There Is No Safe Way To Choke Someone

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Disclaimer: I am not a medical or legal professional. The information shared here is educational and based on publicly available research. While I went through and reviewed said research, it may be subject to human errors due to the unfortunate thing that is my ADHD distractibility (also, my being human). It is not legal or medical advice. Please consult a qualified professional for guidance specific to your situation. Dominant Discourse is not liable for any decisions made based on this content.

Alrighty, disclaimers are out of the way, so let us start with a summary of where we actually are.

Choking during sex has become one of the most common sexual practices among young adults. That means that it’s not niche, not edge-case, not something confined to BDSM communities.

Exhibit A: A US study of nearly 5,000 randomly sampled college students found that one in three women aged 18–24 had been choked during their most recent vaginal intercourse (Herbenick et al., 2021).

Exhibit B: In Iceland, 70% of 18–24-year-olds reported having engaged in choking in their lifetime (Vilhjálmsdóttir & Forberg, 2023).

Exhibit C: In Australia, 57% of adults aged 18–35 had been choked, and 51% had choked a partner (Sharman et al., 2024).

Across all three countries, the pattern is consistent: women and gender diverse people are choked significantly more often than men, and men choke partners significantly more often than women (Herbenick et al., 2021; Herbenick et al., 2025; Sharman et al., 2024; Vilhjálmsdóttir & Forberg, 2023).

So, yes, this isn’t a niche kink practice anymore. It has moved into mainstream sexual culture at significant speed, largely without the conversation about risk catching up. The kink community, to its credit, tends to engage more thoughtfully with risk than the mainstream does. Which is exactly why this conversation is worth having here.

So why should you not engage in choking? Well, let us get right into it.

Physiology Doesn't Care How Experienced You Are

The neck contains structures that don't respond well to external pressure: the carotid arteries, the jugular veins, the trachea, the vagus nerve, and the vertebral arteries. Compressing any of these can reduce blood flow to the brain, impair the heart's rhythm, or restrict the airway. This can lead to consequences including stroke, cardiac arrest, brain injury, or death (Bauer et al., 2021; Bichard et al., 2022; de Boos, 2019; Dunn et al., 2023).

What makes this particularly difficult to reason about is that the effects aren't always immediate. Brain injuries from strangulation can be delayed by hours or even days. Damage to the carotid arteries can lead to stroke well after the fact, with no visible injury present at the time of the act (Bichard et al., 2022). To illustrate this further, strangulation has been identified as the most common cause of death in BDSM-related fatalities across a literature review spanning 1986 to 2020 (Schori et al., 2021).

The feeling that makes erotic choking compelling — the lightheadedness, the dissociation, the floaty quality — is, bluntly put, oxygen deprivation to the brain. That experience doesn't sit on a safe side of a physiological threshold, because there is no safe side of that threshold. The level of pressure required to produce those sensations is also the level of pressure that creates risk of serious harm. There is no technique, no amount of training, and no level of experience that changes this. As fun as the fantasy may be.

The Consent Problem

The kink community places significant weight on safewords and safe signals, and rightly so. Surely you can just tap out if you’re no longer enjoying this adventurous hand’s squeeze on your throat?

The problem is that the physiology of choking actively undermines your ability to.

Research has found that around 40% of people who have ever been choked during sexual activity report having been unable to breathe or speak at some point during it (Herbenick et al., 2024). As oxygen deprivation increases, motor control degrades. That means that tapping out, raising a hand, or using any agreed-upon physical signal becomes unreliable precisely when it would be most needed (Kabat & Anderson, 1943; Smith et al., 2011). Loss of consciousness can occur, at which point no safe signal is possible at all (Stellpflug et al., 2020).

There's also the question of what informed consent actually requires. Consent to an activity can't be meaningfully informed without an understanding of the risks involved. Research consistently shows that many people engaging in choking are not aware of the severity of the harms associated with it (Conte et al., 2025; Sharman et al., 2024). A "yes" given without that knowledge doesn't meet the standard of informed consent — a standard the kink community holds itself to more rigorously than most.

It's also worth noting that gestures commonly used to initiate choking — placing a partner's hand on one's own neck, for instance — do not constitute explicit prior agreement under kink consent frameworks or, increasingly, under law (Schulhofer, 2023). Nonverbal initiation is standard practice in a lot of sexual contexts, but the use of erotic force and restraint requires explicit verbal negotiation (Dunkley & Brotto, 2020).

The Legal Situation

In the United States, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the federal code, three US territories, and at least 20 Native American Tribal Codes have enacted laws criminalizing strangulation and/or suffocation (Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention, 2025). Under federal law, any act that intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly impedes breathing or blood circulation by applying pressure to the neck or throat is a felony carrying up to 10 years, regardless of visible injury or stated intent (Assaults within maritime and territorial jurisdiction, 2024). Courts have consistently held that consent is not a valid defense and have upheld this specifically in BDSM contexts (John Doe v. George Mason University, 2016; People v. Cline, 2024; State v. Stone, 2023).

The American Law Institute's Explicit Prior Permission framework, which represents the most consent-forward legal approach to kink currently in development, still excludes acts that risk serious bodily injury or death, a category that erotic choking falls squarely into (Schulhofer, 2023; Model Penal Code § 213.10).

Outside the US, the exact legal situation varies, but the direction is consistent.

England and Wales introduced a standalone offense of non-fatal strangulation in 2022 under the Domestic Abuse Act, explicitly overriding consent as a defense and carrying a maximum sentence of five years (Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022). Northern Ireland followed with legislation carrying up to 14 years in Crown Court. New Zealand introduced strangulation offenses in 2018 with penalties of up to seven years. In Australia, all states and territories criminalize non-fatal strangulation, with consent generally not accepted as a defense where injury or risk to life is involved. Canada's Criminal Code makes any attempt to choke, suffocate, or strangle another person an indictable offense liable to imprisonment for life under section 246, with additional strangulation-specific provisions added in 2019 under sections 267 and 272. In Germany, the Federal Court has held that the legal line is crossed when a party could be brought into concrete danger of death, which is a threshold choking meets by definition (Bundesgerichtshof [BGH], 2004).

In much of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, the practice is spreading (visible in forensic case reports and online communities) but formal legal and public health documentation remains limited, largely because broader restrictions on discussing sexuality make open research difficult (LSE Women, Peace and Security, 2026).

Also, the legal exposure doesn't stop at criminal liability. Sexual choking also carries civil liability risk, given that most insurance policies exclude coverage for illegal or intentional acts. Courts have treated it as a strict liability activity, meaning liability attaches to any resulting harm regardless of care taken (Restatement (Second) of Torts § 520, 1977; Goodwin v. Reilley, 176 Cal. App. 3d 86).

"But We've Done It Before, and It Was Fine"

This is the argument that's hardest to push back on, because it's true, until it isn't.

The absence of a bad outcome so far is not evidence that the risk isn't present. It means the person has been fortunate. Brain injuries from choking can be cumulative, may not present immediately, and may not be connected to the incident that caused them. A stroke can occur hours after the scene ends. The most serious harms are often ones that neither person would attribute to what happened.

Experience doesn't reduce the risk the way it might with other skills, as the danger is in the act itself, not in a lack of technique.

There Are Alternatives

If what you're after is the psychological charge of breathlessness, the feeling of control and surrender, or the physical intensity of breath restriction, there are ways to approach that without pressure on the neck. These include self-directed breath holding, rebreathing, neck holding without applied pressure, pressure on the jawbone or collarbone, and certain forms of corseting that restrict breathing without compressing the neck (Dunkley & Brotto, 2020).

Some of these require skill, discussion, and ideally instruction before implementing. But they offer a starting point that doesn't carry the same risk profile. The least skill-intensive entry point is verbal — negotiating breath-related scenarios through language rather than physical application.

Why We Need Advocacy

The kink community has built something valuable. We have one of the best cultures of consent literacy, harm reduction, and honest engagement with risk, and that, in my opinion, is one that most mainstream sexual culture doesn't come close to matching.

However, part of protecting it is being willing to sit with inconvenient information. Choking has become normalized fast, and the arguments for it are familiar (”just squeeze the sides!” one may say). While I’m all for delving into high-risk when you’re aware of them, this one is heavily regulated by both law and the unfortunate reality of our bodies. So with a sigh, we conclude:

There is no safe way to choke someone.

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