desire for the act itself.
The impression I get is that in BDSM circles people are much more careful about safety, and take the time to learn safe techniques.
Interesting last point. The 50 shades syndrome?
Dear UnHerd, if you don’t want people commenting here, then close the comments for this article. Get your woke IT they/them to show you how.
You have obviously been censored and are angy about it. But I may just have been saved from a degrading comment. I don’t know.
Are you sure they’re censoring? Or just delaying the actual posting?
In my limited experience, certain words or usages (or perhaps length of comment) sends the comment into the ‘pending’ pile…but it’s always emerged, typically within the next 12 hours, and is posted as written.
Are you saying that something you’ve written has NEVER been posted?
What do you find when you check your ‘Comments’ listing? Is it not there? Or does it show as being deleted or censored?
I can’t relate to any of that and I don’t know anyone who else can. It all seems a bit contrived just to have something salacious and sensational to write about.
It’s just dirty, but that’s what modern art is all about – finding more and more dirt in order to make a person vomit on his clothes right there. They call this “culture shock” and are very proud of the fact that people cringe at the smell of crap
If it actually happens the logistics alone of such an act would be daunting!
Do you mean the ratio of deaths to choking incidents?
Yeah I agree.
Maybe. Sex does indeed sell.
On the other hand a quick googling gives me a million+ responses (depending upon wording & quotation marks). As much as we may not relate to it, perhaps it’s an idiocy which is more prevalent than we’d care to think?
In any case, clearly a symptom of a kind of fundamental social dysfunction.
I can’t relate to any of that and I don’t know anyone who can. It just seems to be something provocative and salacious for Gaitskill to write about. Kinda Scraping the bottom of the barrel for novel topics.
I kind of agree. I read one of her books for insight and she only wrote about perverse relationships outside of marriage. There was no purpose to it at the end and a bit depressing and pointless.
What do women want? … it’s complicated … maybe women don’t know what women want. A handful of evolutionary biologists/psychologists may know the answer, but whatever it is, it”s a damned sight more than an orgasm.
I only need to know what my wife wants. What women generally want is irrelevant to my marriage.
This can be understood more once you accept that for many men (possibly most, certainly not all) it is doing things which the woman will find exciting which is most on their mind. It isn’t just selflessness – basically this is how a man behaves if he wants to be seen as a good lover.
As many women feel uncomfortable about some of their fantasies and struggle to communicate them men often end up testing the water, and working to help their partner feel comfortable with what they like. Hence the feeling of comfort described in the article. They are being made to feel ok about something they want, but feel uncomfortable about.
This is surely the case. For most people it’s just a kind of play acting. Obviously there are people who do all sorts of crazy stuff – but for most surely the risk of death or a life in prison is enough deterrent. This is just something that could so easily go badly wrong if done seriously.
Mummy always says don’t play with fire if you don’t want to get burnt.
Some commenters seem to be assuming that this is a male driven activity. I’d always assumed the opposite. Contrary to a popular belief, most men struggle with anything that might really hurt a woman, even if she requests it.
Do we have any evidence either way?
There is mounting evidence that much of the hysterical commentary on this article is coming from people without the slightest clue. You could be excused for thinking our society is being ravaged by a raging epidemic of sexual asphyxiation, hitherto playing out in the shadows until Ms Gaitskill decided to shine her dim light on this insidious erosion of our moral foundations. Wait until UnHerd’s grown ups find out about the pegging epidemic.
Pe**ing? … bu**er that!
I don’t really want to know about it. A quick glance tells you everything you need to know and doesn’t profit one much.
It is hard to get evidence on that sort of thing as sex is a private thing and not easily shared unless anonymous online where you do not know what is true or not.
I do not believe that the majority of Ladies like being choked during sex. I also think you must be mad to give a licence to someone (you may not know that well) to endanger your life.
wow which freaks down voted that???
We have them on here unfortunately.
Definitely not a first date activity. Probably pretty effective as a last date activity though.
it is fine to question self-destructiveness among young women, but to fail to question young men’s misogyny and violence, is victim-blaming and intellectually dishonest. Girls and young women are under extreme pressure to consent to behaviour which is increasingly normalised by adults. In some schools sex education and information treats this as acceptable ‘non-vanilla” sexual activity. Girls need to be warned that past ‘consent’ to choking is being used by violent men as a defence to murder even months or years after the alleged consent was given (sometimes to a different person). Choking can also result in death by Stroke long after the event, when it is impossible to gain redress. Boys and girls need parents and teachers – and journalists – who will challenge abusive and misogynist behaviour and help children resist it, protecting themselves and others.
It appears that many teachers are are guilty of grooming our youngsters today in the sexual world so it is hard for the children to avoid it especially if they have not got moral parents. The government have totally failed in this area and are tending to overule parents whose area it should be.
Definitely some truths here.
But — equally we must note that ‘Boys and young men are ALSO under extreme pressure to consent to behavior which is increasingly normalized by adults’… (recognizing, of course, that to ‘consent to a behavior’ is to consent to participate (as either choker or chokee).
In most cases this is not misogyny (or misandry) at play, at least not in the sense that the one initiating the choking hates the sex of the one being choked. Nor, in most cases, is the act intended to be violent (though clearly it is). It is intended rather to demonstrate the couple’s ‘maturity’…their Kama Sutra savoir-faire….their mastery of ‘seduction & ecstasy’…when in fact it demonstrates none of that.
In the end, yes, boys and girls need adults (we used to call them parents) who will build a moral/behavioral foundation which will be strong enough — anti-fragile enough — to withstand the impact of countless collisions with the collection of idiocies which now surround us. Choking one’s ‘beloved’ is just one of the more grotesque, sad, and — to your point — dangerous.
I’m not sure, but……..I wonder if Mary has totally the wrong end of the stick here? She seems to view choking during sex as a purely symbolic/BDSM past time focused around dominance/submission. I think you’ll find that it all started when people discovered that mild hypoxia can massively enhance orgasm. Certainly, all those unfortunate young men found dangling from door jams with a hangman’s noose around their necks were pursuing this aim and just didn’t know where to stop. In this context, as gently as possible inducing hypoxia in a female partner in order to enhance her orgasm might just be viewed as an affectionate act?
BTW, I’m an old bloke that doesn’t know what he’s talking about, I’ve never tried choking and have been totally monogamous during a 35 year marriage, of which I’m now slightly proud!
“In this context, as gently as possible inducing hypoxia in a female partner in order to enhance her orgasm might just be viewed as an affectionate act?”
Quite. Why don’t we ask some of the ladies who have tried this, so that they can just tell what’s true and what’s not? It’d make a change from this seeemingly-endless sacralising of female agency in general. It might really turn out that it’s only ever done to cater to the sadistic instincts of a minority of men, but somehow I doubt it.
I think all sex should only be between a man and a woman in marriage. I cannot really see a faithful husband strangling his wife for her pleasure within the marriage relationship but I may be wrong.
So, gay people must remain celibate, must they?
Door jambs please. I may not be kinky but I am pedantic.
Pedantry can be a useful means of deflection when discussing something distasteful, I agree.
Yes, I’m in a monogamous marriage of 42 years, 43 in May. I cannot imagine choking my wife. I know for sure that she would not be in favor of this “enhancement” of our intimate moments.
I cannot see it either but Mary never writes about married relationships only off the beaten track which is depressing after a while.
Given that people take potentially lethal drugs, it’s perhaps not surprising that they try potentially lethal sex acts too. I’m less worried about whether it is a nice or nasty thing to do to one’s partner if it’s what she wants – and more worried about it going horribly wrong.
Interesting that most of us would accept skydiving as a legitimate thrill seeking activity – but not this.
I cannot see that it would fit into a marriage where the couple are faithful to each other. Possibly there may be some self hatred in the act?
You should be very proud David.
The French phrase for orgasm (Le Petit Mort….’The Little Death”) well over 150 years ago may have been onto something vis a vis all of this.
There are women who pass out when they orgasm.
At least men have the decency to wait 5 minutes.
Never heard of that one. My wife only breathes heavy.
Oh my God! A 70-year-old woman is tormented by the fact that she can’t do it anymore, and she hasn’t been wanted for a long time, and pours out a stream of her old lady erotic fantasies on the UnHerd website.
I can’t even imagine the erotic pleasure of a man masturbating on the face of a woman with whom he is intimate. The desire to humiliate a woman? Insult her? Rape?
“…there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Don’t get so hot under the collar. We humans are an odd bunch; there are probably stranger things going on not far from you, right now!
And insulting the author is not helpful.
Possibly in your partners head.
That’s funny.
You believe that 7 decades of a life well-lived precludes sex and kills desire?
You can’t imagine “X” erotic pleasure? (please feel free to fill in the blank)
You have much to learn, young Skywalker.
Luckily a lifetime still to do it.
What men really need to learn is that women are multi-orgasmic. The practice of this leaves both partners on a body blasted high! Maybe the man should be choked in the build up to his, normally single orgasm, to increase his pleasure but choking a woman seems a terrible way to behave.
“Maybe the man should be choked in the build up to his, normally single orgasm, to increase his pleasure but choking a woman seems a terrible way to behave.”
Interesting use of words. By whom, should the man be choked?
The wife obviously. Although I would think that this activity would be much rarer within a comitted marriage and probably belongs to the Mary Gaitskill type of people.
The logistics!!!
Being choked would’nt build me up to pleasure.
Trashy topic to give air to.
It absolutely isn’t. It’s something that speaks to so many tendencies, both in humans and in current discourse.
Anyone with a tendency to harrumph about it should simply steer clear.
The greatest achievement of this essay is that the author maintains surprise that the generation long effort to decouple sex from commitment (or even intimacy) has led to the degradation of those that follow. Is there really any consternation left when witnessing barbaric acts where one individual – who has, in the abstract, had their value removed by materialism – is treated as merely a route to another’s pleasure?
Yes, there’s a good deal of consternation left. Your argument amounts to a non-sequitur: just because sex has been separated from the commitment of a monogamous relationship does not also mean that a basic duty of care between human beings has been rendered obsolete whenever people decide that they might avail themselves of the pleasures that each other can bring in this way.
The principle of mutually-consenting adults has not gone away, nor will it ever, I hope.
He mentioned commitment, usually expressed in marriage, as opposed to what you were talking about.
I am not talking about anything which his argument did not already encompass.
This is a terrible argument which ignores how humans actually work. ‘Consent’ is a thin and delicate concept, much too willowy to support the entire weight of human sexual activity. It comes and goes, it is uncertain, it is hard to know whether one agrees with something or not, whether one agrees in some abstracted sense, whether one is enthusiastic or hesitant or pretending, whether one has all the relevant information, etc. This is plainly seen by the many instances of so-called ‘regret rape’ not to mention many other, less alarming examples.
The idea that ‘mutual consent’ is all that matters to sexual ethics is basically a sort of temporary, few-decades-long swamp gas emission from the libertine miasma that was early 20th century intellectual life. It is already dying out, thank heavens.
To speak of commitment as a commitment to monogamy is too one-dimensional. Rather a Marriage Vow is a commitment to God, to Family (past, present, and future), and the Community: a solemn oath not just for a permanent sexual fidelity, but for the wholeness of one’s entire life. Monogamy is but a small part of what that Absolute Commitment to Married Life and Love actually means.
To separate Sex from all of that is to reduce it to mere Itch & Scratch.
As for the ‘basic duty of care between human beings’….from what is that ‘basic duty’ derived…and what does it entail? When I buy groceries I smile at the clerk who rings them up and thank her when I’m done. Does your ‘basic duty of care’ require more than that?
Yeah it sounds obvious doesn’t it?
An interesting and insightful comment.
But in truth the objectification of the Other, regardless of the relationship & context, is an inevitability, even if the Other is our dearly beloved.
As much as we may intellectually understand and recognize that our partner is, indeed, a fully-formed, independent human being …a person whom we love…. still, they are, subjectively, not-us. And as not-us, they do not star in our particular drama; we do.
But this inevitable objectification does not mean or require dehumanization. And always transcendent love does much to bridge this perceptual gap
So yes, to your point, when we so thoroughly decouple sex from intimacy, sex from commitment, sex from love from intimacy and commitment… we should not be surprised to find an increasing number of behaviors (frequency of behaviors) on the part of both participants which are essentially inhumane.
If there is no Heaven, no Hell, then everything is permissible.
Eros ex Machina / Love ex Machina (haptic interface available for small fee)
“Somewhere in sands of the desert …. A shape with lion body and the head of a man, … A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, … Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it … Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.”
I have to admit to knowing nothing at all about this, but I have heard a few stories about people accidentally killing themselves while trying to get themselves off this way.
Surely someone has invented a machine that detects a pulse which controls the asxphyxiation mechanism and turns it off if it goes too far?
From what I’m reading above, I suspect there’d be a queue around the block at the point when they’re conducting human safety trials.
Seems to me all the comments miss the most basic function of choking women during sex. It silences her.
Perhaps you are joking… but per the article these women utter fake moans (while being choked) to please the man, to convey to him a sense of sexual pleasure at being choked.
Two things the author seems to be unaware of. Firstly, women also choke men. Both the man and woman often simultaneously choke the other. Secondly, the couple is having sex while one or both are being choked. The attraction of having your oxygen cut off is that the sexual sensations being experienced are enhanced.
So it’s come and go.
Rimshot!
Every time I read about some weird sex thing, I get a sort of piteous feeling for humanity. There are, apparently, a lot of people out there who don’t like, you know, sex. They have to drizzle it with cheap sugar or sprinkle it with a lot of peppers or deep fry it or something to think it’s any good. Just sad.
I just came to this from Chris Bray’s substack, and it sums up my feeling about UnHerd constantly pushing the crazy in our faces. Instead of leaving it to psychologists studying maladjusted weirdness out on the fringes. But noooo!
“The logic of a cultural system founded on the feeling of being oppositional and transgressive forces that system to extend, and extend, and extend. It has to keep going. Cluster B political culture can only be in your face, and then be in your face, and then be in your face. Push push push push push. It cannot declare victory and live quietly on the ground it took.”
Great referral, I read his essay – that’s right on.
There is a baked in assumption here that choking relates closely to murder. This is wrong.
I’ve been with a few women who enjoy this and there’s nothing murderous about it whatsoever. The “squeezing the bones of the throat” line implies a misunderstanding of the act. Squeezing the bones or restricting the windpipe would be very unpleasurable. Squeezing the soft tissue and blood vessels isn’t, for many people.
It’s a dominant act, but it requires delicacy. For most there’s nothing sexy about risking hurting someone or starving their brain of oxygen for any prolonged period. Apart from the physical hypoxia effect, I imagine for some women that combination of power and restraint is attractive.
If you’re sensible about it you start very gentle and let her ask for more pressure.
Yes – I’d always assumed this was something women were into, and men agreed to. Similarly, rape fantasies seem to be mainly a female thing. I’m sure there are exceptions. Real choking seems to me to be something best avoided unless you really know what you are doing. There are surely safer ways to meet a woman’s desire for submission than risking strangulation.
Agreed. I’ve had quite a few lovers before who liked it. I find their pleasure erotic but if anything the concentration necessary takes me away from any pleasure I’m feeling.
Hmmm.
I suspect the problem is that the border between fantasy and playing out fantasy and actuality has become so thin, in some case, perhaps in many cases, it no longer exists
Fantasies are just that things that people may think about to get aroused, but have no intention of doing in real life, and would not like it if they did
However, possibly due to the ubiquity of porn people are able to find online visual reenactments of their fantasies, and I suppose this perhaps encourages people to try it at home
I remember way back when I was a student, somebody lent me a copy of the book Women on top by Nancy Friday, which was essentially a great big, thick tome, cataloguing all kinds of female sexual fantasies. I was absolutely disgusted and horrified by almost all of them, a lot of things that were absolutely repulsive to me, like sexual violence and beastiality figured very large in these fantasies. I did not share any of those fantasies myself
at the same time, I understood that the likelihood of any of these women acting out the fantasies was very low.
Today, though, probably all of those fantasies exist in some kind of ultra niche corner of the Internet and with one click can be downloaded. This makes me sad and depresssd to think about
If you are a guy who enjoys choking your honeypie, my thought is that she should choke you first. That would give you an indication of how long to choke her.
This is a nothing article. No science behind it, no interesting theories; just a lot of hearsay nonsense. What happens in other peoples’ bedrooms I could not care less about. I cannot believe the writer or Unherd published this. Perhaps this is a low-article day (very very low)
I had a girlfriend once who wanted to be strangled during sex. It was nothing to do with wanting to be physically dominated and everything to do with asphyxiation tipping her over into orgasm. I say that with some confidence because when I tried to oblige her, but couldn’t bring myself to do actually cut off her breathing, she promptly pushed me off her, clamped a pillow over her face, and masturbated herself to orgasm. And so things proceeded for the remainder of the relationship, which was one of the reasons it didn’t last.
This was 35 years ago and the woman was a South-East-Asian Chinese. So clearly not entirely a modern phenomenon nor peculiarly Western.
Thanks for sharing.
Choking always seemed rather thug-ish to me. So I’m surprised to read that some young women actually like it. And pleased to read a rare acknowledgement of how blessedly perverse the female of the species can be, something that’s usually treated like a forbidden topic.
Thanks, Ms. Gaitskill.
It’s the worlds best kept secret.
Mathew 24:37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. This is one of the signs of the coming of Jesus. Another is the Restoration of Israel. People have lost all decency and engage in deviancy. Soon comes the Rapture of the Church, the rule of the Antichrist and the war of Gog and Magog which is beginning as we write. Note that based on the 1948 date of Israel recreation and the following prophesy Mark 13:30 I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass from the scene before all these things take place. A 12 year old Bar Mitza Jew in 1948 is scheduled to die at age 90 in 2026. This indicates how close we are to the Church rapture and the rule of the Antichrist and total depravity.
The danger of highlighting these passages of text from antiquity as precise calendrical predictions is, if they fail to occur, and the year passes by, and yet we are still here, it discredits the scripture.
I am pretty sure that William Brand and I disagree about how to interpret these passages. But anyone on UnHerd who thinks his analysis discredits Scripture… will have already found plenty of other reasons to discredit Scripture anyhow. This is way down the list of ‘apologetical challenges.’
Thanks Mary for this thoughtful article.
How about “no thank you “ and exit stage left. The lack of self respect exhibited in the social behavior of the female contingent on unheard is shocking.
I didn’t notice it. I must be blind.
.
This phantasm of prolonging jouissance into eternity existed since human sexuality exists. It’s the needed sadomasochism required by human sexual rapport – the impossible meeting between the voyeur and the exhibitionist. Trying to apply the common sense of the narrative du jour is what UnHerd readers do…
This article made me smirk a bit, as I recall a sexual incident, some 23 years ago when I met a beautiful young lady who was 22 and I was 32, at the time. Somehow, during the evening we ended up at friend’s house in bed. At some early point she then invited me to choke her, which I found bizarre at the time. However, I compiled (she was very beautiful after all), and it was fine, but I do recall feeling it was a strange request.
We dated on and off for a couple of years and had a wonderful time. She was bisexual too, and we had a lot of fun. But I did think that this is not a woman i could marry and have a family with as i probably felt a bit insecure with it all. To be fair, I think she thought that I was bit of an old fart by comparison, at the time. However, she remains a significant person in my history and experience.
Roll forward to now, in my 50s, raising a young daughter, and I am trying hard to counteract the rampant sexualisation of children in today’s society.
Trying to encourage my daughter to not wear much makeup, and not wear clothes that show off too much, even though all her role models seem to be flaunting their bits constantly on social media. This started when she was only 12!! She’s now 15 and kind of understands that being classy, rather than trashy, is a good thing….but wear what you want, to a degree, as long as it’s appropriate.
We as parents don’t help, as we dress up our daughters from a very young age in frilly knickers and pretty dresses, then they wanna be Barbie dolls by the age of 7-8 and it carries on into adolescence and adulthood. Constant validation of how pretty you are. It’s very damaging I think…..
Anyway what do I know?
If I find myself choking during sex it usually means my tie has somehow got caught up in the chandelier.
Much to agree with in MG’s article, but I’m afraid that most of The Culture’s fascination with “kink” of all 50 shades can be explained in one word: *Decadence* – decay from the inside. We can’t focus on our own desires, without discipline or consequence, without eventually reaching a wall, beyond which lies self destruction and self-loathing.
Let the smirking and condescension begin….
Mary Gaitskill is obsessed with writing about the ugliest part of sex outside of marriage.
It’s a money maker.
“It would also make me angry without knowing quite where to direct my anger.” One option might be, in that eventuality, to direct the anger at the chap choking her
Remember Robert Chambers who was dubbed the Preppy Killer and the Central Park Strangler by the media after the August 26, 1986, strangulation death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in New York? He supposedly killed her by choking her during sex. That was the first time I had ever heard of such a thing….
Maybe Mary should read some of Shere Hite or Gail Dines to get a broader perspective on reality rather than just looking to her own subset.
The popularity of choking may be due to fashion — surely #1. Also the power dynamics may appeal to some.
But there is a physical aspect. Vagus nerve stimulation can lead to orgasm in women (not documented in men, so unknown). Gagging and choking stimulate the vagus nerve (as do relaxation and the like).
Who doesn’t want to be cool?
Who wouldn’t want to sit at the cool kids table…and if not at THAT exact table, a table in proximity? Close enough, you hope, to catch the occasional trenchant comment, the sparkling bon mot — whatever those cool kids must be saying at tables where we don’t sit.
Now in the Bad Old Days, pre-internet, pre- social media, pre-instatokbooktube, what was cool was relatively narrowly defined. Fruit Loops were distinctly not cool (and many’s the shirt that would never be worn because Mom just didn’t understand). White socks. Long hair. Then short hair. Then long hair again. Cool was rather minimalist…if only because it was difficult, if not impossible, to communicate the Exclusiveness of Cool when everyone watched the same 3 channels, and listened to the same one or two transistor radio AM stations (I’m looking at you, WLS / CKLW)….and no one had Johnny Strabler’s motorcycles, or jumped them over Nazi barbed wire like Virgil Hilts.
Those days, need it be said, are gone.
Now life as lived by the UltraHip chases cool Everywhere in Everything. (Can I get an Influencer here??!) And every UltraHip Youth, thanks to instatokbooktube, is able to find his or her ultra-exclusive ‘cool kids table’ at which, virtually, they plant & root: the dazed, head-down posture with the waggling finger, constantly checking: is this meal cool, this restaurant, this yogurt, this drink, this bar, this dress, these jeans, that car, this word, that hair, this in vogue sexual thing (see me grin & stick out my tongue!). Everything is or can be or will be or has been already classified Cool or Not….and Everyone Always Knows.
And right now, in this Idiocracy Moment: choking, light choking, pretend choking, soft strangulation, throat compression, breath restriction, is — for any number of reasonless reasons….sort of semi-cool.
You want to demonstrate that you do, indeed, sit at that Coolest Table…heck, you know what to do, dontcha? And so of course we all ‘like it’ especially when we don’t because it’s….cool.
Plus — always a Big Plus — it’s, like, ‘ultra-transgressive’ and prior generations just think it’s stupid. Which it is. And so it goes.
Evidently not enough people had that kitchen table conversation which echoed in every ear I knew: Well, if EVERYONE JUMPED OFF A CLIFF, WOULD YOU??!!
Seems like everyone these days jumps….and videos all the way down.