I read this awhile ago, and I unfortunately read the comment section too. I do understand the author's concern, but I'm honestly more worried about the trend of teenagers having fewer meaningful...
I read this awhile ago, and I unfortunately read the comment section too. I do understand the author's concern, but I'm honestly more worried about the trend of teenagers having fewer meaningful relationships. Sex is awkward and inherently kinda strange. I'm not surprised that, when teens end up having sex, nowadays they're more likely to be inexperienced and make some questionable decisions like non-consensual choking.
Also, the obvious answer is better sex ed. It's a shame there's always a moral panic over teaching children healthy behaviors and expectations for a standard part of the human experience.
Broadly good article, but some things about it rubbed me the wrong way. Principally, problematic subtext that was neither properly hedged nor fully explicated. No individual instance would have...
Broadly good article, but some things about it rubbed me the wrong way. Principally, problematic subtext that was neither properly hedged nor fully explicated. No individual instance would have been worthy of comment or even necessarily overtly bad, but taken together, they seem to reinforce a narrative which I thought it had been agreed was harmful and outmoded.
Among girls and women I’ve spoken with, many did not want or like to be sexually strangled, though in an otherwise desired encounter they didn’t name it as assault. Still, a sizable number were enthusiastic; they requested it.
Is it the case that: 1) the boys are pressuring the girls into letting them choke them, 2) the girls are pressuring the boys into choking them, or 3) they're both into it? Of course all three happen (and there are a lot of in betweens), but what's the balance? I'd genuinely like to know—those situations all have different dynamics. The phrasing of the text here wants you to think that 1 is dominant, but it avoids saying so explicitly—there's no way to know which of 'many' and 'a sizable number' is bigger, let alone how much bigger it is. (Nor which of that 'sizable number' are closer to situation 2 vs 3.)
Then the follow on:
In my interviews, college students have seen male orgasm as a given; women’s is nice if it happens, but certainly not expected or necessarily prioritized (by either partner). It makes sense, then, that fulfillment would be less the motivator for choking than appearing adventurous or kinky.
The interview result is interesting. The baseless speculation ('it makes sense that...') is not, and presumes sex is only pleasurable if you orgasm.
When, for instance, she asked one male student who said he choked his partner whether he’d ever tried using a vibrator instead, he recoiled. “Why would I do that?” he asked.
Perhaps, she responded, because it would be more likely to produce orgasm without risking, you know, death.
Obviously, his incredulity is likely reflective of some problematic views on his part. But her response makes the same problematic presumption. And in particular, the 'instead' carries with it a lot of other assumptions that are not unpacked.
Nonfatal strangulation, one of the most significant indicators that a man will murder his female partner (strangulation is also one of the most common methods used for doing so), has somehow been eroticized and made consensual, at least consensual enough.
Like ... yes? Okay? People can do things consensually which would be extremely problematic if done non-consensually? I mean, forget strangulation; what about sex? The principal problem is that strangulation (consensual or otherwise) is actually dangerous, and people (apparently) don't know that.
If you wanna have the 'men choking women, even consensually, is reflective of ... patriarchal ... subjugation ...' conversation, then fine, have at (I might even agree!), but then you have to criticise sadomasochism in general. But no, they try to have it both ways ('I’m not here to kink-shame').
The part where the 16-year-old girl asked why all boys want to choke girls and the 15-year-old boy asked why all girls want to be choked fit well with my intuition. It seems fairly obvious to me...
Is it the case that: 1) the boys are pressuring the girls into letting them choke them, 2) the girls are pressuring the boys into choking them, or 3) they're both into it?
The part where the 16-year-old girl asked why all boys want to choke girls and the 15-year-old boy asked why all girls want to be choked fit well with my intuition. It seems fairly obvious to me that it was normalized by porn and several societal factors contributed to teens interpreting it as something that everyone wants. I think the answer is (4) society has pressured them both into thinking it's expected of them.
Critically, this is an opinion piece, and some of the issues you point out is why you need to approach opinion pieces differently then regular investigative pieces. In regular investigative...
Critically, this is an opinion piece, and some of the issues you point out is why you need to approach opinion pieces differently then regular investigative pieces. In regular investigative articles, the editor will help ensure unfounded or ambiguous statements don't get through.
As an aside, I read this article a little bit ago and remember part where she describes both young men and women asking why the other is into choking. My first thought is that if there was ever one single thing that would help young people, and the world in general it would be this: almost anytime you ask the question "why is broad group into/like this <very specific things>?" the answer should almost always be, they aren't, that it's an over extrapolation based on an infrequent anecdote. If we could guide people past reductive thought patterns, and approach everyone they meet as an individual, si much harm, drama, and confusion would be avoided.
I don't think teens (especially teenage women) these days are new in "assuming the male orgasm is a given and not the female orgasm". I think that's been a hetero/patriarchal issue for a long...
I don't think teens (especially teenage women) these days are new in "assuming the male orgasm is a given and not the female orgasm". I think that's been a hetero/patriarchal issue for a long time.
I also don't think that they're all (the ones who are engaging in it) actually into "choking". Asphyxiation is a kink sure but usually the choking thing is more of an control/power exchange kink and teens don't ask how to do that safely. (Pressure lower down from the neck on the upper chest for example) But teens lack safe resources to answer those questions, and they lack adults who won't freak out about the sexual behavior long enough to help the teens be in a healthier, more equitable, sexual relationship.
I didn't like how the article grouped "kinky, consensual sex" in with "forceful, hurting, assaulting sex". The two are obviously different and it's kind of insulting.
Yet, the outcomes are largely the same: Women’s brains and bodies don’t distinguish whether they are being harmed out of hate or out of love.
I didn't like how the article grouped "kinky, consensual sex" in with "forceful, hurting, assaulting sex". The two are obviously different and it's kind of insulting.
As a woman, one caveat. Young people generally can be isolated around this topic and learn harmful norms from partners depending on who initiates them into sexuality. Some people will aggressively...
As a woman, one caveat. Young people generally can be isolated around this topic and learn harmful norms from partners depending on who initiates them into sexuality. Some people will aggressively seek out information and find healthy models but others won't.
Oh yeah absolutely. I think there's always merit in discussing sex and sexuality in more depth. But also relationships- what's healthy and what isn't is often modeled on what we're presented with....
Oh yeah absolutely. I think there's always merit in discussing sex and sexuality in more depth. But also relationships- what's healthy and what isn't is often modeled on what we're presented with. I received close to no education on how to analyze a relationship for problems. I received no education on how relationships can differ in healthy ways. We teach vanishingly little psychology and human behavior to children so when they're presented with complex relationships where there's both love and maladjusted behavior it's really hard to know when it's harmful or how to approach the bad behavior.
Maybe I'm being overly charitable to the author, but I interpreted that line as acknowledging that women's (and men's) physical and physiological responses to sexualized activities are often...
Maybe I'm being overly charitable to the author, but I interpreted that line as acknowledging that women's (and men's) physical and physiological responses to sexualized activities are often involuntary. When you have limited sexual experience, this can be confusing.
This has been the "troubling new trend" for... a decade? Two decades? More? Teens have not known how to have sex and done dangerous things they thought would be hot or cool for at least my...
This has been the "troubling new trend" for... a decade? Two decades? More? Teens have not known how to have sex and done dangerous things they thought would be hot or cool for at least my lifetime, and choking has been one of the ways that they die from being uneducated pretty consistently. My uncle died from an episode of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong, and it's entirely possible that he'd have had another three decades plus with his family if there'd been more of a culture of openness and lack of shame.
Then again, he also put his eye out as a teenager due to playing around with explosives and glass, so it's entirely possible he'd have found some other way to kill himself.
But more to the point, hopefully this changes the narrative or helps change the way sex ed is taught because this is literally old news.
Which makes me so angry about the state of sex ed: tell your kids early on about safe toys for bums and choking can kill someone, if you dont want the teachers at school to talk about it. Or pull...
Which makes me so angry about the state of sex ed: tell your kids early on about safe toys for bums and choking can kill someone, if you dont want the teachers at school to talk about it. Or pull your kids if you don't want schools to talk about it but don't petition and rally and march against other kids being able to learn sex ed.
Honestly it's not any more sexual than telling your kids don't eat pills from the medicine cabinet and don't stick fingers / forks into electrical outlets.
I had a very frustrating conversation with my brother in law who is a classic, if not somewhat more moderate fox news conservative and his wife, my sister, who is a left leaning liberal. He...
I had a very frustrating conversation with my brother in law who is a classic, if not somewhat more moderate fox news conservative and his wife, my sister, who is a left leaning liberal. He absolutely does not want their daughter to have any sex education, and she obviously does.
His mindset was just so alien to me. His argument was that they should just let her "be a kid", instead of ruining some sort of imagined innocence by teaching her that sex exists. It's so odd to me to make that stand about sex, and not say, argue to keep stoves as special and mysterious by not telling her that they can be dangerous and not to touch them.
People have a lot of personal hangups about sex and it manifests in ways like this, where things related to sex, including very real dangers can't be addressed without somehow ruining a child. It just makes no sense to me, and unlike most viewpoints, I can't see the other positions point of view on it. Maybe that comes from the bias of being raised by parents who were very open and candid about sex from as early as I can remember though.
I think this type of "wishful parenting" concept goes well beyond sex, as well. I don't know if this is more of a conservative behavior, but so many parents have blinders as to who their children...
I think this type of "wishful parenting" concept goes well beyond sex, as well. I don't know if this is more of a conservative behavior, but so many parents have blinders as to who their children will ultimately grow up to be. They get this idealistic idea of "well, my perfect child would never do such a thing!" when it comes to bad or dangerous behavior. Ethan Crumbley's parents exhibited a lot of this before and after their child's mass murders. Many parents of bullies have the same disillusions.
When it comes specifically to sex, many parents just don't want to accept that their children will learn about sex one way or another at a very young age. I worked for a public school district a while back, and couldn't believe some of the things I heard in the hallways at an elementary school. So like you've said, parents just bury their heads in the sand and pretend that these problems don't exist by not talking to their kids about it, and refusing to have other adults (eg teachers) talk about it either.
There really needs to be a movement to stop infantalizing youth. Kids grow up far faster than 90% of adults are willing to acknowledge, and the list of things psychologists consider to be adverse...
There really needs to be a movement to stop infantalizing youth. Kids grow up far faster than 90% of adults are willing to acknowledge, and the list of things psychologists consider to be adverse childhood experiences generally tend to lean towards abusive or neglectful behaviors rather than the kind of things where kids are given autonomy and respect.
I've attended several child sex abuse prevention workshops, and that is exactly the kind of kid predators prey on: they don't know anything about sex except that their parents refuse to talk to...
I've attended several child sex abuse prevention workshops, and that is exactly the kind of kid predators prey on: they don't know anything about sex except that their parents refuse to talk to them about it. It offers predators easy bait (curiosity and small rebellion), and the hook is that once the grooming begins, the predators make the child will feel responsible and too ashamed to come forward for advice.
At the very very least any child needs to know the basic biology of their anatomy in proper correct terms, and that there is nothing shameful about their own bodies, and that they have private bits that are private because they are sacred to themselves, not dirty and shameful. All of that can be talked about in non sexual terms even if we pretend the child lives in a world with nobody having sex at all.
But they won't. Because the shame is just dripping off of the adult and everything is dirty and corrupted and defiled in their own minds.
Apologies about the rant but it's astonishing how many kids could have been saved from predators if they have just one adult they can turn to for good advice and to tell if someone is grooming them. I hope your sister can become informed and do her best under the circumstances.
I have to say, as a regular participant in consensual strangling in a sporting context, some of the research about brain injuries is somewhat concerning. I've always heard and believed that as...
According to the American Academy of Neurology, restricting blood flow to the brain, even briefly, can cause permanent injury, including stroke and cognitive impairment. In M.R.I.s conducted by Dr. Kawata and his colleagues (including Dr. Herbenick, who is a co-author of his papers on strangulation), undergraduate women who have been repeatedly choked show a reduction in cortical folding in the brain compared with a never-choked control group. They also showed widespread cortical thickening, an inflammation response that is associated with elevated risk of later-onset mental illness. In completing simple memory tasks, their brains had to work far harder than the control group, recruiting from more regions to achieve the same level of accuracy.
I have to say, as a regular participant in consensual strangling in a sporting context, some of the research about brain injuries is somewhat concerning. I've always heard and believed that as long as I don't make a habit of going out and tap early, that there's minimal risk -- this seems to indicate that I may be wrong.
I'm not so sure the author understands neuroscience very well or they're purposefully being misleading (I suspect the latter). A few high level issues I see with the way the author is framing...
I'm not so sure the author understands neuroscience very well or they're purposefully being misleading (I suspect the latter). A few high level issues I see with the way the author is framing these studies:
There are at least two different articles by the same set of authors being cited here. The article on cortical thickening is separate from the article on memory tasks.
The article on memory tasks found no difference in accuracy or speed of recall tasks. Framing it as 'their brains had to work harder' is dishonest at best and potentially misleading. I'm inclined to think the latter given that the author doesn't mention this is a separate paper than the one being referenced in the last sentence.
Both of these papers have rather small n sizes, very clearly state that this is correlational and not casual, and as far as I can tell so not screen for domestic violence outside of the framing of asking whether they experienced 'consensual choking'. They also don't screen for drug abuse (outside of alcohol) and the group which reported being choked had higher values reported on the PHQ9, GAD and AUDIT meaning they had more depression, more anxiety, most notably more alcohol use disorder.
It's well known that alcohol use disorder is associated with increased critical thickness, the same finding they report with the group which has a higher alcohol use disorder screening score (p = 0.012).
There are also significant differences in other demographics between the two groups, which I will mention again are very small (n=14, n=19).
At best this is exploratory research and the author doesn't frame it that way. You really shouldn't draw any conclusions from the papers referenced in the text you quoted.
I think it's partially that there are different levels of choking. Is gently pulling a collar or putting a hand on someone's neck choking? I don't think either of those restrict blood flow to any...
I think it's partially that there are different levels of choking. Is gently pulling a collar or putting a hand on someone's neck choking? I don't think either of those restrict blood flow to any significant degree. What if someone firmly grabs their partner's neck for only half a second?
Almost everyone will agree that choking someone in a way that could cause them to blackout is extremely dangerous and simply not safe.
Yet according to the article, it's reported by a lot of girls. That's where the problem lies. If it's simulated strangulation then that's totally fine, whatever, do what you want. But when it's...
Almost everyone will agree that choking someone in a way that could cause them to blackout is extremely dangerous and simply not safe.
Yet according to the article, it's reported by a lot of girls. That's where the problem lies. If it's simulated strangulation then that's totally fine, whatever, do what you want. But when it's cutting off air or blood for any amount of time, it becomes a public health situation, especially when it comes to teens and not informed adults.
The author's focus of strangulation being a sick fetish that's Bad and Wrong is counterproductive to the only thing that would actually effectively address that though -- which is educating teens...
The author's focus of strangulation being a sick fetish that's Bad and Wrong is counterproductive to the only thing that would actually effectively address that though -- which is educating teens about what's safe and what isn't. Teens need more education on safe sex generally anyway, and telling them not to do something because it's gross and wrong is not that.
Very interesting article - thank you for sharing that; however, it is one of those that evoke the "I am too old for this world" feeling in me. I guess it explains why I started noticing this in...
Very interesting article - thank you for sharing that; however, it is one of those that evoke the "I am too old for this world" feeling in me. I guess it explains why I started noticing this in porn. For me, it is an intense turn-off - when I see that, washing dishes instantly becomes a lot more appealing than porn. Am I the only one who misses the good old pre-internet days when actual women were not shaved down there and the raunchiest thing one could think of was slapping her butt? Those were simpler times.
You mean the pre-internet days in the 1970's where there were entire libraries of smut as debauched as anything you could find today? Or the pre-internet days of the 1770's when the Marquis de...
You mean the pre-internet days in the 1970's where there were entire libraries of smut as debauched as anything you could find today? Or the pre-internet days of the 1770's when the Marquis de Sade was writing? Or the pre-internet days when the Romans had a specific word for face-fucking (irrumatio) or the pre-internet days of ancient Greece when Sappho was writing erotic poetry, or the pre-internet days of the Song of Solomon (hung like donkeys and ejaculating like stallions, anyone)?
People have always been kinky. You're far too young to predate raunchy porn.
Of course, porn and kinkiness existed, but maybe this is not about existence, but about pervasiveness - is that the right word? When I was a teenager, of course, some of my buddies brought a...
Of course, porn and kinkiness existed, but maybe this is not about existence, but about pervasiveness - is that the right word? When I was a teenager, of course, some of my buddies brought a magazine to school once or twice. But it was not so ever-present and it was not treated as a manual on how real sex should look like.
And let me be clear - I did not try to express any objective value statement. I am not saying porn is bad or anything. I tried to share my personal feelings of nostalgia and being old (which is new to me - I am not even 50). If people want to choke themselves nowadays, that's none of my business.
That goes for everything that the internet enabled, including international communication, educational information, visual entertainment, and yes, porn.
is not about existence, but about pervasiveness
That goes for everything that the internet enabled, including international communication, educational information, visual entertainment, and yes, porn.
That's exactly my problem with it. At least when I was a hormone driven 14 year old, you had to go looking to find porn. It might be in a box hidden your uncle's garage, it might be a magazine...
That's exactly my problem with it. At least when I was a hormone driven 14 year old, you had to go looking to find porn. It might be in a box hidden your uncle's garage, it might be a magazine blowing down the back alley, but it wasn't available 24/7 on a device that you carried with you everywhere you go. And you might have seen a Playboy centerfold or two, but dear gawd that stuff was tame and almost classy erotica compared to the stuff thats online and available to any horny 14 year old now just by clicking 'Yes I'm 18'. I dont think I even knew what the work 'kink' meant til I was already married. The pervasiveness is definitely NOT good.
You make a good point but I came of age in the 80s and no one ever tried to choke me or hit me . My sexual education was aided by a copy of the Joy of Sex and Jean Auel's romance novels which...
You make a good point but I came of age in the 80s and no one ever tried to choke me or hit me . My sexual education was aided by a copy of the Joy of Sex and Jean Auel's romance novels which looking back are cringy but emphasized female orgasm and respect.
I'm not a guy but I have seen Men of my generation reminiscing about the underwear pages of the Sears catalog. Porn was not as easy to get.
The easy availability of video porn and the competition for clicks has popularized what used to be extreme kink. This article is not great but young people, gay and straight need effective warnings about dangerous activities.
To be fair I didn't think Song of Solomon should be counted in the debauched category. It's one man one woman and a lot of similies and metaphor without much graphical depictions of much besides...
To be fair I didn't think Song of Solomon should be counted in the debauched category. It's one man one woman and a lot of similies and metaphor without much graphical depictions of much besides regular penis in vagina sex. Very tame by any (non Victorian) period standards.
Let's replace that example with Gilgamesh randomly raping lots of teenaged girls.
You're not alone. I can't comment on older pornography, but I'll comment on media in general. I do appreciate the "new" tag system these days, when one could inspect a (say) game package or review...
You're not alone.
I can't comment on older pornography, but I'll comment on media in general. I do appreciate the "new" tag system these days, when one could inspect a (say) game package or review and find out if there's smoking or use of drugs or drinking or whatever, and filtre from there. Same for sexual content, you could probably read tags and find out right away if something's got stuff you don't like. It's my understanding that in ye Olde days you just click on stuff and be surprised? Or buy a VHS and be surprised?
Back in the human world, my concern would also be that performers are pushed to doing weirder and much more violent and degrading content than they would otherwise choose to do before they entered into the industry. "But they consented" doesn't mean as much as people think they do when money and work and young people and power dynamics are involved
I read this awhile ago, and I unfortunately read the comment section too. I do understand the author's concern, but I'm honestly more worried about the trend of teenagers having fewer meaningful relationships. Sex is awkward and inherently kinda strange. I'm not surprised that, when teens end up having sex, nowadays they're more likely to be inexperienced and make some questionable decisions like non-consensual choking.
Also, the obvious answer is better sex ed. It's a shame there's always a moral panic over teaching children healthy behaviors and expectations for a standard part of the human experience.
Broadly good article, but some things about it rubbed me the wrong way. Principally, problematic subtext that was neither properly hedged nor fully explicated. No individual instance would have been worthy of comment or even necessarily overtly bad, but taken together, they seem to reinforce a narrative which I thought it had been agreed was harmful and outmoded.
Is it the case that: 1) the boys are pressuring the girls into letting them choke them, 2) the girls are pressuring the boys into choking them, or 3) they're both into it? Of course all three happen (and there are a lot of in betweens), but what's the balance? I'd genuinely like to know—those situations all have different dynamics. The phrasing of the text here wants you to think that 1 is dominant, but it avoids saying so explicitly—there's no way to know which of 'many' and 'a sizable number' is bigger, let alone how much bigger it is. (Nor which of that 'sizable number' are closer to situation 2 vs 3.)
Then the follow on:
The interview result is interesting. The baseless speculation ('it makes sense that...') is not, and presumes sex is only pleasurable if you orgasm.
Obviously, his incredulity is likely reflective of some problematic views on his part. But her response makes the same problematic presumption. And in particular, the 'instead' carries with it a lot of other assumptions that are not unpacked.
Like ... yes? Okay? People can do things consensually which would be extremely problematic if done non-consensually? I mean, forget strangulation; what about sex? The principal problem is that strangulation (consensual or otherwise) is actually dangerous, and people (apparently) don't know that.
If you wanna have the 'men choking women, even consensually, is reflective of ... patriarchal ... subjugation ...' conversation, then fine, have at (I might even agree!), but then you have to criticise sadomasochism in general. But no, they try to have it both ways ('I’m not here to kink-shame').
The part where the 16-year-old girl asked why all boys want to choke girls and the 15-year-old boy asked why all girls want to be choked fit well with my intuition. It seems fairly obvious to me that it was normalized by porn and several societal factors contributed to teens interpreting it as something that everyone wants. I think the answer is (4) society has pressured them both into thinking it's expected of them.
Critically, this is an opinion piece, and some of the issues you point out is why you need to approach opinion pieces differently then regular investigative pieces. In regular investigative articles, the editor will help ensure unfounded or ambiguous statements don't get through.
As an aside, I read this article a little bit ago and remember part where she describes both young men and women asking why the other is into choking. My first thought is that if there was ever one single thing that would help young people, and the world in general it would be this: almost anytime you ask the question "why is broad group into/like this <very specific things>?" the answer should almost always be, they aren't, that it's an over extrapolation based on an infrequent anecdote. If we could guide people past reductive thought patterns, and approach everyone they meet as an individual, si much harm, drama, and confusion would be avoided.
I don't think teens (especially teenage women) these days are new in "assuming the male orgasm is a given and not the female orgasm". I think that's been a hetero/patriarchal issue for a long time.
I also don't think that they're all (the ones who are engaging in it) actually into "choking". Asphyxiation is a kink sure but usually the choking thing is more of an control/power exchange kink and teens don't ask how to do that safely. (Pressure lower down from the neck on the upper chest for example) But teens lack safe resources to answer those questions, and they lack adults who won't freak out about the sexual behavior long enough to help the teens be in a healthier, more equitable, sexual relationship.
I didn't like how the article grouped "kinky, consensual sex" in with "forceful, hurting, assaulting sex". The two are obviously different and it's kind of insulting.
Worse yet, it's infantilizing women. They can't distinguish when they're being hurt or loved? I don't buy it, women aren't stupid.
As a woman, one caveat. Young people generally can be isolated around this topic and learn harmful norms from partners depending on who initiates them into sexuality. Some people will aggressively seek out information and find healthy models but others won't.
Oh yeah absolutely. I think there's always merit in discussing sex and sexuality in more depth. But also relationships- what's healthy and what isn't is often modeled on what we're presented with. I received close to no education on how to analyze a relationship for problems. I received no education on how relationships can differ in healthy ways. We teach vanishingly little psychology and human behavior to children so when they're presented with complex relationships where there's both love and maladjusted behavior it's really hard to know when it's harmful or how to approach the bad behavior.
Maybe I'm being overly charitable to the author, but I interpreted that line as acknowledging that women's (and men's) physical and physiological responses to sexualized activities are often involuntary. When you have limited sexual experience, this can be confusing.
But it's not saying the same thing about men. It's taking the "poor little girls don't know this is bad for them" tack.
This has been the "troubling new trend" for... a decade? Two decades? More? Teens have not known how to have sex and done dangerous things they thought would be hot or cool for at least my lifetime, and choking has been one of the ways that they die from being uneducated pretty consistently. My uncle died from an episode of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong, and it's entirely possible that he'd have had another three decades plus with his family if there'd been more of a culture of openness and lack of shame.
Then again, he also put his eye out as a teenager due to playing around with explosives and glass, so it's entirely possible he'd have found some other way to kill himself.
But more to the point, hopefully this changes the narrative or helps change the way sex ed is taught because this is literally old news.
Which makes me so angry about the state of sex ed: tell your kids early on about safe toys for bums and choking can kill someone, if you dont want the teachers at school to talk about it. Or pull your kids if you don't want schools to talk about it but don't petition and rally and march against other kids being able to learn sex ed.
Honestly it's not any more sexual than telling your kids don't eat pills from the medicine cabinet and don't stick fingers / forks into electrical outlets.
I had a very frustrating conversation with my brother in law who is a classic, if not somewhat more moderate fox news conservative and his wife, my sister, who is a left leaning liberal. He absolutely does not want their daughter to have any sex education, and she obviously does.
His mindset was just so alien to me. His argument was that they should just let her "be a kid", instead of ruining some sort of imagined innocence by teaching her that sex exists. It's so odd to me to make that stand about sex, and not say, argue to keep stoves as special and mysterious by not telling her that they can be dangerous and not to touch them.
People have a lot of personal hangups about sex and it manifests in ways like this, where things related to sex, including very real dangers can't be addressed without somehow ruining a child. It just makes no sense to me, and unlike most viewpoints, I can't see the other positions point of view on it. Maybe that comes from the bias of being raised by parents who were very open and candid about sex from as early as I can remember though.
I think this type of "wishful parenting" concept goes well beyond sex, as well. I don't know if this is more of a conservative behavior, but so many parents have blinders as to who their children will ultimately grow up to be. They get this idealistic idea of "well, my perfect child would never do such a thing!" when it comes to bad or dangerous behavior. Ethan Crumbley's parents exhibited a lot of this before and after their child's mass murders. Many parents of bullies have the same disillusions.
When it comes specifically to sex, many parents just don't want to accept that their children will learn about sex one way or another at a very young age. I worked for a public school district a while back, and couldn't believe some of the things I heard in the hallways at an elementary school. So like you've said, parents just bury their heads in the sand and pretend that these problems don't exist by not talking to their kids about it, and refusing to have other adults (eg teachers) talk about it either.
There really needs to be a movement to stop infantalizing youth. Kids grow up far faster than 90% of adults are willing to acknowledge, and the list of things psychologists consider to be adverse childhood experiences generally tend to lean towards abusive or neglectful behaviors rather than the kind of things where kids are given autonomy and respect.
I've attended several child sex abuse prevention workshops, and that is exactly the kind of kid predators prey on: they don't know anything about sex except that their parents refuse to talk to them about it. It offers predators easy bait (curiosity and small rebellion), and the hook is that once the grooming begins, the predators make the child will feel responsible and too ashamed to come forward for advice.
At the very very least any child needs to know the basic biology of their anatomy in proper correct terms, and that there is nothing shameful about their own bodies, and that they have private bits that are private because they are sacred to themselves, not dirty and shameful. All of that can be talked about in non sexual terms even if we pretend the child lives in a world with nobody having sex at all.
But they won't. Because the shame is just dripping off of the adult and everything is dirty and corrupted and defiled in their own minds.
Apologies about the rant but it's astonishing how many kids could have been saved from predators if they have just one adult they can turn to for good advice and to tell if someone is grooming them. I hope your sister can become informed and do her best under the circumstances.
Cosign this 100% from working with victims and juvenile offenders.
I have to say, as a regular participant in consensual strangling in a sporting context, some of the research about brain injuries is somewhat concerning. I've always heard and believed that as long as I don't make a habit of going out and tap early, that there's minimal risk -- this seems to indicate that I may be wrong.
I'm not so sure the author understands neuroscience very well or they're purposefully being misleading (I suspect the latter). A few high level issues I see with the way the author is framing these studies:
At best this is exploratory research and the author doesn't frame it that way. You really shouldn't draw any conclusions from the papers referenced in the text you quoted.
I never wrestled, but I agree. It's also the part that makes me incredulous when people just complain about this article kink-shaming.
I think it's partially that there are different levels of choking. Is gently pulling a collar or putting a hand on someone's neck choking? I don't think either of those restrict blood flow to any significant degree. What if someone firmly grabs their partner's neck for only half a second?
Almost everyone will agree that choking someone in a way that could cause them to blackout is extremely dangerous and simply not safe.
Yet according to the article, it's reported by a lot of girls. That's where the problem lies. If it's simulated strangulation then that's totally fine, whatever, do what you want. But when it's cutting off air or blood for any amount of time, it becomes a public health situation, especially when it comes to teens and not informed adults.
The author's focus of strangulation being a sick fetish that's Bad and Wrong is counterproductive to the only thing that would actually effectively address that though -- which is educating teens about what's safe and what isn't. Teens need more education on safe sex generally anyway, and telling them not to do something because it's gross and wrong is not that.
Totally agree. I really wish the author had taken a public health perspective and focused on what can be done to better educate teenagers...
Very interesting article - thank you for sharing that; however, it is one of those that evoke the "I am too old for this world" feeling in me. I guess it explains why I started noticing this in porn. For me, it is an intense turn-off - when I see that, washing dishes instantly becomes a lot more appealing than porn. Am I the only one who misses the good old pre-internet days when actual women were not shaved down there and the raunchiest thing one could think of was slapping her butt? Those were simpler times.
You mean the pre-internet days in the 1970's where there were entire libraries of smut as debauched as anything you could find today? Or the pre-internet days of the 1770's when the Marquis de Sade was writing? Or the pre-internet days when the Romans had a specific word for face-fucking (irrumatio) or the pre-internet days of ancient Greece when Sappho was writing erotic poetry, or the pre-internet days of the Song of Solomon (hung like donkeys and ejaculating like stallions, anyone)?
People have always been kinky. You're far too young to predate raunchy porn.
Of course, porn and kinkiness existed, but maybe this is not about existence, but about pervasiveness - is that the right word? When I was a teenager, of course, some of my buddies brought a magazine to school once or twice. But it was not so ever-present and it was not treated as a manual on how real sex should look like.
And let me be clear - I did not try to express any objective value statement. I am not saying porn is bad or anything. I tried to share my personal feelings of nostalgia and being old (which is new to me - I am not even 50). If people want to choke themselves nowadays, that's none of my business.
That goes for everything that the internet enabled, including international communication, educational information, visual entertainment, and yes, porn.
That's exactly my problem with it. At least when I was a hormone driven 14 year old, you had to go looking to find porn. It might be in a box hidden your uncle's garage, it might be a magazine blowing down the back alley, but it wasn't available 24/7 on a device that you carried with you everywhere you go. And you might have seen a Playboy centerfold or two, but dear gawd that stuff was tame and almost classy erotica compared to the stuff thats online and available to any horny 14 year old now just by clicking 'Yes I'm 18'. I dont think I even knew what the work 'kink' meant til I was already married. The pervasiveness is definitely NOT good.
You make a good point but I came of age in the 80s and no one ever tried to choke me or hit me . My sexual education was aided by a copy of the Joy of Sex and Jean Auel's romance novels which looking back are cringy but emphasized female orgasm and respect.
I'm not a guy but I have seen Men of my generation reminiscing about the underwear pages of the Sears catalog. Porn was not as easy to get.
The easy availability of video porn and the competition for clicks has popularized what used to be extreme kink. This article is not great but young people, gay and straight need effective warnings about dangerous activities.
To be fair I didn't think Song of Solomon should be counted in the debauched category. It's one man one woman and a lot of similies and metaphor without much graphical depictions of much besides regular penis in vagina sex. Very tame by any (non Victorian) period standards.
Let's replace that example with Gilgamesh randomly raping lots of teenaged girls.
Just because it existed doesn't mean that all of it was in a competition to be the most extreme.
You're not alone.
I can't comment on older pornography, but I'll comment on media in general. I do appreciate the "new" tag system these days, when one could inspect a (say) game package or review and find out if there's smoking or use of drugs or drinking or whatever, and filtre from there. Same for sexual content, you could probably read tags and find out right away if something's got stuff you don't like. It's my understanding that in ye Olde days you just click on stuff and be surprised? Or buy a VHS and be surprised?
Back in the human world, my concern would also be that performers are pushed to doing weirder and much more violent and degrading content than they would otherwise choose to do before they entered into the industry. "But they consented" doesn't mean as much as people think they do when money and work and young people and power dynamics are involved