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The death of a 16-year-old girl in a suspected case of sexual choking this week has shone a light on a pervasive practice that our society has an urgent duty to address.
Within the past decade, strangulation has rapidly moved from the fringe into a mainstream sex act that young people have become dangerously complacent about.
Research shows more than half of Australians aged 18 to 35 have been strangled at least once during sex, a figure that has risen in line with the ubiquity of violent pornography and misogynistic content.
While it may be normalised, the truth is it is never safe. Even without signs of physical injury or immediate harm, consequences can include incontinence, seizures, stroke, cardiac arrest, paralysis and brain injury.
There are psychosocial ramifications, such as anxiety, PTSD and an increased risk of future abuse, both for those who have had their personal safety violated and those who carry out strangulation.
Violence-prevention advocates argue consent is not possible because asphyxiation removes a person’s ability to consent and can result in grievous bodily harm, irrespective of intent.
Furthermore, informed consent means both parties understanding and accepting the roulette of risks.
Some measures have been taken: NSW tightened laws to make choking convictions easier to obtain in 2018, and the Albanese government introduced age verification to access adult content this year.
But many argue this is not enough to prevent a time bomb of unintended consequences.
Breathless campaign founder Maree Crabbe is pushing for tighter regulation of content in pornography, which has become a powerful source of sex education for young people and often depicts strangulation.
There’s merit in Australia considering legislation to address this by preventing the distribution of strangulation pornography, as recently passed in Britain. However, like other well-intended laws around online safety, time will tell how successful this will be in practice.
Closer scrutiny should also be applied to content creators on social media who actively promote sexual strangulation, more commonly described as choking, and falsely claim to be able to show followers how to engage safely.
It’s another notoriously difficult area to regulate but misinformation can be called out, and those with expertise should be prepared to report and publicly challenge false narratives.
Teach Us Consent chief executive and founder Chanel Contos’ #fixourfeeds campaign is calling on the Australian government to introduce an opt-in feature for social media algorithms, designed to prevent young men’s feeds from being flooded by default with misogynistic content.
A bill backing the #fixourfeeds proposal was introduced into the Senate by the Greens this year.
This would help restore some agency and autonomy to teens, who are often the product rather than the consumer on social media.
Reining in the multibillion-dollar pornography and big-tech industries is a worthwhile but ambitious task.
There are important conversations to be had on an individual level to arm young people with information about the risks and critical thinking skills around what they’re consuming online.
The 16-year-old girl’s death tells us maintaining the status quo is not an option.
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