Wait, so ‘choke me daddy’ could be a criminal offence. Like, goading someone into performing a criminal act or, on flip side, the other party thinking they’re in the clear because of consent that can’t lawfully be given?

Inb4 police stings trying to catch guys in the act.

Her: spread eagle, mid coitus, getting choked. Her: rips off mask revealing middle aged man Thought you were getting away with it, mate?! You’re under arrest!!

It's always a tragedy when someone dies like that, but that article is full of some really dumb stuff and a lot of moralizing. The Lucy mentioned had frequent hookups where nothing was negotiated beforehand. It's not her fault she was subject to violence and people should talk about sex, boundaries, kink, etc, before participation.

"No safe way to do it": quite possibly. There is risk in many activities. This is why frameworks like RACK (risk aware consensual kink) exist alongside SSC (safe, sane, and consensual). To use a metaphor, driving a car is risky, but we do it anyway while adding safety features to roads and vehicles to reduce that risk. It's impossible to make it completely safe.

“I think it’s a really troubling sign that 50 years ago most people would probably know strangulation was an offence – just like we all know that stealing is illegal,” she says.

Stealing can't be done with consent because then it's just taking.

consequences can be delayed by weeks. It can cause a change in voice, difficulty swallowing, incontinence, seizures, problems with memory, decision-making and concentration, depression, anxiety, miscarriage.

Pregnancy also carries risk for everything on this list except trouble swallowing which is more of a cause. Voice changes from hormone level changes, incontinence from the pelvic changes required to get a baby through there, seizures from eclampsia, "pregnancy brain", postpartum depression and anxiety both exist, and unfortunately miscarriages happen in over 10% of pregnancies. But taking risks for this is considered good while doing so for pleasure is deemed not so.

this is happening overwhelmingly to women by men. If you accept what people will argue – that this is an activity that’s enjoyed because it’s ‘sensual’ – then why aren’t men the recipients more often?

There is a significant difference in the preferences between men and women. This paper suggests ~75% of women prefer to be submissive as opposed to dominant. The sensual framing used is a straw man that requires willful ignorance of kink.

There is a heavy emphasis that porn causes more violent sexual behavior but then has this:

I’ve been with my current boyfriend for over a year and at some point, we had a conversation where I asked, ‘Why don’t you choke me?’ He said he had no desire to.

Some people just aren't into it. It's also mentioned he's not into kinky porn. Also, maybe have conversations about sex and what everybody's into before your one year anniversary.

“When [choking] was presented, you could feel the tension, the internal conflict, in the room, with professionals being unable to reconcile the gap between what they were hearing and their usual sex-positivity.”

This is the most interesting part of the article but they don't go beyond the feeling to get any actual statements from anybody that would be at a sexual health conference. Going from risk to guaranteed harm (if that's the case as opposed to user error) and how that shifts opinions or if there's a divide in spite of that would be fascinating.

As somebody in the kink scene that doesn't really consume BDSM pornographs and knows way too many women that have been subject to sexual violence and domestic violence, I think this is a pretty bad article that conflates kink with those violences.

Thank you for that. I did no see it. Here it is for anyone interested: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/27/sydney-16yo-girl-death-suspected-sexual-choking-asphyxiation-ntwnfb